Galleries. Libraries. Archives. Museums. Every day, artists and cultural workers face tough ethical calls on AI. Could artists show us a new way forward?

What if ethics wasn’t about ticking boxes, but about how we act, care and respond in the moment? In their new book Decentring Ethics: AI art as method (Open Humanities Press, 2025), Vanessa Bartlett, Jasmin Pfefferkorn and Emilie K. Sunde explore how artists using AI are raising new questions about responsibility and creativity. The book challenges the idea of ethics as a fixed code, instead showing how it plays out in real practice.

In the following podcast recording with Vanessa and Jasmin, we discuss how the GLAM sector – galleries, libraries, archives and museums – navigates these ethical choices, and how artists and arts workers can help us imagine new ways forward.

Galleries. Libraries. Archives. Museums. Every day, artists and cultural workers face tough ethical calls on AI. Could artists show us a new way forward?
What if ethics wasn&rsquo;t about ticking boxes, but about how we act, care and respond in the moment? In their new book <a href="http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/decentring-ethics/">Decentring Ethics: AI art as method</a> (Open Humanities Press, 2025), Vanessa Bartlett, Jasmin Pfefferkorn and Emilie K. Sunde explore how artists using AI are raising new questions about responsibility and creativity. The book challenges the idea of ethics as a fixed code, instead showing how it plays out in real practice.
In the following podcast recording with Vanessa and Jasmin, we discuss how the GLAM sector &ndash; galleries, libraries, archives and museums &ndash; navigates these ethical choices, and how artists and arts workers can help us imagine new ways forward.

Explore emerging tech, digital experimentation and all things library-futures.

SLV LAB is State Library Victoria's prototyping and innovation lab. We experiment with technology to open access to collections, data and spaces. In our Conversations series, we discuss emerging technology, digital experimentation and library futures with artists, technologists and workers in the cultural sector.

Explore emerging tech, digital experimentation and all things library-futures.
SLV LAB is State Library Victoria's prototyping and innovation lab. We experiment with technology to open access to collections, data and spaces.&nbsp;In our Conversations series, we discuss emerging technology, digital experimentation and library futures with artists, technologists and workers in the cultural sector.

SLV LAB is State Library Victoria's prototyping and innovation lab. In our Conversations series, we discuss emerging technology, digital experimentation and library futures with artists, technologists and workers in the cultural sector.

SLV LAB Conversations

Emerging tech, digital experimentation and library-futures.

SLV LAB is State Library Victoria's prototyping and innovation lab. We experiment with technology to open access to collections, data and spaces. In our Conversations series, we discuss emerging technology, digital experimentation and library futures with artists, technologists and workers in the cultural sector.

Emerging tech, digital experimentation and library-futures.
SLV LAB is State Library Victoria's prototyping and innovation lab. We experiment with technology to open access to collections, data and spaces.&nbsp;In our Conversations series, we discuss emerging technology, digital experimentation and library futures with artists, technologists and workers in the cultural sector.

Galleries. Libraries. Archives. Museums. Every day, artists and cultural workers face tough ethical calls on AI. Could artists show us a new way forward? In the following podcast recording with Vanessa and Jasmin, we discuss how the GLAM sector – galleries, libraries, archives and museums – navigates these ethical choices, and how artists and arts workers can help us imagine new ways forward.

Rethinking Ethics in the Age of AI – Vanessa Bartlett & Jasmin Pfefferkorn

How can mixed reality technologies create emergent social experiences? Scientist-artist Yoyo Munk (US) joined SLV's Paula Bray and CEO Paul Duldig to discuss blending virtual geometries with shared physical space in their recent KAGAMI and Medusa projects. Yoyo asks how technological imperfections can evoke meaning, and explains their journey from scientist to artist by finding the signal in the noise. Together, they wonder how mixed reality might interact with library collections, and the potential for digital visualisations to not only reveal the dynamic evolution of knowledge archives, but to shape future collecting practices.

This conversation was recorded in March 2025, a few months before Yoyo joined SLV LAB as its first Creative Technologist‑in‑Residence. His resulting project, In Memory | Of Being, was a mixed reality installation built from the Library’s digitised holdings: thousands of unidentified portraits, fragile glass‑plate negatives, vintage stereographs and oral history recordings.

How can mixed reality technologies create emergent social experiences? Scientist-artist Yoyo Munk (US) joined SLV's Paula Bray and CEO Paul Duldig to discuss blending virtual geometries with shared physical space in their recent KAGAMI and Medusa projects. Yoyo asks how technological imperfections can evoke meaning, and explains their journey from scientist to artist by finding the signal in the noise. Together, they wonder how mixed reality might interact with library collections, and the potential for digital visualisations to not only reveal the dynamic evolution of knowledge archives, but to shape future collecting practices.
This conversation was recorded in March 2025, a few months before Yoyo joined SLV LAB as its first Creative Technologist‑in‑Residence. His resulting project,&nbsp;<a href="https://lab.slv.vic.gov.au/articles/yoyo-munk-cultural-amnesia">In Memory | Of Being</a>, was a mixed reality installation built from the Library&rsquo;s digitised holdings: thousands of unidentified portraits, fragile glass‑plate negatives, vintage stereographs and oral history recordings.

The social life of mixed reality – Yoyo Munk

Voice assistants and auto-captions are everywhere now, but they can quickly fall apart when someone speaks with an accent the system wasn’t trained to recognise, or in a language it rarely “hears”. 

In this episode of the SLV LAB Conversations podcast, we were joined by technologist, linguist and researcher Kathy Reid who unpacked why that happens and what can be done about it. She introduces Mozilla Common Voice, a community-led project that collects speech in hundreds of languages and dialects. Kathy also talks through the Mozilla Data Collective and what it could mean for libraries and other cultural institutions facing constant scraping of online collections.

Voice assistants and auto-captions are everywhere now, but they can quickly fall apart when someone speaks with an accent the system wasn&rsquo;t trained to recognise, or in a language it rarely &ldquo;hears&rdquo;.&nbsp;
In this episode of the SLV LAB Conversations podcast, we were joined by technologist, linguist and researcher Kathy Reid who unpacked why that happens and what can be done about it. She introduces Mozilla Common Voice, a community-led project that collects speech in hundreds of languages and dialects. Kathy also talks through the Mozilla Data Collective and what it could mean for libraries and other cultural institutions facing constant scraping of online collections.

Building better AI speech tech with global voices – Kathy Reid

As Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems pull data from across the internet, library databases and our online presence, it generates a significant change in our relationship with knowledge. But what do we really know about this pervasive technology? Do our societies have robust guardrails in place to protect people and democracies, and have we reckoned with AI’s environmental impact?

Join award-winning Professor Kate Crawford, one of the world’s foremost scholars on the social and political implications of AI, as she explores how AI is reshaping our societies, ecosystems and power structures with host Natasha Mitchell in State Library Victoria's 2024 For Future Reference lecture.

Professor Kate Crawford is a leading international scholar of artificial intelligence. She is a Professor at USC Annenberg, a Senior Principal Researcher at MSR New York, and was the inaugural Visiting Chair for AI and Justice at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris.

Her book Atlas of AI won multiple awards and was named one of the best books of 2021 by New Scientist and The Financial Times. Her project Anatomy of an AI System with Vladan Joler won the Design of the Year Award in 2019 and is on show at MoMA from 2022-2024.

Their latest work, Calculating Empires: A Genealogy of Technology and Power, won the Grand Prize of the European Commission for art and technology. She was named on the TIME100 list as one of the most influential people in AI.

As Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems pull data from across the internet, library databases and our online presence, it generates a significant change in our relationship with knowledge. But what do we really know about this pervasive technology? Do our societies have robust guardrails in place to protect people and democracies, and have we reckoned with AI&rsquo;s environmental impact?
Join&nbsp;award-winning&nbsp;Professor Kate Crawford, one of the world&rsquo;s foremost scholars on the social and political implications of AI, as she explores how AI is reshaping our societies, ecosystems and power structures with host&nbsp;Natasha Mitchell&nbsp;in State Library Victoria's 2024&nbsp;For Future Reference lecture.
Professor Kate Crawford is a leading international scholar of artificial intelligence. She is a Professor at USC Annenberg, a Senior Principal Researcher at MSR New York, and was the inaugural Visiting Chair for AI and Justice at the &Eacute;cole Normale Sup&eacute;rieure in Paris.
Her book&nbsp;Atlas of AI&nbsp;won multiple awards and was named one of the best books of 2021 by&nbsp;New Scientist&nbsp;and&nbsp;The Financial Times. Her project&nbsp;Anatomy of an AI System&nbsp;with Vladan Joler won the Design of the Year Award in 2019 and is on show at MoMA from 2022-2024.
Their latest work,&nbsp;Calculating Empires: A Genealogy of Technology and Power, won the Grand Prize of the European Commission for art and technology. She was named on the TIME100 list as one of the most influential people in AI.

Rethinking Ethics in the Age of AI – Vanessa Bartlett & Jasmin Pfefferkorn

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