Natalia Fuchs

Supervisor: Ioannis Zannos

Members: Dalila Honorato, Michalis Panagopoulos

PhD research topic:

My PhD research is carried out at the intersection of three areas: the ethics of care, interactive audio-visual performance and artificial intelligence (AI). I am investigating performative practice where AI is applied to extend the support of the ethical AI concept such as the concept of care in arts. The central question of my research is how to actually perform care ethics in the interactive audio-visual art aligned with contemporary AI ethics. I will consider not only theoretical concept of care-focused feminism, but the ethical complexities in the field of artificial intelligence development and the ways that advances in technology have forced us to rethink what it means to be human and if we can trust the machines. The purpose is to provide new advanced ways of human interaction with AI through the development of 'best practice' in interactive performance art that can be easily and fully appropriated for the stage, freely express human and AI creativity based on ethical principles, caring, practicing solidarity. So this way my PhD research becomes the PhD in practice. I conduct my work adopting artistic research the areas of digital performance and digital ethics including my own experience gained at the international artistic laboratories on AI Art that I have curated earlier and during my teaching activities on AI for creative industries I am currently implementing. As a result, I expect to come out with a set of conceptual advances for artists and creators focusing on the ethical AI made within my research as well as providing an approach to evaluating those advances within the framework of performative stage practice.

Natalia Fuchs is international curator, media art historian, art advisor and cultural producer.

Nominee for the Kuryokhin International Contemporary Art Award in the category “Grand-Prix”. Co-Author of AI Art Manifesto. PhD Candidate in Ethical AI and interactive performance art at the Faculty of Audi-Visual Art at the Ionian University (Corfu, Greece). Currently teaching Media Archeology and Theory of Culture & Communications at the National Research Institute Higher School of Economics (Moscow, Russia). Natalia graduated from the University of Manchester (MA Cultural Management) and from the Danube University (MA MediaArtHistories) in Austria. Between 2009 and 2013, she was developing the Media Forum at the Moscow International Film festival, and the contemporary art fair VIENNAFAIR. In 2013 Natalia has founded art relations agency ARTYPICAL, and then was appointed as Curator of the Polytechnic Museum (Moscow)—where apart from the exhibitions (Earth Lab co-curated with Ars Electronica, On the Origin of the New at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art and others), she curated Polytech.Science.Art interdisciplinary program in 2013-2016. In 2015 program received diploma of the Ministry of Culture as "The best educational museum project".

Starting from 2016, Natalia is also teaching Media Art Histories course developed by her at the Moscow State University (World Art History department). In 2016-2018 Natalia Fuchs was curator, head of the multimedia art department and deputy director of the National Centre for Contemporary Arts in Moscow, Russia, where she launched TECHNE platform for innovative art. In 2018-2020 she was curator and co-producer of Gamma Festival and Gamma_Pro, international conference on art and technology (Saint Petersburg, Russia). In 2019-2020 she was creative director for for MUTEK Arab Emirates, the festival of electronic music and digital creativity. She is curating and co-producing international Laboratories of art and technology - such as Gamma_LAB AI (2019) for Gamma Festival and Mutek.JP AI Music Lab for Mutek Japan (2019). Natalia Fuchs is creator of Mutek AI Art Lab (2020) by the invitation of MUTEK Montreal. Her latest international projects include an exhibition of technological art "Open Codes - Living in Digital Worlds" at the ZKM Center for Art and Media in Germany (in a role of Advisor to Peter Weibel), anniversary exhibition of CTM Festival in Berlin "Persisting Realities" and INPUT annual international digital art symposium of the Lunchmeat Festival at the National Gallery in Prague, Czech Republic. Also, she worked as Advisor for Barbican Centre (London, UK) for the Artificial Intelligence exhibition "AI: More Than Human" that was launched in 2019 and became curator of Futurological Congress 2020 in the frame of Transart Festival for Contemporary Culture in Bolzano, Italy. Since 2020 Natalia Fuchs is also member of IKT International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art and numerous times she was contributing to the art papers selection process at ISEA International Programming Committee. Natalia's artistic projects include the audiovisual performance “benaviours” (2014) together with Sonia Chillari (Italy), the audiovisual installation “Crystall.Reconstruction” (2016) together with ::vtol:: (Russia), the video artwork “Times Connection" (2018), the audiovisual performance NOTATION_AI (2020) together with Ilya Symphocat (Russia), artistic research projects “Trust Territories” (2021) and “Manifesto of Manifestos” (2021) together with Albena Baeva (Bulgaria).