Panelists: Shaun Foster, Jen Gradecki, Derek Curry
Description: Artificial intelligence is reshaping creative industries, including animation, game development, music, design, and storytelling, by changing how ideas are imagined, developed, and shared. This webinar explores AI not as a replacement for human creativity but as a collaborator that transforms artistic workflows, redefines authorship, and challenges our understanding of originality and craft. Moving between theory and practice, we will examine how AI tools are being used across creative disciplines, from motion generation and generative design to sound and visual composition, while considering the ethical, cultural, and educational implications of this rapidly evolving landscape.
Through dialogue among artists, technologists, and educators, the event invites participants to reflect on how creative practice can remain both innovative and deeply human in an AI augmented world, where imagination and computation increasingly intertwine.
This event is part of the Center for Transformative Media’s AI Webinar Series.
Speaker Bios:
Derek Curry is an Associate Professor of Art + Design at Northeastern University. His interdisciplinary practice combines artistic production with research techniques from the humanities, science and technology studies, natural language processing, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. He uses a practice-based research approach to investigate topics where information may be limited, and to create artworks and games that provide an experiential understanding of topics where information may be limited, such as automated decision-making systems used by algorithmic stock trading systems and Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) gathering practices.
Shaun Foster (MFA) is a Professor of 3D Digital Design at the Rochester Institute of Technology. With over 20 years of experience in 3D graphics and interactive educational design, he has worked on multiple award winning projects, has received multiple grants, and publishes and speaks regularly at top conferences. His focus blends interactive real time 3D Graphics using the Unreal Engine, with emerging technology and next generation interfaces, including VR, AR, and Virtual Production and AI.
Jennifer Gradecki is an Associate Professor of Art + Design at Northeastern University. She is an artist-theorist who investigates secretive and specialized socio-technical systems. Her artistic research has focused on social science techniques, financial instruments, dataveillance technologies, intelligence analysis, artificial intelligence, and social media misinformation. Gradecki has presented and exhibited at venues including Ars Electronica (Linz), NeMe (Cypress), Media Art History (Krems), ADAF (Athens), and the Centro Cultural de España (México). Her research has been published in Big Data & Society, Visual Resources, and Leuven University Press. Her artwork has been funded by Science Gallery Dublin, Science Gallery Detroit, and the NEoN Digital Arts Festival.