Events
Upcoming Events
Flux Festival
Wednesday, November 20, 2024 - Saturday, November 23, 2024
AIMS will present an exciting four-day showcase of new forms of moving image storytelling, titled Flux Festival, November 20-23, 2024, with a special focus on the role of AI. Filmmakers, performers, and artists at Flux Festival will include: Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Carlos López Estrada; multidisciplinary sci-fi artist Lucy McRae; creator of the Cyberfeminism Index, Mindy Seu; conceptual filmmaker Paul Trillo; singer and performance artist Poppy; British visual artist and performer Shantell Martin, and genre-defying filmmaker and artist Rashaad Newsome, and many more. A complete list of filmmakers, performers and presentations is available online. The event is free to the USC community by using the code "AIMS2024" when ordering tickets. More information at Flux Festival.
Recent Events
Spark Awards Year-End Showcase
Tuesday, April 16, 2024 ◆ 4–6 PM ◆ SCI Lobby
Join us for a celebration of projects that explore the use of AI for mediated storytelling produced with the support of AIMS funding over the last year. From 4–5 p.m., we’ll present a series of short demos, followed by keynote talks and conversation featuring Louise Matsakis and Mashinka Firunts Hakopian. The conversation will address critical perspectives on AI in relation to storytelling and journalism. RSVP here.
Grad Student Workshare
March 26, 2024
Two PhD students from the Interdivisional Media Arts + Practice Program offered a glimpse into their process, outcomes, insights, and expressions - Luke Fischbeck on exploring patient interfaces with medical technologies via generated imagery (w/ custom datasets); Sarah Ciston on recent book project Coding Care: Guidebooks for Intersectional AI, via their creative-critical code projects.
Assistive AI for Journalism
March 26, 2024
This combined demo-conversation-brainstorming session included an overview of Assistive AI-for-Journalism, laying the groundwork by looking at recent research and nascent startups, and then focused in by critically engaging with and constructively iterating on one such system proposed by USC Viterbi’s Alexander Spangher as part of his dissertation work. We discussed the ethical and political complexities of designing such a system, and the kinds of tasks that it tries to solve, and how such a prototype connects to broader media systems.
Grad Student Reading Group
January 30, 2024
At the inaugural AIMS Grad Student Reading Group meeting, we discussed Wendy Brown's Nihilistic Times: Thinking with Max Weber, in which she argues that we might navigate difficult times by better engaging with different ways of knowing, representing, and transforming worlds -- a dynamic that's key to so much of (generative) AI.
Spark Awards Launch Reception
January 24, 2024
AIMS hosted a reception to share updates about the Spark Award recipients and their projects that explore generative AI for media and storytelling.
"Governing the Model Marketplace"
January 23, 2024
Dr. Robert Gorwa, visiting scholar at USC Annenberg, delivered a talk about governing the model marketplace. He discussed recent research exploring the growing ecosystem of various AI hosting intermediaries, their political economic context, their social and technical affordances, and underlying business models. He further discussed the emerging governance issues that these platforms are currently grappling with, with a focus on the slow development of community guidelines and moderation practices in the image-generation model platform space. In the face of increasing public and private scrutiny, how are these new companies responding? And how might these platforms better mobilize resources to act as a careful, fair, and proportionate regulatory access point?
Lecture: "For a General Theory of Simulations"
January 11, 2024
Benjamin Bratton, Director of Antikythera and Professor of Philosophy of Technology and Speculative Design at the University of California, San Diego, discussed the topic of Recursive Simulations, a research theme exploring the emergence of simulation as an epistemological technology, from scientific simulation to VR/AR. The reception and lecture were co-sponsored by the USC Center on Generative AI & Society, and Antikythera, a think tank reorienting planetary computation as a philosophical, technological, and geopolitical force, housed within the Berggruen Institute.
GenAI & Journalism Panel Event
November 7, 2023
Professor Mike Ananny hosted a panel discussion about the role that Generative AI could – or should – play in newsrooms.
Grad Student Mixer
October 18, 2023
Graduate students from the School of Cinematic Arts and the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism interested in Generative AI gathered to connect, share their research, and brainstorm ideas for further collaborations and reflective practice.
AI AV Club: Midjourney
October 6, 2023
Professor Holly Willis offered a hands-on faculty workshop on the use of Midjourney for text-to-image generation, within a broader discussion of Generative AI.
Workshop on Media & GenAI
September 29, 2023
We kicked off the academic year by hosting a workshop with 50+ faculty from SCA and Annenberg to explore storytelling and its relationship to Generative AI.