AIKONIC and KNOWING AI, KNOWING U

Public voices in AI expressed as Data Shadow Theatre

What makes AI uniquely problematic as a technology deployed across all sectors is its opacity. The spread of surveillance cameras in the UK was visible to all, especially those that might have felt targeted. But how do you know you’ve been sorted by a system that even its designers may not understand (AI outputs are often not ‘explainable’)? How do you converse with a neighbour when they see entirely different news feeds? The impact is greatest on those who are already vulnerable, possibly in multiple ways.

As part of the ESRC-funded Public Voices in AI initiative, this series of 12 workshops explored beliefs, hopes and fears around deployment of AI and related technologies. Participants were drawn from clients of mental health charity MIND, and teenage users of the intervention and harm reduction charity Streets of Growth.

Co-lead artist Mukul Patel wrote about our creative methodologies of Tactical Fiction and Layered Film Production:

Over each course of workshops, the participant groups were invited to play with different media and techniques, from drawing and clay-sculpting to poetry, sound manipulation and acting. This created spaces for reflection, and generated elements that could be iterated and layered to make a complex, collaborative piece. With a final video work in mind, we needed to bring characters, sound, and plot together and encourage expression on a non-threatening stage. We used an approach called ‘Tactical Fiction’ that allows us to rethink the status quo by creating myths and tales around existing objects, processes or environments. Participants first fictionalised a typical day’s encounters with AI, then further developed this into scenarios and dialogues for a ‘Data Shadow Theatre’ encourages expression from even the most stage-shy participants, and the vignettes that the participants created spanned the entire gamut from the poignant to the outraged to the laugh-out-loud.

Publication download link [pdf]

Watch the filmed vignettes by participants of both our programmes, AIKONIC & Knowing AI, Knowing U, here:

In a closing event in January 2025 at Streets of Growth we celebrated the completion of these two series of community workshops, Knowing AI, Knowing U and AIKONIC, and showcased the creative responses .

A project by The People Speak and artist-researchers Manu Luksch and Mukul Patel (Ambient Information Systems)
This project was funded through Public Voices in AI through RAI UK grant reference EP/Y009800/1 and informs research by the University of Sheffield and the Alan Turing Institute.
> Watch Public Voices in AI video