“Brave New Work is not a series of talks about the future. It is a series of encounters with what the future means,” said founder Michael Delgado. At last year’s inaugural edition of Brave New Work, a sense of seeking definition of purpose and vision hovered over the series, but Delgado and his team are back with a vengeance for year two of what is essentially a seminar and exhibition program geared around the inevitable interface of art and technology — including elements of AI and a broad canvas of topics and guests.
Delgado, a Santa Barbara transplant from the L.A. art world, whose marketing company is Brandwell Arts, is the brains and ambitious force behind this effort, which unveils its second annual event October 1 and 6-8. (October 1 hosts an artist’s projection in another lodge, the Oddfellows Lodge, with the October 6-8 period as the concentrated schedule.) This year, the seminar’s central hub of panel discussions and other activities is in the large former Staples site at 410 State Street, now owned by UCSB.
The site will be transformed for Brave New Work’s installation. “We are going to fill the cavernous 155-foot-by-18-foot-tall space with live, 10-12 foot palm trees and lots of other live flora. Artists Iason Paterakis and Nefeli Manoudaki are using technology developed by Alan Macy (founder of the SBCAST) to monitor the electrical impulses that the plants emit,” Delgado explains.
“The artists ‘listen’ to the plants’ ‘conversation’ through an AI generative model they have constructed. The model translates the conversation into a real-time visualization that is projected along the entire span of the building for a completely spectacular, moving and immersive experience.”…