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Episode 12 - AI Campfire Returns, a Festivals Research Mention and an Ecoscenography Residency in Argentina
19 Plays11 days ago
This week the guest speakers are us!. We turn the microphone on ourselves to talk about our own Venue 13 show, AI Campfire: Return, coming to the 2026 Fringe. Be ready for a more casual, conversational episode, with the two of us sharing how the show came about, why we are bringing back the concept and what has changed for this new chapter.
We then dig into a major new piece of relevant research, “AI and the Festivals”, published by Festivals Edinburgh in May 2026. It gathers essays from some serious voices in the field, including Drew Hemment of The Alan Turing Institute, and to our genuine surprise Venue 13 and AI Campfire both appear in it. We break down the key points and reflect on what it means to be named in independent research of this level.
Finally we report back from Argentina, where we have just delivered the first of what we hope will be many ecoscenography seminars, an intensive postgraduate residency at the Arts Faculty at UNICEN in Tandil, with Ian teaching in English and Vanesa collaborating and translating. We talk about what the week involved and what this growing collaboration between York University in Canada, Venue 13 in Edinburgh and universities across Argentina and the wider Spanish-speaking world might become.
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Transcript
Introduction & Surprising News
00:00:12
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to podcast 13. I'm Ian. And I'm Vanessa. And this week is a slightly unusual one because our guest speakers are, well, us. Ta-da. Ta-da. That's right. Normally we will bring you one of our 2026 artists in the guest chair. This week we're putting ourselves in such a chair because we have our own story coming to venue 13 this August.
00:00:35
Speaker
Our show, A Campfire Return, a follow-up to A.I. Campfire from last year. So we thought we'd interview each other about it and let you in on how the whole thing came about. We've also got some news that generally took us by surprise. We've been mentioned in a big new research paper on AI and the festivals, alongside some very serious names in the field.
Recap & Upcoming Events
00:00:55
Speaker
So let's dive in.
00:01:03
Speaker
As usual, we want to start with a quick recap. We've caught the our previous episode with Chris Davis and the 40-year-old ballerino. Go back and have a listen if you missed it, as it was really good. And you can find out what type of French goer you are too.
00:01:15
Speaker
The full 2026 programme is on sale now at edfringe.com and venue search. Our Renewables vegan food trailer crowdfunding is more alive than ever. And we also have a fabulous anonymous funder who will fund match every donation we get.
00:01:32
Speaker
So this is a huge help as it means that we only need to raise half the funds. We will add all the information on the description and we ask you to donate and share as every little contribution is now worth double.
AI Campfire: Concept & Setting
00:01:43
Speaker
And with that, let's talk about our own show. So Ian, shall we tell the audience what the first AI Campfire actually is, was for anyone who hasn't seen it? Sure. The short description of AI Campfire as a show in an immersive campfire setting.
00:01:58
Speaker
We have our main character, Cymbeline, recounting elements of Scottish folklore. Now, she's based off of the idea of the Green Man, which is motif, an idea, stories ah related to wild man, etc. that has existed within folklore and and and lots of cultures across Europe.
00:02:21
Speaker
for millennia and so taking that idea that there is this figure that is about our human relationship to the natural world that she is recounting in a contemporary way scottish folklore so we can talk about our contemporary environmental moment and we do this in an immersive media setting as well And the show serves as a bit of an archive to also highlight various types of possibilities as well as limitations of technology today that we might be using to think about how this relationship might go forward. A little bit of a solar punk approach as well.
Venue 13's Vision & Collaborations
00:03:00
Speaker
AI Campfire is the first of what we are now doing under Venue 13 Productions. And it takes a look at you know how we work and what other Venue 13 Productions might look like in the future, both in terms of the themes and the ideas that we're working on within this piece and our hope to create as a series, but future collaborations around international projects and immersive site-specific installations, et cetera, like that sort of idea.
00:03:25
Speaker
Vanessa, you were there. no it was there. Yeah. So that gives you a little bit of background of what we were doing before. you know, we were both there.
00:03:36
Speaker
When we we came up with this initial idea, do do you want to share a little bit about how the concept actually started
Inspiration for AI Campfire
00:03:41
Speaker
for us? Yeah, I think it was when we were exploring the ah possibilities of what we wanted Venya 13 to be and We wanted it to be so that we could actually connect with the artists in a way that maybe other venues can't do so. And what best way to do so from just, you know, from the venue perspective, but also so from the artist perspective, so that we can actually demand from a venue what artists could demand from us. The origin story of this come the concept was sparked it was the and various immersive shows that we saw at the 2025 Fringe in Adelaide, including Dark Hills. For me, and we saw scenes.
00:04:18
Speaker
We also saw other immersive shows, and the idea sort of like came up that What would it be amazing to take the venue, turn it into a lab for all things and digital, experimental, AI. And then that's kind of where the concept of AI Campfire came about.
00:04:38
Speaker
And our backgrounds, scenography, design and ecology, fed into it. And what we were trying to say with the first version is this is what you can do now with what's out there and to create some sort of ah an archive. Because with all this this technology, it's moving so fast and there uploaded versions that coming up so quickly that you cannot actually recreate what you could a year ago.
00:05:03
Speaker
But if we don't you know keep records of the proof of what you could do at the time, It's much harder to compare the advances or or the different benefits, you know, of how things are moving forward.
00:05:14
Speaker
So, yeah.
Evolution & Audience Feedback
00:05:15
Speaker
you tell us a little bit more then what is new with AI Campfire Return? So this is from your perspective, why are we doing something again? And what do we want to implement that we haven't seen on a previous version, Yeah.
00:05:29
Speaker
Yeah, well, we learned so much in that first version of presenting it. Like a lot of the work that we do and we're interested in, you sort of don't know what it is until you've actually made it, right? And so actually being able to put that in front of audiences for, we were running it three times a night. So technically we had 60 performances that always seemed to have somebody in them. And we started to talk to people after the shows as well. And so this really gave us a lot of insight into different elements that we're working in.
00:05:58
Speaker
And weren't. Also in the way that we created it, we found that it worked in a couple of different situations. We always sort of imagined it as an immersive performance type of approach, but it worked as like a cinematic presentation. It works as an installation where it's looping. And in the last year, we've been able to do all of those versions of it.
00:06:18
Speaker
as well. And so we wanted to then sort of be more like proactive in thinking about what the next piece would be like that took all of that learning into consideration. We always sort of had been talking about like what folklore were we going to, what tales were we going to tell with it. So there's that aspect of it too.
00:06:38
Speaker
And this one is really interesting. Without giving too much away, we've we've really sort of broaden this the we've we've broadened the scope of sort of what we're thinking. One is talking more about like how Symbioline came to be. That gives us an opportunity to also talk about like our understanding of the like relational aspects of of AI and other technologies, which is what we've been talking about in a lot of different research contexts over the last year. And the stories that we're looking at are much more thinking about seasons and their relationship to each other. So it's a little less ah episodic than before, but still but still like distinct and intertwined. And there's also just elements of the technical side that we wanted to work on, which, you know, there's just never enough time to do everything. So we are looking at expanding that, having a very sort of refined approach to the way that we want to work with, like projected content. But looking at other things that we've been playing with or seen with over the course of the last year, where're we're trying to continue to expand the way that somebody's experiencing it through multiple senses,
Ethical Considerations in AI Storytelling
00:07:49
Speaker
right? And just as you mentioned, like the conversation around AI has moved so much.
00:07:54
Speaker
you know it was really that we were making the first one at the same time that like there was some maturity within generated and synthetic content which has become a really hot topic and so we want to continue to explore that we've been doing a lot of work around what are the ethics of working with these tools And different ethical ways that we can work with that and any technology, really. And so there are these aspects that both in the way that we're making it and what we're making and and then also how we're presenting it. where
00:08:27
Speaker
These are evolving things that are are really key to this moment. know What but do you think is new for you this
Character Evolution & Societal Relevance
00:08:34
Speaker
time? you know What can audiences expect from return that that you think that they haven't seen before, Vanessa? Vanessa?
00:08:39
Speaker
I think, right, so I believe that because we were looking at the idea of having the AI campaign as an umbrella, this was something like a concept that we were talking about, us the more we reaffirmed ourselves on the the concept of the archive and how things are moving forward throughout the years, we thought, okay, well, let's take this year as a way to have a stronger look into the characters their evolution story in parallel with the evolution story of an ai as such a prominent topic right now is something that you know you have assistive ai and generative ai and there are other types of ai and you know it seems to be like everyone is um is involved in the conversation, whether they're using it or they're not using it. There's definitely a conversation to be had.
00:09:25
Speaker
So because we feel like this is something that it's ah it's quite embedded in society right now, we do believe that the AI series should have ah an origin story. And we're going to try and continue with some of the characters that we started, you know, like the Cymbioline as the storyteller, because I do believe that the evolution of her as a character throughout this year and the future iterations in future years There's been so many changes.
00:09:50
Speaker
And then, yeah, new material or new collaborations. we looking the to to looking to We're looking incorporate new ways of ah immersion, sort of like and playing a bit more with audio this year as an immersive factor. This goes back to my and immediate fascination with dark fields and the sands.
00:10:11
Speaker
How, you know, in that time it was all like a dark room and then you just hear things. And so much comes from that sense of hearing things. We also want to have a look at different software, um including like local l models and continue the idea of setting up, giving credit to what was done or what was created with AI. This is something potentially quite new at the moment. I do believe a lot of people are using AI, but they're not being forward in their use of AI.
00:10:41
Speaker
and And there is a little bit of and discourse to be had with that, maybe because they're ashamed, maybe because they don't feel like they have to. But I do believe that if you'll start giving credit to what we use AI on, it will you know pave a way for a more honest ah type of content creation.
00:11:00
Speaker
And also it will give people the choice to see if they want to take part on that type of content, you know if they know ahead of time. i do believe that's important for people to have that choice. We're also looking to recording the materials used with the potential of creating a a sister documentary or maybe a series of documentaries or a workshop that will feed into some sort of academic research in the hope for sharing more ethical versions of LLMs the public can download and use by passing the need for you know data centers.
Technical Challenges & Audience Experiences
00:11:32
Speaker
and And then, you know, this has been a and slowly developing ecological thread and it wraps into some of the workshops that we have been ah doing. We've done in a workshop in Argentina recently on a very similar um topic to this. So I just think it's very much relevant in in what we're doing with AI Campfire Return.
00:11:53
Speaker
Now, should we talk about how the show sits with everything else we do? So the venue, the research, the seminars... Yeah, I think, you know, it's an interesting thing that we are looking a lot of technology within all of our programming, trying to support that and trying to support ambitious usage of, you know, whether it's video, audio, interactive content, etc.
00:12:19
Speaker
Also trying to explore a lot of different ways of formatting. Like we've got an immersive show this year, but we're really trying to support that sort of... so breaking the solo show on a stage, fringe hour type of format. So there's more experimentation happening.
00:12:35
Speaker
And that doesn't necessarily need to include AI, right? they We're definitely not the AI venue. We have shows where we're interested in exploring it. And so I think that having a show that is engaging with such a hot topic, as you know that's as we're pointing out, as we'll see in our in our next segment on this episode, and looking at different formats, you know, it's a relatively short show. It's done in this campfire setting. It's done in this immersive sort of configuration. So it's it's changing those things around.
00:13:13
Speaker
that it really becomes part of showing, you know, artists that are coming in what the sort of flexibility of what we can do in the space is. Because sometimes people can't imagine things until they see them as well.
00:13:26
Speaker
And we think a lot about this in terms of the relationship to sonography and other shows as well. So, you know, your concept of having people sit you know Low and comfortably. So the beanbags that we brought in, which sort of become a ah hallmark of of what we're doing is important to the comfort level. But that is all part of like the immersive sonography and then how that relates to then eco sonography and relationship to having conversations with, you know, the non-human world.
00:13:56
Speaker
And sort of find that and find ways to put that on stage. And that's something where, you know, just as we've been doing in Argentina, we were using technology really to expand the human sensorium so we could observe things or see things or experience things that in the way that, you know, our senses typically give us input.
00:14:14
Speaker
aren't possible and so seeing work that happens with that and seeing how that influenced the venue and you know bringing us back to the way that we connect as humans so bringing it back around so you know you the most low-tech form of classical theater which is connecting it to the campfire a good place to sit around and tell stories Yeah, the storyteller, bringing it back to that as well. I think that's quite a good emphasis on the balance of what we're trying to achieve. and one of the things about One of the questions that AI Canfire original and ongoing versions will always bring forward is how would you feel
00:14:55
Speaker
if you had to make the decision of losing some stories that had traditionally been passed, you know, by word of mouth, and replacing the storyteller with an AI.
00:15:09
Speaker
And this is one of the the conundrums, because right now we're living in a society where the the younger generations... are taking up more to to digital entertainment. You know, you have, and you know, YouTube influencers and you have, you know, cartoons. We've always had cartoons. We have their own version of sort of like cartoons right now, which are kind of like a mixion mixture of like a gaming with storytelling, this kind of thing of um similar to like Twitch or Roblox. And you have the young generations, you know, as young as four, or five, six-year-olds, they are absolutely enthralled with this type of communication. But then I'm thinking, well, if they're used to this, they will be used to a different type of storyteller now, you know, which would be the AI.
00:15:53
Speaker
And then you think, well, I'd much rather have someone, you know, a real person tell the stories. But that's not happening. It's just it's not happening as much in this day and age. So these stories are getting lost, lost to time, lost to they're just maybe getting dated. So also, you know, reviving these stories with a new climate focus brings them life again and brings them back into the conversation.
00:16:18
Speaker
think that's all, that's all good.
Generative AI in Promotions
00:16:20
Speaker
I think that's, if I were to encourage anybody who is like, what is this show about? How does this fit into things? I'd say one, come talk to us.
00:16:31
Speaker
We'd love people to see it. And it's become very important for us to talk to people. afterwards about what they're getting from it sometimes and people go in all sorts of different directions because we can say it's an ai show ai is a very but broad topic too so it it encapsulates like a lot of things and there's a lot of things that just are in it that have nothing to do with ai it's part of the conversation in it That's been interesting. One of the interesting things that I think that's come out of it is that, you know, I've been seeing people make statements or make posts around the idea. and I don't, I don't necessarily even disagree with them, but they're like, you know, if you're, if your flyer is generative AI, I'm not coming to see your show. Mm hmm.
00:17:14
Speaker
And. like as someone who's been doing the fringe since 2008, the number of flowers that I've designed, like it, I'm like, yeah, why would you use it for that? That doesn't seem necessary. Like, I don't know what benefit you're getting from that in the first place. And yeah, if you, if you really want something of a specific nature, there's so many people that you could talk to and that like, should be looking at the tools as something that's new but then having conversations with people that's like well i mean my flyer has generative ai on it because the show is a in part a conversation around generative ai so that is part of what the show is and i'm like oh well but that's a different thing like you're not using it to replace somebody using it because that's what i'm like yeah the actual design itself like where the text goes and all that like that is done by a person
00:18:01
Speaker
Let me tell you, as the person who's doing a lot of that work, it is very much human-generated. But yeah there are things that have come out of what we've created that come out of generative. So technically, it is it has generative AI on it. But I still want you to come see the show because I want you to have that conversation with us.
00:18:20
Speaker
And that' I think that's that's what I don't like about the ah the discourse right now is that like the the staunch AI refusal to even engage in the conversation. Like I don't care if people decide to use it or not. bake Like any tool, I think people should use it if it's useful to them and does something that otherwise they can't accomplish or they can't accomplish in the same way. which um you know that's what we're exploring but yeah i think i think that that is what i'm i'm hoping that that we get people in to have that conversation they can see sort of what we're doing they can pick it apart we are we're not you know we're not shrinking violets
00:18:58
Speaker
We are more than happy to engage in the hard conversations. And that's actually like we also want it because that's been part of what's put and pushing it forward is we've been like, oh, yeah, let's look at the more ethical ways to do this. Can we still accomplish what we want to accomplish and say what we want to say without spending too much time?
Show Timings & Venue Information
00:19:15
Speaker
Just like being like, yeah, we'll just use whatever is convenient and and available and sort of looks cool. that ah It's very intentional. Of course, you can catch AI Campfire Return Venue 13 this August. We're going to be doing two shows tonight. I've brought it down to two shows. And I will put all the details and the dates in the show notes.
00:19:34
Speaker
It's going to be running. <unk>s It's easy to remember because it's 9.15 and 9.50. So no matter how you, if you accidentally say it in a weird way, you will still be correct. You'll still make it, yeah. and Unless youre you're you're trying to make plans with somebody. And they're like, they said 9.15.
00:19:50
Speaker
No, I think they said 9.50. Confirm with your friends if you're trying to see at the same time, but otherwise, show up at either of those times. We'll be running it twice a night, every night from August 7th until the 29th, except for all Mondays.
Research Paper Recognition
00:20:11
Speaker
Now this next bit is something we're still processing. In May of 2026, Festivals Edinburgh published a research collection called AI and the Festivals. It's a serious independent piece of work.
00:20:24
Speaker
It's got a set of essays from a variety of thinkers thinking about AI and about how the Edinburgh festivals might respond to the opportunities and the challenges of artificial intelligence. It's published under a Creative Commons license and brings together a real range of voices from across the sector. People who are working in industry, like in for-profit creative sector, people who are working in the non-profit creative sector, doing theater, working as artists, people who are on the academic and and research end of things. It spans the gamut.
00:21:00
Speaker
And one of those voices is Drew Hemet, who leads Doing AI Differently at the Alan Turing Institute and the University of Edinburgh. He also founded Future Everything.
00:21:11
Speaker
So we are talking about research from very credible people in very credible organizations. Now, in the essay they say that Hemet mentions that basically writes for the Edinburgh Fringe, Venice 13, run by Ian Garrett-Ambres, is a convening point for an international network of artists working across AI, immersive storytelling and ecology.
00:21:36
Speaker
Now that's a great mention. and He places us alongside initiatives like Braid and Doing AI Differently and argues that Edinburgh already has the depth of infrastructure, relationships and expertise that other cities are trying to build.
00:21:50
Speaker
Yeah, and we should stress that we had absolutely no hand in any of this writing. I know Drew. There's like a research initiative that's working between Canada and UK that I'm part of that fits under this umbrella of doing AI differently. But I didn't actually learn about this essay happening until it was published. That's how I found out about it. So nobody asked us to contribute and we didn't know was coming. We found ourselves name in this independent research, which is exciting because we've been out there, you know, doing some research ourselves and presenting research.
00:22:24
Speaker
ah But it's really interesting to see this in the future of the festivals. And as as video directors, that that means a great deal that people are looking at us. in that way. It's not untrue. like it's it's We are a convening point for a lot of people looking at a lot of different ways of approaching things.
00:22:40
Speaker
One of those topics is AI. In the day-to-day running of a venue that is being recognized in this research, that that that means a lot because you know as much as we very publicly present what we're finding in terms of you know, audience experience, whether or not it's it's our own show with AI, when we're talking about trying to be climate focused, when we're talking about, being the first vegan venue, we also are like, okay, we need to talk to people about insurance or let's, now we got to call the city council again to talk about this permit and to clear and hold this parking bay. And what day does our vendor need to get in for a load? Like there's a lot of day-to-day practicalities in there. So it's really great to see that that works, the background works that a lot of people don't see is, is recognized and then validates like the international network of artists that we've been, you know, building over the years.
00:23:41
Speaker
And are looking at bringing in work. We're already talking about projects that are coming in in 2027 2028 that, you know, take more preparation to do, especially for people coming from afar and that have ambitions. And that's what we want.
00:23:56
Speaker
We want to see. And so, you know, independent recognition matters more than anything that we can say about ourselves. And we, you know, we talk a lot on this podcast, but then being able to have someone else see that sort of leadership, especially for our size, is kind of awesome. What do you think, Vanessa?
00:24:12
Speaker
I think it's a fantastic way to have been acknowledged, you know, the one that you don't know about. it means that, you know, the work is shining for itself. I like the fact that, you know, other organizations have been brought to light to, you know, in this engine from Truhemet about that we do have an infrastructure already
Anthropomorphizing AI Concerns
00:24:33
Speaker
here. And we are looking forward to ah potentially making more connections and, you know, relating to these other organizations to see where there are some similar similarities and if there is room for, you know, collaboration or opportunities in the future as well. I mean, I have to say that the article, in the spirit of being honest, we do we do we should say that we did get a second mention too.
00:24:56
Speaker
And this one is a bit more of a critical one, not of us, But it was a very important point about and artificial and general intelligence in general.
00:25:07
Speaker
So in a different essay, Emma Doffman cautions, again, shows that treat genitive AI as a character with its own agency. And she lists AI campfire as one of her examples because we do we do have the the main character in our story is an AI.
00:25:25
Speaker
But her worry is about a tendency that could could come up from that or from other shows of anthropomorphizing AI, giving it a personality or a present that it doesn't really have.
00:25:38
Speaker
And what that might encourage in audiences. Now, this is already something that is happening. We are treating AI as a friend, as a therapist. We tell everything we ask. Claude, we ask Gemini, we ask Chad, all of these things all the time.
00:25:51
Speaker
But we know that, you know, this is a machine. But do we really know that, Ian? And is there at some point where we start thinking we rely on it so much on its advice?
00:26:02
Speaker
You know, it it also comes with each software has its own tone. It becomes friendly. You can actually customize it in a way of the, you know, how to respond to you. So it does become a companion of sorts to your daily life.
00:26:15
Speaker
thus it Do we get to a point where we start blurring the lines and we do think that you know these this is more than a machine and we should actually show you hear or heed that advice? That's a really interesting question.
00:26:27
Speaker
one of the things that's come up in a couple of the events that I've been at is and and came up within our research presentation that I think was featured in episode two or three. We can link back to that.
00:26:40
Speaker
was talking about how the real change here is in the way that people are interfacing. with AI, like my first experience with what I would now refer to as large language models was in Edinburgh, my first fringe, because my brother-in-law was working informatics around machine translation and talking about the change from like rules and grammar, like grammar and spelling rules based translation into things that we're looking at like statistical analysis. of large bodies of text or large samples of language and then building models around that for better translation, which is now, you know, if you use Google translate, but they've gone through a few different models, which wouldn't be referred to as LLMs until the last couple of years. And that's part of it as well, because it's contextually where, so that means that like, we're looking at a couple of decades. of development of a technology. So in some circles, it's a relatively mature technology. But what's really changed is the chat interface for it and how that has changed the way that we interact with it. So it's become much more conversational.
00:27:54
Speaker
You know, they' we've had years of people making jokes about how ah you know all the digital assistants alexa google home siri are slightly ridiculous and miss your things all the time and and they are they are these things and now we're getting to a point where it's like they're more useful and accelerating and it's because of that interaction we've we've ah where the previous paradigm was like someone would invent a type of technology and you sort of had to find the killer application for it so that people would see why the the like a hardware or the background like the thing that you were using was useful this was sort of like in reverse it's like what is the interface that has actually made sense for it and apparently that's like
00:28:40
Speaker
making a conversation using like natural language to interrupt our things, which has been a long-term dream. But now that comes with interesting costs and considerations for it.
00:28:51
Speaker
So I think that it's, I think that it's interesting, particularly in this, you know, the anthropomorphized, how do we relate to it? My own interest in AI goes all the way back to the 2001 movie AI. And that was all about like robotic people. It's about someone like replacing a child with a,
00:29:10
Speaker
Like the experience of of interacting with a child and not love with a robot. And a lot of these conversations were happening in that too. So it's it's an interesting it's an interesting time to be doing this type of work and seeing it happen.
00:29:25
Speaker
Absolutely. We will pop a link to the full AI and the festivals report in the show notes so you can read it for yourself. And, you know, you can also make up your own mind on this. If you want to also come comment on it or, you know, want to, if you are a researcher on this topic, we would love to have you at the website, at the podcast at some
Bilingual Seminar in Argentina
00:29:44
Speaker
point. So drop us a message and we'd love to talk to you.
00:29:54
Speaker
So as we mentioned at the top, we're recording part of this having completed a residency in Argentina where we've just delivered our first shared ecocenography seminar.
00:30:06
Speaker
What's interesting here is that this is also our first presentation where we were doing it fully bilingually. Not between us, me being the one with the poorer Spanish skills. I cannot thank Vanessa enough for agreeing to come along on this journey to make it really actually work.
00:30:25
Speaker
In English, it's referred to as ecocenography and the expanded sensorium. In Spanish, ecocenography. Sensorium. Expandido. It was a postgraduate seminar at the Universidad de Arte at Unicent in Tendil in Buenos Aires province.
00:30:45
Speaker
And it ran as an intensive in-person residency between those who were in the postgraduate sonography and postgraduate audiovisual programs from the 8th 13th of june And I think that it was extremely successful. We're still in touch with the folks there, and we're hoping that it will bloom into additional points of collaboration in both locations.
00:31:10
Speaker
And, you know, in my opinion, the format itself was lovely. Like you said, you know, it is a you know bilingual workshop. So you led mainly teaching in English and I collaborated alongside and translated, but I also was able to add my own experience to that. So the whole thing moved quite well they between the two languages. It was quite an experience to to give a seminar in that way because it's definitely a different rhythm.
00:31:33
Speaker
ah You have to add more time because, you know you have to add more time for translation. And also for the translation to sink in. These were some big, complex topics. And all of the students were extremely ah passionate, intelligent people. And they brought in their, you know, their information and their concepts to the conversation. So those were things that I had to kind of comprehend myself and then translate to you, Ian.
00:31:58
Speaker
this is So that was that was a fantastic experience. There were students and researchers in the room. So and I genuinely believe that they brought so much life to this ah to this ah seminar. And then they had their own individual projects. We actually made sure that they did things that actually benefited them into their specific
Insights from Student Projects
00:32:18
Speaker
practices. And towards the everyday, we would add a bit more information, would shape each project, and then towards the end of the the week, they all were able to share their projects.
00:32:28
Speaker
Yeah, so they were we had a couple of like breakthrough moments. ah I believe that the local LLMs and the they doing AI ethically were was one of my favorite ah topics.
00:32:39
Speaker
There was a lot of interest. There was also a lot of interest when it comes to inclusion and accessibility. We had one of the ladies was a a director of a school, like a headmistress of a school, and the school was in a very remote location.
00:32:53
Speaker
And she told me that her students... don't have electricity sometimes they don't have internet at home so they they see the school like the ones that are able to attend this as a source of you know the latest internet and and connectivity and things like that and basically think the school were trying to get ways of getting llms so that they could have the experience of of talking with AI because they feel like the children falling behind on their peers of other areas and other schools that are already using AI. But because these kids were living living in this remote area, um they felt slightly like marginalized, so they couldn't actually access this.
00:33:33
Speaker
And they could they were feeling behind and compared to the students of other schools of their similar age. Yeah, I think that's a really interesting point, too, because ultimately, like the projects that were happening, though, we were talking about AI and we were talking about the environmental impacts, the ethical considerations associated with them.
00:33:52
Speaker
And people started exploring the tools and seeing, you know, how they might like to interact with them. ultimately the projects didn't really involve much use of them like there's one project that used it for a very specific and limited purpose that made sense it was you know they had a when we were going out and doing site work there was a photograph of a frog and then they wanted to do something where they needed a 3d model of it and so they were able to like use a model that was able to extract that information from a photograph and then use the the visual information to like create a texture, a skin on this 3D model that I created, ah so that it was like sufficiently looked like the three-dimensional frog. And then they used that for some some animation.
00:34:38
Speaker
And so there was like a very specific use. But other than that, it wasn't really used that much. A lot of what we were doing was using technology mainly as a way of changing our perspective.
Ecological Storytelling Challenges
00:34:50
Speaker
Right. We were doing a lot of stuff around the principle of slow technology. So even when we were talking about we were talking about like, OK, here's how and what the limitations are for working with a completely offline platform.
00:35:01
Speaker
so that you don't need to do something that is being overseen by or involving like these large tech corporations and you're using whatever local energy source that you have in the schools that you mentioned like it Someone might be able to tell that like they have some computers, but they don't necessarily have the internet. So you're developing, like how would you work with this? And then that also slows it down. right That makes it so that you have to be, in part, more intentional about what you're using and a why you're using it, because you need still need the same amount of compute. And you might be using a computer that isn't doesn't have the power of some new data center. And it's cluster.
00:35:47
Speaker
And all of these things then make sort of visceral the the sustainability component to The thinking about how it interacts with ecology, because then you're actually like feeling, you're experiencing what the energy use is is like, because that translates into processing speed.
00:36:05
Speaker
And we were working with the CCTA plays. So as opposed to having a recording for CCTA play on this episode, we'll share some of the documentation for the projects, primarily working between pond life, frogs, and tree people, ah which has an interaction with a tree. It will make a little bit more sense when you see some of the documentation, but just a little bit more.
00:36:28
Speaker
for it uh we were really trying to move away from purely humans storytelling and something that was more ecological and relational so we're using 360 video with action cameras that you could get into interesting spots to like really change perspective from anything that humans might see in terms of scale or position you know they were waterproof so a lot of lot of time spent sticking it into ponds Also a lot of interest in spatial and binaural recording as well, so that we were really thinking about this idea of attunement, right?
00:37:01
Speaker
This idea that we're trying to pay specific attention to things. And we're going to do that in an immersive and natural feeling way so that we're like bringing attention to other ways of understanding place.
00:37:15
Speaker
ultimately we ended up with these three installations. They were very different. There is a VR experience that was both in a headset for the people who are like experiencing it, where you're moving around hearing bird song and moving through tree in ah ah lots of different ways. But they also created a,
00:37:36
Speaker
like a a space for you to go into that was bringing like leaves in, they were, know, using sense by having, we happened to the, the, our last day was also the day that just like the city of Tendill was doing like arbory work. So they were cutting.
00:37:52
Speaker
ah trimming trees and so they brought in some of that so they were like fresh and having that blow around with fans so like very experiential there are others that were looking at like projection mapping onto things that like high above us on the lowest like looking at levels of like water and an experience like trying to put us into that ah in a human scale And another, the one that ended up using ai to create a frog, I created a pepper's ghost illusion, a frog in a jar, but otherwise, you know, was created immersive projection experience using a couple of projectors and it and the inner shell of a camping tent.
00:38:30
Speaker
that people came into and they're all really lovely ideas like bringing both the technology into it for this these different perspectives but then also bringing in a lot of the the literal natural world a little bit of cleanup that happened to there you know cleaning up leaves and such once we got inside I thought it was, that ring genuinely made it very immersive for me.
VR in Immersive Shows
00:38:55
Speaker
it really made me with me to feel like I was, I don't know, planning for AI campfire all of a sudden because all the branches came in. And then, yeah, I believe that the, I don't know, it was a very interesting way to actually bring the best of a VR headset and also understand the limitations of a VR headset.
00:39:15
Speaker
For example, you had to have a one-to-one person on standby. And there were many times people were trying to start the experience and they just couldn't get there. and Little things like that. And and you know it it has to do with so much more than just trying to create. Did I create the the video or the video? the experience correctly has to do with so with the the model of the headset, the model like the connection. and so many things going to play and just one thing not going right, then you actually need immediate help or you just don't go forward. This is also you know a question that we've presented ourselves when we were creating AI Campfire. Do we want to use VR headsets? And the part of me was like, absolutely, yeah, they they're fantastic. But then you also have the warnings so you know, people need to be sitting down. If they're standing, you could get dizzy. You could you could feel sick.
00:40:09
Speaker
And then there are all the reasons why you could just not work that day. And then you have, you know, a huge audience that not having a great time. So I do believe that as much as i enjoyed it, I do believe that the technology has a bit of, i don't know, a road to go before it's it's good or viable for like a larger show.
00:40:31
Speaker
Yeah, I think what I would refer to that as is an affordance. There's still a lot of affordances regarding how to engage with these technologies. So you're always going to end up with some limitations, especially with them. And part of the process, the iterative process, and very much the human process, is figuring out then how do you creatively respond to those.
00:40:57
Speaker
So, you know, when you're talking about doing work about a place and they spend a lot of time in a park, it's like, well, what's the weather going to be like? So, you know, eventually everybody sort of moved it inside. then it's like, well, how do we bring the outside inside? So bags of leaves, branches, etc. Yeah.
00:41:14
Speaker
coming in because they wanted to create that experience. And, you know, having a VR headset, that is a solo individual experience. And it worked for that one. But I don't think that the what was ultimately in the tent would have worked in the same way. Part of that was about having multiple people being able to share it. And so thinking about how you do those things, I think, is is really important and something that came out of that.
00:41:36
Speaker
We'll add all the links for the seminar and for Toaster Lab. Some of this comes out of my work there, which is the the Canadian company here I help run, as well as a lot of things that we're thinking around AI Campfire. All that will be in the show notes.
00:41:50
Speaker
If you want to read about the work a bit more, we'll share it. And then, you know, if you come see AI Campfire Return, I wouldn't be surprised if you start seeing some of this stuff up here there. It was also, i think, inspirational for us as well.
00:42:04
Speaker
Absolutely. i was very inspired. Okay.
Conclusion & Engagement Call
00:42:08
Speaker
That's going to bring us to our outro. It starts with you. And that brings us to the end of a very last episode, I guess. Our own show, our own surprise research mention, and postcard from Argentina.
00:42:20
Speaker
It's been a strange and wonderful few weeks being named in this research, teaching our first international seminar in the same stretch as it reminded us, you know, why why we do this.
00:42:31
Speaker
And next time we'll be back with another one of our 2026 artists in the guest chair. So thanks for joining us. And see you next time.
00:42:50
Speaker
Thanks for listening to this week's episode. If you enjoyed our conversation, be sure to hit subscribe so you never miss an update. You can find us wherever you get your podcasts. We'd also love it if you could take a moment to leave us a review wherever you're listening. It helps with people discovering the podcast, joining our community, especially if they think that they would be interested in any of the topics that we covered today.
00:43:10
Speaker
If you've got thoughts, questions, or ideas for future episodes, we'd love to hear from you. You can reach us at podcast at venue13.com and across socials at venue13fringe.
00:43:23
Speaker
Our back episodes and transcripts can be found on our website, which is venue13.com. That's the number thirteen du not spelled out, venue13.com. And it's only about a month before we'll start being on site at the literal venue 13, Harry Yonker Hall on lock and close.
00:43:42
Speaker
So you can also start to find us there. The music that you heard through the episode is by Dusty Dex, which we get through Epidemic Sound. Until next time, thanks for tuning in and we'll be back with another episode soon.