News and Events

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.

This conversation brought together two complementary perspectives on algorithmic literacy for older adults. CfD Bridges Fellow Myojung Chung shared her research on algorithmic literacy, focusing on how older adults experience and make sense of algorithmic systems. Building on this, CfD core faculty member Miso Kim presented design research centered on older adults and discuss how insights from her work can inform the design of algorithmic literacy interventions and tools for this population.

By splitting the session evenly between empirical research and design practice, the conversation fostered a grounded discussion about how algorithmic literacy for older adults can be meaningfully conceptualized and designed.

Moderator:

Paolo Ciuccarelli: Founding Director of the Center for Design; Professor of Art + Design in CAMD

Speakers:

Myojung Chung: Associate Professor of Journalism and Media Innovation in CAMD; Researcher in Digital Media, Misinformation and AI

Miso Kim: Associate Professor of Art + Design in CAMD; Researcher in Service Design, Experience Design, Healthcare Design and Legal Design

Panelists: Gerard Goggin, Vance Ricks, and Laura Forlano Description: Artificial intelligence is often discussed as a technical achievement—algorithms, datasets, and computational power. But what happens when we shift our perspective and treat AI not just as a tool, but as a medium itself?

This webinar explored AI as a cultural and social force that shapes how we communicate, create meaning, and experience the world. Just as television and the internet became mediums that transformed society beyond their technical specifications, AI is emerging as something that mediates our relationships, structures our information environments, and influences how stories are told and consumed.

By understanding AI as media rather than merely tools, we can better grasp its implications for democracy, policy, and culture, moving beyond technical capabilities to critical questions about who controls these systems, whose voices they amplify, and how they’re reshaping communication itself.

This event was part of the Center for Transformative Media’s AI Webinar Series.

Speaker Bios:

Laura Forlano, a Fulbright award-winning and National Science Foundation funded scholar, is a disabled writer, social scientist and design researcher. She is Professor in the departments of Art + Design and Communication Studies in the College of Arts, Media, and Design and Distinguished Senior Fellow at The Burnes Center for Social Change at Northeastern University. Forlano is also an Affiliated Fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. She received her Ph.D. in communications from Columbia University.

Gerard Goggin is an internationally renowned scholar in communication, cultural, and media studies, whose pioneering research on the cultural and social dynamics of digital technology has been widely influential. He has held appointments at the University of Sydney, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, University of NSW, and the University of Queensland. Goggin has made benchmark contributions to the understanding of mobile media and communication, national and international Internets and their histories.

Vance Ricks is a Teaching Professor at Northeastern holding joint appointments in the College of Social Sciences and Humanities (CSSH) and Khoury College of Computer Sciences. Ricks earned his doctorate in philosophy from Stanford University. Before joining Northeastern, Ricks was an associate professor of philosophy at Guilford College. He has published on parasociality and on the implications of social networks for friendship and for gossip. He has co-authored publications on autonomous vehicles and on faculty policies regarding the use of generative AI systems. His teaching and research focus on technology and moral philosophy broadly speaking.

This panel explored how generative AI has become a pivotal force in the proliferation of mis- and disinformation, eroding the epistemological foundations of trust in truth. As algorithmic systems amplify divisive narratives and destabilize verified knowledge, the line between fact and fabrication blurs, undermining democratic processes and societal coherence. Panelists interrogated how AI-driven content generation distorts public discourse, deepens epistemic uncertainty and challenges the norms of accountability. Through interdisciplinary dialogue, the panelists examined the ethical, technical and societal implications of a world where truth is no longer a shared standard but a contested terrain. They discussed the paradox of relying on AI as a tool for truth, exploring how the pursuit of algorithmic “solutions” often fails to address the root epistemological and technological crises, and perhaps even risks perpetuating those same crises it seeks to resolve.

This event is co-sponsored by the Center for Transformative Media.

Moderator:
Sylke Meyer: Professor, Theatre and Art + Design, CAMD; Co-Founder, Studio206

Speakers:
Derek Curry: Associate Professor, Art + Design, CAMD; Co-Founder, Bankster Games
Jennifer Gradecki: Associate Professor, Art + Design, CAMD; Co-Founder, Bankster Games
John Wihbey: Associate Professor, Journalism, CAMD; Director, AI-Media Strategies (AIMES) Lab; Co-Founder, Institute for Information, the Internet, and Democracy (IIID)