Discover more about the artists at the AI Arts Festival.
Boyd Branch
Improbotics Kids! How To Train Your Robot
Robot Filmmaking: A Lo-Fi Sci-Fi Adventure
Dr. Boyd M. Branch is a theatre technologist, artist and researcher. He is a co-director of the AI Theatre Lab Improbotics, and co-founder of Improbotics Kids!. He works across disciplines with scientists, engineers, and artists to develop novel technology, experiences, and pedagogies aimed at fostering adaptive radical social change through play. He publishes regularly in the field of human-computer interactions on the subjects of live performance with LLMs, performing in virtual and augmented reality, and training with XR tools. As a live-arts creative who works with technology, he has extensive experience designing and building digital media systems for theatre companies and institutions around the world including the Venice Biennale (Cuspidi, 2023), New Ohio Theatre in NYC (NY Times Criticâs Pick), and academic institutions including the New York Academy of Science and Yale School of Medicine. He holds a PhD in Digital Arts from the University of Kent, an MFA in Interdisciplinary Digital Media & Performance from Arizona State University, and an MA in Theatre studies from the University of Utrecht. He is Associate Professor of Digital Technologies at the University of Southamptonâs Winchester School of Art.
Piotr Mirowski
Improbotics Kids! How To Train Your Robot
Robot Filmmaking: A Lo-Fi Sci-Fi Adventure
Piotr Mirowski is an AI researcher, currently Senior Staff Research Scientist at DeepMind. As a member of Dr Raia Hadsellâs and Dr Shakir Mohamedâs teams, he has been focusing on navigation-related research, scaling up autonomous agents to real world environments, weather and climate forecasting, and now on humanâcentred AI – leading an interdisciplinary team working on AI and Society. His work has been published in Nature, at ICLR and NeurIPS and covered by The Guardian, BBC, Financial Times and many other press outlets.
Les Carr
AI Stand-Up Comedy Showcase
Professor Les Carr is Professor of Web Science at University of Southampton and a deputy director of the Web Science Institute.
William Hunt
AI Stand-Up Comedy Showcase
William Hunt is a PhD Computer Science Student at the University of Southampton, specialising in HumanâSwarm Teaming and Multi-Agent AI. His research focuses on how a human can command and control a swarm of autonomous robots to solve high-stakes, real-world tasks. William develops and evaluates interactive systems that help operators understand, trust, and manage these AI agents â from simulation environments to language-based interaction modalities.
Ted Hill
AI Stand-Up Comedy Showcase
Ted Hill is a multimedia comedian based in London. He specialises in using PowerPoint, video and sound effects to enhance his unashamedly silly, high energy stand-up. Hill has performed three different hours at the Edinburgh Fringe festival, and had a successful 3-date run at the prestigious Soho Theatre. Together with his live performances, Hill is building an impressive online following, with over ten million views on his Instagram and TikTok videos. His fast-paced comedy is often an expose on his real experiences with autism and ADHD, and an ode to his many special interests, from US presidents to graphs and maps. And, well, comedy.
Plus-Minus Ensemble
Music for the Singularity
Plus-Minus Ensemble is a UK based ensemble committed to commissioning new work and placing it alongside recent and landmark modern repertoire. Formed in 2003, Plus-Minus is distinguished by its interest in performative, electroacoustic and conceptual pieces, and experimental open works such as Stockhausenâs 1963 classic, from which the group takes its name. Plus-Minus is directed by Matthew Shlomowitz, Vicky Wright and Mark Knoop. In recent years Plus-Minus has performed at performed at Whelanâs (Dublin), Centro Cultural de BelĂ©m (Lisbon), MINU festival (Copenhagen), Archipel (Geneva), and Klangspuren Schwaz in Austria, and in London Cafe Oto, BBC Studios, music weâd like to hear, City University Concerts, ICA and London Contemporary Music Festival. From 2019 to 2025, Plus-Minus was Ensemble in Residence at the Reid School of Music (University of Edinburgh), leading projects with students and giving three concerts each year. Over the past decade Plus-Minus has also enjoyed delivering annual projects at both Bath Spa University and Guildhall School of Music. Plus-Minus has also given workshops and concerts at Stanford University, Durham University, Huddersfield University, University of Southampton and City, University of London.
Robert Laidlow
Music for the Singularity
Robert Laidlow is a composer and researcher based in the UK. Robert’s music has been commissioned and performed across the globe and broadcast on television and radio. His boundary-pushing orchestral music includes Exoplanets, (London Philharmonic Orchestra & Basel Interfinity Festival), TECHNO-UTOPIA, a concerto for piano and intelligent instrument soloist (BBC Radio 3 & Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin), and Silicon for orchestra and artificial intelligence (BBC Philharmonic).
Stephanie Lamprea
Music for the Singularity
Colombian-American soprano Stephanie Lamprea is an architect of new sounds and expressions as a performer, recitalist, curator, composer, and improviser, specializing in contemporary-classical repertoire. Trained as an operatic coloratura, Stephanie uses her voice as a mechanism of avant-garde performance art, creating âmaniacal shifts of vocal production and character⊠like an icepick through the skullâ (composer Jason Eckardt). She has performed as a soloist at Roulette Intermedium (New York City), Constellation Chicago, Kings Place (London), Southbank Centre (London), the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, the National Concert Hall (Dublin), the Centre for Contemporary Art (Glasgow), the Hidden Door Festival (Edinburgh), and the Casa da MĂșsica (Porto). She has collaborated with leading new music ensembles and bands including the London Sinfonietta, Riot Ensemble, International Contemporary Ensemble, EXAUDI Vocal Ensemble, the City of London Sinfonia, SĆ Percussion, and Post Coal Prom Queen.
Cato Rolea
AI Co-Creation Lab: Shared Imagination, Generative Expression
A senior leader at the intersection of international education and digital transformation, Cato Rolea combines 10+ years of deep sector expertise in UK Higher Education, building and managing 200+ partnerships across the Americas, Africa, and the Middle East, with a proven track record of leading complex technology initiatives. He spearheaded the end-to-end digitization of student mobility for over 40,000 students and, in a subsequent role, led AI and data strategy for critical Home Office and Department for Education contracts – making him a recognised innovator in applying AI to solve challenges in recruitment, student experience, and operational efficiency.
Ruohan Tang
Global Smart Lab Live Project
MA Digital Media Practices – Critical Practice Showcase
Dr Ruohan Tang is a Senior Teaching Fellow in Digital Media Practices at the Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton. He is the Co-EDI (Equality, Diversity and Inclusion) for the Art & Media Technology Department. He is also a researcher at the Global Smart Lab, focusing on digital media practices of computing technology with Artificial Intelligence and Immersive media. Central to his work are critical & creative methods, interdisciplinary investigations, international collaborations, and a commitment to advancing equality, diversity, and inclusion of media representation and practices.
Jess Spurrell
AI & Broadcasting – Learning from Unity 101 Community Radio
Jess manages the University’s engagement with schools, colleges and youth groups, supporting our researchers in developing interactive activities to engage school pupils in cutting edge research. Jess began working as School-University Partnership Officer in 2016 â and now she gets to apply that learning to working with communities, spending time getting to know and building relationships with people and organisations.
Felicity Farrell
AI & Broadcasting – Learning from Unity 101 Community Radio
Felicity is a Public and Community Engagement Officer in the Public Engagement with Research team at the University of Southampton. Felicity joined the team in January 2024 and plays a key operational role in working with communities as the Public and Community Engagement (PCE) Hubs Officer. Coming from the private healthcare sector, with a background in project management and customer service, she has 10 years marketing experience.
Matt Javanshir
RoboPaws Live!
Matt spent 15 years at J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. in the Corporate & Investment Bank, working across risk, controls, and governance – from accounting and regulatory reporting, to leading internal audits. Later, he transitioned into data analytics, where he helped to design and manage analytical and AI/ML solutions (and training) that equipped a global department of 1,300+ auditors with analytical capabilities. In parallel, Matt spent over a decade as a freelance composer and sound designer for indie games. He co-founded Propulsion Games with his brother, collaborating with friends and family to release several commercial indie titles focused on transmedia elements and teamwork mechanics, with roles spanning production, narrative, and audio.
Matthew Shiel
AI Mozart
Matthew Shiel is a British concert pianist and a Live Music Now Scotland and Usher Hall emerging artist who performs 200+ performances every year across UK, USA and Australia in partnership with the Edinburgh, Brighton (UK), Adelaide, Melbourne (Australia) and Hollywood (USA) Fringe Festivals. In 2025, Matthew Shiel made history by performing the worldâs first piano recital of music composed by artificial intelligence at the Edinburgh Festival; this performance was subsequently commissioned by Dame Wendy Hallâs Web Science Institute (University of Southampton) and broadcast on Al Jazeera News. His performances have received multiple 5-star reviews in the press (including Edinburgh Guide, Corr Blimey and Binge Fringe). Nationally, he has performed at Usher Hall (Edinburgh), The National Portrait Gallery of Scotland (Edinburgh), St Gile’s Cathedral (Edinburgh), The Glasshouse International Centre for Music (Newcastle) and City Halls (Glasgow). He is also the artistic director of Fringe Classics, an international performing arts company that creatively adapts classical music for festival fringes around the world, and is a graduate of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
Antonia Marcu
Electric Sheep Tales: Improvised comedy inspired by Human memories and AI hallucinations
Antonia Marcu is a New Frontiers Fellow at the University of Southampton. She has supported conferences presenting research on the effects of artificial data modification, and has produced a thesis on a data-centric theory of generalisation.
Benjamin Oliver
Feedback Loops
Benjamin Oliver is a composer, conductor and jazz pianist. His music has been performed internationally, broadcast on BBC Radio 3, released on labels including Linn and Prima Facie, and his âLoop Concerto for jazz trio and large ensembleâ was nominated in the Contemporary Jazz category of the British Composer Awards 2017. Key musical collaborators and commissioners include: pianist Yshani Perinpanayagam; Ensemble Paramirabo (Montreal); Riot Ensemble; London Sinfonietta; ensemble mise-en (New York); BBC Symphony Orchestra; toy pianist Dorothy Chan (New York); jazz pianist Ivo Neame; and theorboist Elizabeth Kenny.
James Ashdown
Feedback Loops
James Ashdown is a composer, drummer, and educator. He has collaborated with several artists, including Arcades of London and Southampton Jazz Orchestra, as well as working with commercial clients such as Blizzard Entertainment and Breezeblocks Productions
Pablo Galaz
Feedback Loops
Pablo is a lecturer in Composition and Analysis at the University of Southampton. He has been a composer in residence at the Visby International Centre for Composers (Sweden), the Liszt School of Music Weimar (Germany), and the Cité Internationale des Arts de Paris. His music has been performed at several festivals in Latin America, the United States, Australia and Europe by renowned ensembles and musicians, such as the Chilean Symphonic Orchestra, the Ensemble Intercontemporain, the Ensemble Itinéraire, the Ensemble Aleph, the New York New Music Ensemble, the Ensemble Proton Bern, the ensemble Vertixe Sonora, the ensemble Iberoamericano, the Ensemble Auditivvokal Dresden, the Ensemble Multilatérale, the Elision Ensemble, the Ensemble Adapter, and the Schallfeld ensemble, among others.
L. Gre
Feedback Loops
Gre is a Black Midwestern American composer, multi-disciplinary artist, researcher, and vocalist known for her genre-less compositions created through collaboration. Her artistic practice is deeply rooted in storytelling and the visceral realms of the imaginary, exploring the opacity of human experience. As a sound artist-researcher, Gre delves into the applied use of Endarkened Co-Composition, a collaborative method they developed for generative sound and music-making. This approach centres Black and Indigenous forms of storytelling and story-keeping, utilizing methods such as storytelling, interviews, and informal exchanges. Endarkened Co-Composition is a non-linear process focused on creating a space of endarkened co-presence where shared stories and experiences fundamentally shape the sonic outputs. Currently, Gre is a cross-departmental Lecturer at the University of Southampton in Music and Art and Media Technology. They also serve as the Doctoral Programme Director for Music. Their work has been exhibited at notable venues such as Lindisfarne Castle (Holy Island, UK), Lisson Gallery (London, UK), The Union for Contemporary Art (Omaha, USA), and Queens Museum (New York, USA).
Tamar Osborn
Feedback Loops
Tamar Osborn is a UK-based saxophonist/woodwind-player and composer renowned for her innovative approach and versatility across genres, bringing a wealth of experience from a career informed by observation, participation and variety. She collaborates regularly in various ensembles with Dele Sosimi, Sarathy Korwar, Rosa Brunello, Jessica Lauren, Emanative, DJ Khalab and more. She is a founder member of Flock, Unknown to Known and Tryp Tych Tryo, and also the creative force behind modal jazz ensemble Collocutor (On The Corner Records), with whom she has released three critically acclaimed LPs and an EP.
Nicki Clarkson
Copilot Cats: an exploration into reproducibility
Nicki Clarkson is an Engagement Librarian at the University of Southampton. With a love for the methods and practices of teaching and Open Research, she has acquired knowledge in several fields, including Generative AI.
Dave Gibbons
Park Life
Dave Gibbons is the Specialist photography technician at Winchester School of Art and a visual artist who works predominately between photography and collage to seek narratives and explore ideas around emotional attachments to found ephemera and objects and their impact on and by the environment. A recent area of investigatory research serves to pursue creative imaginings using AI text to image and prompt crafting techniques to explore the possibilities with this method of photographic image making.
Chao Zheng
WSA Smart Lab x The AI in Media Institute: Responsible AI-Driven Creativity
Dr Chao Zheng is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) of Statistics in the School of Mathematical Sciences and the Southampton Statistical Sciences Research Institute (S3RI) at the University of Southampton. Chao is broadly interested in developing statistical theories, methodologies, and algorithms to solve problems in large-scale and complex data analysis.
Lexi Webster
AI Otherwise
Lexi Webster is an Associate Professor of Digital Culture and the Deputy Director of Digital Humanities at the University of Southampton. She is also the Co-Director for the Southampton Institute for Arts and Humanities (SIAH). Broadly speaking, Lexi’s research focuses on explaining and critiquing the cognitive and discursive processes that underpin how we interpret our lived experience, influence how we position ourselves in relationship to one other, and structure the way we go on in the world. Whilst her primary disciplinary training is in linguistics, her work is more comfortably situated at its interdisciplinary intersections of digital media, sociology and gender/sexuality studies. Through her work, Lexi pursues a critical agenda for deconstructing social inequities, envisioning futures for human flourishing, and considering feasible ways of co-creating those futures.
Han Geng
Ghost in the Machine: an immersive exploration of horror, technology, and consciousness
Han Geng is an AHRC funded PhD student in Film Studies at the University of Southampton. She is interested in exploring womenâs roles in horror and Chinese film. Her doctoral research project focuses on the representation of female ghosts in Chinese horror cinema.
Tina Scahill
Human and Machine = Art Fusion
A freelance graphic designer working in agency and small/medium enterprise, Tina has formed a large network of clients and now friends from all parts of her career. Tina is also a multidisciplinary artist working in the digital domain and traditional forms of painting. Tina uses text, poetry and personal stories within paintings to weave a narrative, perhaps a memory or a feeling. Themes of life and death, science and intervention have played through her work. Predominantly work is created in 2D, the surface is used as mirror to reflect out to each viewer a dialogue of unconscious and reflective thought. Through the digital space Tina is interested in storytelling, blurring the boundaries between paint and digital, to make art that speaks.
Chi Ying Lam
Listen to Buddy: Telling Stories for Climate Action
Chiying Lam is a Lecturer in Community Music and Social Justice. Born and raised in Hong Kong, she completed her doctoral studies at the Royal College of Music, London. Her research focuses on musiciansâ pedagogical practices and post-colonial discourses of power and identity within the music practitioner community. She holds a Bachelor of Education (Honours) and a Master of Arts in Music Education from The Education University of Hong Kong. She currently serves as the convenor of the Social Justice Special Interest Group (SIG) within the British Educational Research Association (BERA) and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Public Health. She is also a Neurologic Music Therapy Allied Professional.
Tan Viet Tuyen Nguyen
Listen to Buddy: Telling Stories for Climate Action
Nguyen Tan Viet Tuyen is a New Frontiers Fellow (Lecturer) in AI at University of Southampton. His research centres around machine learning, computer vision, robotics, and their applications to robot learning from and for human interactions. Prior to joining the University of Southampton, Tuyen was working on the EPSRC project âLISI – Learning to Imitate Social Interactionâ as a Research Associate at Kingâs College London. Tuyen obtained a PhD degree in Information Science, majoring in Robotics, at Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, where he was working on the H2020 project âCARESSES – Culture Aware Robots and Environmental Sensor Systems for Elderly Supportâ as a Research Assistant.
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