The International Center of Photography is pleased to present Seeing Meaning: From Pictographs to AI, a day-long convening organized by Marina Chao, with the generous support of a Curatorial Research Fellowship Grant from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

This public symposium brings together artists, writers, designers, scholars, and researchers to explore the intersections between image and language across disciplines. In light of emergent text-to-image AI tools and the training of machines to process image and language as a single unit, the conflation, simultaneity, and slippages between picture and text—as old as language itself—are particularly visible today. Looking at these relationships from a multitude of perspectives, the speakers raise urgent questions about the ethics of photojournalism in the absence of a photographer-witness and how to navigate the proliferation of misinformation in the media. In their work they weave cognition, vision, and text together in generative ways—touching on sound, speech, citation, transduction, accessibility, spirituality, empathy, and connection—that sheds light on intrinsic but elusive connections between the brain, image, and language. Looking towards the future, they imagine a more compassionate technology guided by ancient knowledge.

Participating speakers include: Jennifer Daniel (artist, chair of the Emoji Subcommittee for the Unicode Consortium); Shannon Ebner (artist); JJJJJerome Ellis (artist); Sarah Gephart (graphic designer), Anna Gerber (writer and creative consultant); Nicholas Muellner (artist); Haytham Nawar (artist and Associate Professor, The American University in Cairo); Yotam Ophir (Assistant Professor of Communication, University at Buffalo); Fred Ritchin (author, curator, and Dean Emeritus of the School at ICP); Finnegan Shannon (artist); Catherine Taylor (writer and editor); Maria Varkanitsa (Research Assistant Professor, Aphasia Research Laboratory, Boston University)

Also featuring a performance by artist Chloë Bass.

Full schedule to be announced. The event is free and open to the public, but registration is required.

This program is being offered both in person at ICP, located on NYC's Lower East Side, and online. Tickets to attend the conversation in person are free and do not include access to ICP’s galleries. Online tickets are available for free.

This symposium is produced by the generous support of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

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