Event Partner
The New Real

 

Introducing transformative ideas through art and AI, to equip future generations to flourish on a thriving planet in the midst of surprising, joyful, and inclusive forms of intelligent life.

The New Real explores how art and creativity can help to change how we think about AI design, and illuminate how emerging technology can become a creative, playful and deeply impactful part of everyday living. It demonstrates how AI can be made more easily usable in tools and systems for the creative sector following Covid-19, and connects science and data to applications and impacts in the real world. 

For the Scottish AI Summit, The New Real lounge will showcase projects developed over the last year, and present a lunchtime demo of a climate AI platform for artists, The New Real Observatory, combining raw satellite data and climate modelling with AI processing engines. 

The New Real Observatory is an 'experiential AI' system developed with and for artists, to explore the link between global-scale data and ground truth, and an experiential approach to explainability in artificial intelligence. 

Established 2019, The New Real is a partnership between the University of Edinburgh, Alan Turing Institute, and Edinburgh’s Festivals.

 

Meet the team

  • Matjaz Vidmar

    Dr Matjaz Vidmar is Lecturer in Engineering Management at the University of Edinburgh. He is researching innovation, entrepreneurship and futures design, especially within space industry. He leads projects ranging from geostationary space stations to growing food in space, several start-up companies and public engagement with STE(A)M.

  • Drew Hemment

    Dr Drew Hemment is a Turing Fellow and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and Chancellors Fellow and Reader at Edinburgh Futures Institute and Edinburgh College of Art within the University of Edinburgh. Drew leads the Experiential AI research cluster and The New Real programme with the Alan Turing Institute and Edinburgh's Festivals. As a Turing Fellow, he is working to develop a research agenda for the coming decade on AI and the arts, and to build a national capability for the UK in this highly significant area. Drew has worked with cities and nations representing culture and research at the highest level, and is one of the key figures who shaped the field of digital arts in Europe over 30 years.

  • Daga Panas

    Dr Daga Panas is a Data Scientist at the University of Edinburgh, working in the Data Science Unit for Science, Health, People, and Environment. She holds a PhD in Computational Neuroscience and an MSc in Physics and describes herself as an all-round-geek, when pressed to write in third person. She has a varied background, including, in no particular order: deploying Machine Learning in a business environment, guiding punting tours on the river Cam, and research on the benefits of naps (often conducted personally).