About the Speaker:
Philippe Pasquier is Associate Professor at Simon Fraser University's School of Interactive Arts and Technology. He is both a scientist specialized in artificial intelligence and a multi-disciplinary artist. His contributions range from theoretical research in artificial intelligence, multi-agent systems and machine learning to applied artistic research and practice in digital art, computer music, and generative art. Philippe is the Chair and investigator of the AAAI international workshops on Musical Metacreation (MUME), the MUME concerts series, the international workshops on Movement and Computation (MOCO), and he was the symposium director for ISEA2015.
He has co-authored over 100 peer-reviewed contributions, presented in forums ranging from the most scientifically rigorous to the most creatively arty. His academic and artistic work has been shown internationally, including at the Centre Pompidou, IRCAM, GMEA, Comtemporary Museum of Montreal, Mutek festival, Sydney Biennale, Hearzoom festival, Les bains numeriques, … He attracted support and funding from more than 20 scientific or cultural institutions including the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) the Canadian Council for the Arts (CCA), the French Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication, the Australian Research Council and the Australian Council for the Arts.
About the Talk:
The ability to invent and use tools is a defining characteristic of human beings: from the invention of the wheel to the development of cell phones, humans and their technologies have been co-evolving. In recent years, artificial intelligence has been successful at endowing machines with autonomous and proactive behaviors that normally rely on human intelligence. Computational creativity, a.k.a. metacreation, is a new and expanding field that attempts to model and simulate creative processes. This field brings together scientists and artists to design systems that are achieving creative tasks at human competitive levels. This presentation will introduce and motivate this subfield of artificial intelligence through the presentation of generative systems designed and developed at the Metacreation Laboratory.