Stanford University is offering this fall Introduction to AI (Artificial Intelligence) with identical coursework to its traditional physical classroom for free to all via the internet. At the moment, over 135,000 have signed up for the class.. This is enough people to form a real "culture" in both the cultural and petri dish senses of the word. This is a unique moment and rare opportunity to observe and participate in the evolution of internet culture as well
Introduction to Artistic Intelligence will be a parallel course that will also be freely available to the public. This course will function both as real educational introduction to the tools and techniques used today in contemporary art and as a collaborative art project in its own right.
That artificial and artistic share the same word root is not accidental. The common Latin root is ars which encompasses our modern words for art, craft and skill. Both AI and the Arts are multidisciplinary fields that interested in perception, social organization, relationships between humans and objects, as well as the nature of intelligence itself.  Likewise both AI and the arts have fluid borders between works of pure investigation and those with broad popular application. In diverse yet often parallel ways both artificial and artistic intelligence will profoundly shape the future of our society.
However compared to the young field of AI, the visual arts are the oldest experimental field of human inquiry with a history that stretches back almost between 32,ooo and 2.5 million years. Yet just like in the AI, the visual arts is undergoing the same rapid evolution in methods and techniques. The breath and depth of domain-specific knowledge needed in the visual arts in order make new breakthroughs has few parallels in other branches of learning. The special challenges of this long history paired with its current rapid evolution tools and practices are the focus of Introduction to Artistic Intelligence both as online course and as artistic product in itself.
This project examines the fluid evolving place of both artistic intelligence and the artist in a world increasing defined by technology and science yet framed and understood through the design and the visual arts.
This is open call to all types of art practitioners from both traditional visual arts (drawing, painting, and sculpture) as well as those using newer technologies and techniques.Â
Guidelines
1. Each collaborating artist will be expected to give an approximately 20 min video lecture* with generous visual examples drawn from art history, nature, and/or current practicing artists’ work of an important technique and/or concept in the arts with no more than the 5 minutes concerning their personal work. Collaborators can make second lecture optional lecture focused on the same ideas and their own practice.  Art Instructors at all levels are welcome to submit proposals as long as they are also practicing artists.
*lecture proposals that relate back to ideas and concepts in Stanford’s Introduction to AI course syllabus are preferred but not required. (syllabus here)
** topics of special interest –materials vis-a-vis tactile/spatial perception, drawing and vision, identity and the body, language in the visual arts, graphical representations and symbols, composition, and games as artistic tactics (exquisite corps, oblique strategies etc).
2. Help create the weekly assignment for the on-line course and interact with participating public during the week of their lecture.
3. Participate in the Jury of the on-line final exam for inclusion in a group show ( to be exhibited both on-line and at a physical site)
Please send an OUTLINE of your proposed lecture which includes at least 10 URL links to visual examples (PDF)and your CV(PDF) with on-line links to your work to aprille ( at ) other-ai.org before SEPTEMBER 15, 2011 or use contact link at www.other-ai.org to make inquiries.
Collaborating artist will be expected to submit their lectures, 15 days before scheduled on the course syllabus
