Courtesy of Kevin Lieue ’26
From March 26–28, 2026, the Ammerman Center for Arts and Technology hosted its annual symposium at Connecticut College beneath the theme “All Too Human.” Across three days, college students, school, and visiting artists explored the intersections of artwork, science, and know-how by way of lightning talks, workshops, and collaborative discussions that pushed contributors to rethink how human expertise can form inventive observe.
A spotlight of the symposium was the keynote delivered by Katerina Cizek, a Peabody- and Emmy-winning documentarian and lead of the Co-Creation Studio at the MIT Open Documentary Lab. Her work facilities on collaborative storytelling and community-driven media, themes that resonated strongly with the symposium’s focus on shared creation and interdisciplinary exploration. Her perspective framed the weekend’s occasions round the concept that know-how can be utilized not simply to provide media, however to reimagine how tales are made and who will get to take part in that course of.
The symposium additionally revisited the work of commissioned artists from the earlier 12 months. Tansy Xiao developed LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor), a dwell interplay between musicians, dancers, and digital environments that explored types of intelligence past human dominance. Mathieu Pradat workshopped Giants and Minis, a massively multiplayer cellular sport imagining a wrestle for cities between those that search destruction and people who collaborate to protect them. Both artists returned to mirror on how their initiatives advanced since their preliminary commissions, providing perception into how inventive work continues to develop lengthy after its first presentation.
One of the central occasions I attended was the Lightning Talks held in Oliva Hall at the Cummings Art Center. Speakers, together with Jonah Brucker-Cohen, Rachelle Beaudoin, Kaeti MacNeil, and Peijing Mou, shared their initiatives and artistic processes. Each presentation supplied a special perspective on how know-how can be utilized not simply as a software, however as a medium for exploring deeply human questions. Listening to their work gave me new methods of occupied with how concepts can take form throughout disciplines.
I additionally participated in two workshops that stood out for the way interactive and thought-provoking they had been. In “The Body as User Interface,” contributors labored collectively to design a system that used the human physique itself as the foundation for interplay, reasonably than relying on conventional units. The exercise pushed us to assume creatively and collaboratively, reimagining how we perceive each know-how and embodiment. Hearing different folks’s concepts made the expertise much more significant; a lot of the ideas they proposed had been issues I’d by no means have considered on my very own.
The second workshop centered on futuristic reproductive applied sciences, together with prospects corresponding to male being pregnant and parthenogenesis, and examined them from scientific, moral, and social views. The dialog challenged contributors to assume past what’s presently doable and to contemplate how rising applied sciences may reshape basic points of human life.
What stood out most to me all through the symposium was how accessible it was to college students from all fields. The Ammerman Symposium isn’t restricted to those that determine strictly as artists or technologists. It is an area the place anybody can discover inspiration, uncover new concepts, and join totally different pursuits in surprising methods. I want extra college students knew that they don’t want a particular background to learn from attending; curiosity is sufficient.
One school member who significantly impressed me was Kaeti MacNeil. Through animation, she was capable of make one thing as summary as ideas and feelings seen. Seeing her course of and the evolution of her work made me mirror on how I strategy my very own initiatives, particularly in digital artwork, and the way complicated ideas might be expressed visually with intention and experimentation.
My key takeaway from the symposium is the significance of mixing science, artwork, and know-how to create significant work. The occasion emphasised that the inventive course of is simply as vital as the last consequence, experimenting, attempting new approaches, and permitting concepts to develop over time. It additionally sparked new concepts for my very own initiatives and inspired me to assume extra deliberately about the right way to visually signify complicated ideas.
Ultimately, “All Too Human” was a reminder that innovation typically begins with curiosity about what it means to be human, and that the most compelling concepts can emerge when disciplines intersect.
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