Programs

Make a home in the world.

Our programming prepares you, your team, or your community to encounter large-scale changes in a pragmatic, creative, and homegrown way.

  • Want to know how artificial intelligence will impact your work?
  • Want to start or evolve a business that respects and acknowledges the natural world upon which we rely?
  • Want  to live a life with integrity despite increasing polarization and the rising power of institutions?
Your long-term resiliency hinges on your ability to respond to these and other massive technical, economic, cultural, and social changes.
 

Through our programs you will:

  • better understand the issues through hands-on experience and through engagement with practitioners and researchers
  • develop new skills and relationships to be resilient to “what’s coming”
  • untangle the polarization that keeps you stuck
  • create, refine, and apply a framework unique to you, your organization, and/or your community for working with large, abstract, and volatile issues
  • develop pragmatic strategies for navigating uncertainty
  • gain confidence to act

We can tailor our programming to the specific challenges of your team or organization.

Find the Program for You

We have a selection of programs ranging from self-directed to full experiential encounters.

Core Program

One-Day Intensive Programs

Scheduled workshops in Vancouver, Calgary, Halifax, Toronto, Montreal

Registration Details
photograph of participants at MUTEK Forum in 2023 listening to speakers from UKAI. Around 100 people are seated at desks with laptops in front of them. The crowd is generally in their 20s.

Core Program

3-Month Comprehensive Programs

Hybrid online and in-person delivery in Toronto

Registration Details

Core Program

Research Retreats and Residencies

Experiential encounters: 2 month online plus 2 to 4-week site-specific program, delivered with Canadian and International programming partners. 2025 call for applications now open!

Apply Now

Free Course

Tell the Story of the End of the World

We live in an era defined by challenges that are hard to put our finger on. There is no “where” or “when” to confront these changes. Yet somehow, we have to live alongside them. This course is designed to help you make sense of issues like climate change, AI, and authoritarianism from the perspective of the artist. 

This course is delivered on Mighty Network as part of programming for The Centre for the Sustainable Practice in the Arts (CSPA)

Enroll Now

Program Schedule

Upcoming Events

AI Workshop Series: Halifax

all 3 days of workshops in Halifax, NS

Wed Dec 11, 2024 @ 09:00 am

Register

Delivery: in-person

Event Type: 1-day Workshop

This package includes all three workshop days - Finding your way with AI, AI Art Intensive, and the AI Community Session and Poetics of Synthetic Launch (and after-party) in Halifax, NS in December, 2024.

See each of the individual program descriptions for more details or reach out to us at home@ukaiprojects.com

Finding your Way with AI: Halifax

Wed Dec 11, 2024 @ 09:00 am

Register

Delivery: in-person

Event Type: 1-day Workshop

A 1-day crash course for creators worried about being left behind.

"Finding Your Way with AI" is a 1-day workshop being delivered across Canada. It is designed to support creators who feel anxious about the rapid integration of AI into artistic practices. "Finding Your Way with AI" aims to demystify AI and help participants discover how they can harness this technology to enhance their creative processes. Drawing from UKAI’s experimental approaches over the past five years, this information session will answer questions from potential participants about the types of hands-on activities, collaborative discussions, and exploratory exercises to expect and that might illuminate the possibilities AI offers for the arts. Workshops are structured to encourage a deep and thoughtful exploration of AI's role in artistic practice, emphasizing practical, real-world applications.

At UKAI Projects, our broader mission is to question dominant narratives and explore alternative ways of understanding and interacting with the world. By offering this series of workshops, we aim to equip artists with the tools to navigate the evolving landscape of AI in a way that aligns with their idiosyncratic practices and resists the homogenizing tendencies of centralized technological control .

Halifax Workshop Series Schedule

  • Finding your Way with AI: December 11, 2024
  • AI Art Intensive: December 12, 2024
  • AI Community Event and Poetics of Synthetic Language Book Launch: December 13, 2024

Participation Fee:

  • $35 for one day
  • $75 for all three days at your location (Finding your Way with AI, AI Art Intensive, and AI Community Event)

Acknowledgement: UKAI Project’s nation-wide AI programming is made possible through the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.

AI Art Intensive: Halifax

Thu Dec 12, 2024 @ 09:00 am

Register

Delivery: in-person

Event Type: 1-day Workshop

The "AI Art Intensive" builds upon the foundational knowledge from the "Finding Your Way with AI" workshop but attendance on the first day is not a requirement. This intensive session is dedicated to helping creators develop their AI-enhanced art projects from concept to realization. 

Participants will receive guidance on project development, prototyping, and testing their ideas in a supportive environment. The focus is on practical, hands-on learning, where participants can move their artistic ideas into actionable projects, using AI tools and techniques.

UKAI’s approach emphasizes the value of collaborative creation and the development of diverse perspectives in the use of AI. By supporting artists in moving from idea to implementation, we reinforce our commitment to fostering a polyphony of voices and approaches in cultural production. This method not only enriches individual artistic practices but also contributes to a more resilient and adaptable cultural ecosystem .

Halifax Workshop Series Schedule

  • Finding your Way with AI: December 11, 2024
  • AI Art Intensive: December 12, 2024
  • AI Community Event: December 13, 2024

Participation Fee:

  • $35 for one day
  • $75 for all three days at your location (Finding your Way with AI, AI Art Intensive, and AI Community Event)

Acknowledgement: UKAI Project’s nation-wide AI programming is made possible through the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.

Telling the Story of the End of the World: Halifax

Fri Dec 13, 2024 @ 01:00 pm

Register

Delivery: in-person

Event Type: 1-day Workshop

ALL REGISTRANTS WILL RECEIVE A COPY OF THE "TELLING THE STORY OF THE END OF THE WORLD" CHAPBOOK

Join us for an immersive and thought-provoking workshop designed to explore the themes of storytelling, disorder, and synthetic language through creative and practical lenses. Whether you are a writer, artist, researcher, or someone curious about how we might navigate the complex realities of today and the uncertain future, this workshop offers a space to engage with these ideas and apply them to your own practice.

Date: Friday, December 13 2024

Time: 3:00 PM - 9:00 PM


Schedule:

  • 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM: Telling the Story of the End of the World Delve into the challenge of representing large-scale volatility—climate change, AI, authoritarianism—and how to craft stories that allow us to make meaning of these seemingly abstract changes.
  • 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM: Reading from "In Praise of Disorder" Explore the themes of disruption, disorder, and creativity through selected readings that open conversations about the ways disorder can offer new approaches to art and life.
  • 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM: Introduction to the Poetics of Synthetic Language Discover how synthetic language, AI, and poetic forms intersect. This session introduces the principles of creating and interpreting poetic works in the age of machines and explores how language evolves in digital and human contexts.
  • 6:00 PM - 7:00 PM: Workshop: Applying These Themes to Your Own Practice Participate in a hands-on session where you will explore how these ideas can be applied to your own creative or research practice. Guided exercises will help you synthesize insights and craft new approaches.
  • 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM: Social Time and Connection An opportunity to meet and connect with fellow participants, share insights, and build relationships with like-minded individuals interested in storytelling, art, and the evolving landscape of creativity.

Join us for an evening of deep exploration, creativity, and community.

We will also be introducing our Poetics of Synthetic Language publication.

Poetics of Synthetic Language was a multi-month research residency for cultural producers exploring the poetics of large language models and synthetic language generally. What happens to the poetics of a work when language is being drawn not from engagement with the world but rather from a large language model trained on a vast corpus of human language? What are the risks and opportunities of relying on synthetic language that is not participating in the continuous process of becoming and evolving that defines language running wild in the world?

Halifax Workshop Series Schedule

  • Finding your Way with AI: December 11, 2024
  • AI Art Intensive: December 12, 2024
  • Telling the Story of the End of the World: December 13, 2024

Participation Fee:

  • $15 for one day (includes Telling the Story of the End of the World)
  • $75 for all three days at your location (Finding your Way with AI, AI Art Intensive, and Telling the Story of the End of the World)

These programs aim to create a supportive and dynamic environment for artists interested in exploring the intersection of AI and creative practice, ensuring that participants leave with a richer understanding and practical skills to integrate AI into their work.

Intelligent Terrain Spring 2025 Residency

Mon Feb 03, 2025 @ 12:00 pm

Register

Delivery: online and in-person

Event Type: Residency + Retreat

Intelligent Terrain is a yearly land-centered residency drawing on terrain near Wakefield, Quebec. During this residency, interdisciplinary artists individually and (where safe) collectively explored cognitive technology’s relationship to land and imagined approaches that bring us into a closer relationship with our environment while working toward the preservation of our world for future generations.

Join this information session to learn more about the program, the application process, and connect with others interested in the themes expressed.

Just as we inhabit our physical bodies, we inhabit landscapes and live within and from them. We have seen the impact of failing to acknowledge our entanglement with natural systems. From stone tablets to silicon chips, intelligent machines are not further away from the land than an engraved piece of stone.

To varying degrees, we are organized by our landscapes, and how might land inform AI’s development and our responses to it? How might we change the focus of surveillance from monitoring and control to understanding the relationships among people and environments? How might traditional knowledge and stewardship underpin ethical AI?

According to legal scholar and member of the Chippewa of the Nawash First Nation John Borrows, in oral and visual cultures, law flows from the people and from the natural world and is reflected in the artistic and physical world. To imagine ourselves as disentangled from our landscapes creates the conditions for the evacuation of these spaces. How might an ethic of stewardship, centered in natural environments, suggest developmental pathways for AI and responses to its excesses?

UKAI Projects leads a yearly, land-centered residency drawing on terrain near Wakefield, Quebec. During this residency, interdisciplinary artists individually and (where safe) collectively explored cognitive technology’s relationship to land and imagined approaches that bring us into a closer relationship with our environment while working toward the preservation of our world for future generations.

Most discourse tacitly or explicitly positions human beings, their relationships, and the environments they inhabit as ‘objects’ of ethical systems, algorithmic decision making, corporate action, and government regulation. Our cultural life extends from how we experience ourselves and how we experience others. AI amplifies and distorts what we actually and potentially experience.

Reimagination is possible.

Our experiences establish the ideas we can draw upon. AI has no body, no physical environment organizing its development, and no culture to weave and reweave into social life. There is no ‘dark matter’ for the machine to draw upon and our algorithmic culture is increasingly asking us to ignore our own semantic contexts. By (re)inhabiting the body, the land, and our cultures we might imagine a new ethics for algorithms and support others to appreciate the path we find ourselves on.

Program Testimonials

  • Borelson (Ferment 2018 - 2021, Migration 2022)

    "Being part of UKAI was like being part of a think-tank. The longer version is that it was a unique experience at the intersection of so many domains (tech, culture, futurism, arts, etc.), where each member would bring their own skills and expertise and we wouldn't feel limited, we would actually feel free ("Avengers Assemble"?) and feed off of each other in a benevolent way, and when really lucky we would find those paid gigs that would keep us afloat, especially during the pandemic.

    I am grateful for my time over there and I feel I still am part of this family, forever. Witnessing their growth and the way they keep experimenting till this day has been beautiful to witness."

  • Ryan Kelln (Factitious - 2024)

    "What is the future of art making? Collaborations with digital aliens who make all your dreams come true? UKAI and its community building are our hope for a future with fewer monsters and pitchforks and more critical wonder and thoughtfully free expression."

  • Ben McCarthy (Local Disturbances - 2024, Factitious - 2024)

    "Working with UKAI, especially during the Factitious Residency, I was supported in experimenting with several machine-learning-based technologies and in the process learned to improvise with these emergent neural media. An ethos emphasizing creative play over defined-production brought to life a new suite of songs and a collection of video vignettes produced in collaboration with local and LLM generative AI— I was able to share both projects at distinct events in the UKAI studio space. I’ve benefited from peer exchange on new technologies, practical theory, and informed abstraction that advanced my project, my research and practice."

Interested in a tailored program for your team and organization? Let's work together!