What role do teachers have in supporting pupils' critical understanding of the possibilities and pitfalls of machine vision?
How do we 'feed the machine' each time we 'like' a photo on Instagram or tick a series of images in a captcha?
Under what conditions do workers annotate images? And how might their subjective interpretations create bias and discrimination?
Two Ways of Machine Seeing teachers' workshops take inspiration from John Berger's 1972 television series and book Ways of Seeing, and specifically the popular impact that these had in fostering a critical understanding of visual culture.
Led by Nicolas Malevé, the workshops will culminate in a co-produced teaching resource on the topic of machine vision. This is part of a research collaboration viewed as a mutally beneficial partnership. It will value the insights and experience of school practice in its many forms. All contributors will be credited in the final resource.
Wednesday 21 September, 14:00-16.30 – an in-person, interactive workshop at The Photographers' Gallery for teachers currently working in mainstream secondary schools in England. Participants will learn, through practical activities, about the relationship between AI and visual culture. We will collaboratively brainstorm ideas to be incorporated into the subsequent PGCE Art & Design workshop as well as the Art & Design classroom. Funding is available to pay for cover for 1/2 day out of school. We hope that those enrolled in this workshop will continue on to the second workshop in October.
Tuesday 25 October, 13.30-18.00 – a further interactive workshop for PGCE trainee teachers and teachers currently working in mainstream secondary schools in England. This session will take place at the Institute of Education and The Photographers' Gallery. It will be a scaled-up version of the September workshop. It will give participants an opportunity to learn, speculate, collaborate and feed into the co-production of a teaching resource, alongside members of the resource team.
The workshops are an opportunity to develop teaching and learning at the forefront of critical issues in visual culture today. Together we will co-design an engaging, practical teaching resource aimed at rendering visible some of the issues related to artificial intelligence and visual imagery.
To register your interest in attending one or both workshops, please email Annie Davey at the Insititute of Education a.davey@ucl.ac.uk
Please note: these workshops are open to teachers and trainee teachers in mainstream secondary schools in England only.
Nicolas Malevé is a researcher, artist, computer programmer and activist. He was awarded a PhD from London South Bank University, in collaboration with The Photographers' Gallery, for his research on the algorithms of vision. In this context, he initiated the project Variations on a Glance (2015-2018) which included a series of workshops on the experimental production of computer vision. He lives and works between Brussels and London.
Ways of Machine Seeing is a research collaboration between the Institute of Education's Art & Design PGCE course, Centre for the Study of the Networked Image (CSNI) at London South Bank University and The Photographers' Gallery, supported by a public engagement grant from The Alan Turing Institute.
