CONTENTS
Organising AI Week (this page)
ORGANISING AI WEEK
At Robert Gordon University in 2023 interest in AI, especially generative tools like Midjourney and large language models like Chat GTP, reached critical mass - spawning a number of staff-led initiatives.
"AI Week" was an inter-school, inter-disciplinary initiative led by Fine Art lecturers Helen Scarlett O'Neill and Jim Hamlyn with support from Ben Durack (3D design) and Kyle Martin (School of Computing). The idea was to provide space for staff, students and graduates to come together to explore how the rapidly-developing AI landscape might impact theory, practice and pedagogy.
Originally concieved as a 5-day series of events, practicalities reduced this to 3 with minimal internal research funding covering speaker fees, workshop tools/software and print assets.
We used various AIs throughout the planning of AI week to maximise experimentation and exposure, creating provocations for discussion.
The original 5-day proposal was written with ChatGTP, and complemented by images created using DALL-E.
The above video, created using D-ID was shared internally and externally with text accompaniments.
These AI assisted outputs were successful in garnering both interest and support.
Over 100 people sigened-up to our AI Week Moodle page (sampled to the right).
The actual work devising and delivering AI Week was far more traditional, with drop-in planning activities using physical print media (pictured below) and bespoke presentations/training materials created by a diverse spectrum of academic staff, technical staff, alumni and graduates-in-residence.
Miro was used both as an asynchronus planning space and as a notation space before transferring to Research Catalogue.
