Human-Computer Interaction Talk Series: Dr. Shm Garanganao Almeda, "The Design of Technology by, and for, Artistic Worlds."

Abstract: I think it is a good thing when people make art. How can we help communities make art more often? Creativity Support Tools (CSTs) have made the creation of art (images, music, film) faster and easier than ever. But creation technology often fails to address (or even exacerbates) big issues threatening creative communities today. Communities share art online at the mercy of mysterious media recommendation algorithms, on platforms crowded with slop, at the risk of nonconsensual reuse (i.e., for AI training data.) How can we reimagine technology’s role in the face of these wicked artistic support problems? I’ll present Creativity Supportive Ecosystems, a framework for understanding how creation systems interdepend on systems of distribution, reception, and provenance. I’ll discuss how this ecosystemic lens grounds my perspective on designing creativity supportive infrastructure, and share Artographer, a system we built to explore spatial maps as a medium for art curation and exploration. Throughout, I’ll try to emphasize an aggressive optimism that–not only can we use data and ""AI"" technologies to support creativity & culture in awesome, powerful ways… we can (and should) do so while moving smaller, slower, with intention, and with care.

Bio: Shm Garanganao Almeda (https://shmuh.co/) is a creativity support researcher, visual + performance artist, and computer scientist. Shm is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian, using data visualization + an unhinged passion for underappreciated historical art to imagine new encounters with cultural collections. They're also currently driving across the country from SF to NYC! Over the past 7 years, Shm has been spotted around the Bay Area researching HCI+AI in the UC Berkeley EECS PhD program, at Adobe Research, at the Midjourney Storytelling Lab, and in other strange environments. Further sightings have caught them teaching Creative Programming & Electronics at the Jacobs Design Institute, using computer vision to push new paradigms of puppetry as a Stochastic Labs resident, and pushing their two rabbits around in a pet stroller.