AI Meditations: The State of the Field

Friday, April 17th, 2026 – Saturday, April 18th, 2026

Broad Performance Space, Pitzer College

a two day conference on AI across media, art, politics, and ethics featuring renowned scholars, curators, and artists

View the Digital Program Here

 

Friday, April 17th Politics, Ethics, and the Media Sphere

9:15 – 10:00am – Coffee and Continental Breakfast (Broad Center Courtyard)

10:00 – 10:15am – Introductions

10:15 – 11:00am – David Bates, “On the Crisis of Decision in the Age of Artificial Intelligence”

11:15am – 12:00pm – Tung-Hui Hu, “Normal and Abnormal Language, from Criminal Argot to Large Text Models”

12:00 – 1:00pm – Lunch (Broad Center Courtyard)

1:00 – 1:45pm – Charlotte Kent, “Talking about Art with ‘AI’ in the Picture”

2:00 – 2:45pm – Jeff Nagy, “Big Blue: Depression AI and Disability Technopolitics”

3:00 – 4:30pm – Roundtable conversation with audience Q&A

4:30-6:00pm – Public Reception (Broad Center Courtyard)

 

Saturday, April 18th Media Arts and Creative Practice

9:15 – 10:00am – Coffee and Continental Breakfast (Broad Center Courtyard)

10:00 – 10:15am – Introductions

10:15 – 11:00am – N. Katherine Hayles, “Literary Theory of Mind and LLM Fictions: Implications for Awareness”

11:15am – 12:00pm – Zsofi Valyi-Nagy, “Cripping AI Art: Disability, Radical Slowness, and the Leonardo CripTech AI Lab”

12:00 – 1:00pm – Lunch (Broad Center Courtyard)

1:00 – 1:45pm – Mashinka Firunts Hakopian,“Ancestral Intelligences: Data Feminist Interventions in Algorithmic Coloniality”

2:00 – 2:45pm – Memo Akten & Katie Hofstadter, “Cosmosapience: Embodying our Planetary Mind”

3:00 – 4:30pm – Roundtable conversation with audience Q&A

4:30 – 5:00pm – Closing remarks

Memo Akten (University of California, San Diego)
Katie Hofstadter (multidisciplinary artist)
David Bates (University of California, Berkeley)
Mashinka Firunts Hakopian (ArtCenter College of Design)
N. Katherine Hayles (University of California, Los Angeles)
Tung-Hui Hu (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Charlotte Kent (Montclair State University)
Jeff Nagy (York University)
Zsofi Valyi-Nagy (Scripps College)

 

Hosted by the Intercollegiate Media Studies Program at the Claremont Colleges, with additional support from the Anna Abel Pinkel Lectureship in Media Studies at Pomona College, the Claremont McKenna College Film Studies Program, the Endowed Fund for Media Studies Pitzer College, the O’Brien Distinguished Professorship at Scripps College, and the Office of Academic Affairs at Harvey Mudd College.