Who's Afraid of AI?
Conversation
30 Jan 2026, Friday | 6 - 7.30PM
ArtSpace@Helutrans
30 Jan 2026, Friday | 6 - 7.30PM
ArtSpace@Helutrans
Join our speakers in a conversation discussing the impact of AI on our culture in the future. Going beyond apprehension and enthusiasm about what AI portends for our lives, the speakers delve into the implications of AI on artistic practices and the cultural landscape. Artists, curators, AI technological researchers gather for a conversation on AI and its tensions and alignments with culture and the larger community.
Participants Gunalan Nadarajan, jo+kapi, Kathleen Ditzig, Mohan Kankanhalli, Ong Kian Peng
5.45am Registration
6.00pm Welcome
6.05am Speaker Presentations
7.05pm Q&A
7.30pm Programme End, Post-programme refreshments
Free admission, Registration required.
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Complete Session Transcription
Summarised Key Takeaways
Topic Word Cloud highlighting recurring themes
Executive Summary of the panel discussion
Dean Emeritus and Professor, Stamps School of Art and Design
Gunalan Nadarajan, an art theorist and curator working at the intersections of art, science and technology, is Dean Emeritus and Professor at the Stamps School of Art and Design, University of Michigan. His publications include multiple books and over 100 book chapters, catalogue essays, academic articles and reviews; many translated into 17 languages. He has curated many international exhibitions including in Mexico, Indonesia, New Zealand, US, Korea, Germany, Japan, Taiwan, China and as Artistic Co-Director of Ogaki Media Arts Biennale and Artistic Director of ISEA2008 (International Symposium on Electronic Art) in Singapore.
Media Artists
jo+kapi’s artistic research and works critically engage with the evolving modes of consuming digital art, specifically within the dynamic discourse surrounding this space, including exploring concepts around the ownership of digital art, the seat of creative labor in algorithmically generated art, and the ongoing debates surrounding intellectual property and authorship in AI-generated artworks.
Their ongoing ENZYME project, where works are presented through a software platform that visually transforms the displayed pieces, explores the changing nature of creating and consuming digital art. This project necessitates new approaches to curation and presentation within the context of interactive art, where audiences play a crucial role in the art-making and meaning-creation process, prompting them to reconsider their role in art appreciation and consumption.
Curator, National Gallery Singapore
Kathleen Ditzig is a Singaporean art historian and curator. She has written about global histories of culture, finance, and geopolitics through the lens of Southeast Asian Modern and Contemporary art. She received her PhD from the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore in 2023 with the dissertation titled Exhibiting Southeast Asia in the Cultural Cold War: Geopolitics of Regional Art Exhibitions (1940s-1980s). She obtained an MA from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College in New York in 2015. As a curator at National Gallery Singapore, she researches art histories of technology from a Southeast Asian perspective and works on projects related to advanced technologies. She co-curated the exhibition Art Histories of a Forever War: Modernism between Space and Home at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum (2021-2) and the traveling exhibition Afro-Southeast Asia: Pragmatics and Geopoetics of Art during a Cold War (2021-2), which traveled to Singapore, Manila, and Busan.
Professor at National University of Singapore (Computer Science)
Deputy Executive of AI Singapore
Mohan Kankanhalli is Provost's Chair Professor of Computer Science at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and the Deputy Executive Chairman of AI Singapore. He is also the Director of NUS AI Institute, where he leads initiatives on multimodal models and trustworthy machine learning. Mohan obtained his BTech from IIT Kharagpur and MS & PhD from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Mohan’s research interests are in Multimodal Computing, Computer Vision and Trustworthy AI. Mohan was a member of World Economic Forum's 2023-2024 Global Future Council on the Future of Artificial Intelligence. He is a member of ACM’s Global Technology Policy Council. Mohan is a Fellow of IEEE, IAPR and ACM.
Artist, Assistant Professor at Nanyang Technological University
Working across a broad range of mediums, including film, sound, VR, and electronics, ong kian-peng situates his practice at the intersection of art, technology and ecology. His work explores ecological thinking through immersive media enviroments and installations that address environmental crises, climate change, and the expanding field of human-technology interactions.
Delving into the complex relationship between culture, nature, and technology, he creates visionary scenarios and raises existential questions about our role in shaping the future of a vulnerable planet. His work has been featured in international exhibitions and festivals such as, most recently, *Ars Electronica* (Linz, Austria, 2024) and Singapore Biennale (2022). In 2017, he co-founded *Supernormal.space*, an independent art space focusing on emerging and experimental art practices. He was awarded the President's Young Talents Grand Prize in 2015, and shortlisted for awards such as the Re:humanism award, and Lumen Prize. He is currently an assistant professor at the NTU School of Art, Design and Media.