Kulturkonferenz Ruhr 2024: Exploring AI and its impacts on Culture, and Creativity
The Kulturkonferenz Ruhr 2024 in Essen offered an opportunity for attendees to experience firsthand how artificial intelligence (AI) is shaping the cultural landscape. Organized Regionalverband Ruhr, produced by SAVE THE WORLD and featuring various contributors, the event centered on key questions about AI’s influence on art and society. My colleague Tobias Hartmann and I, working as the duo CYLVESTER, were honored to be part of this event. We designed and implemented a series of interventions that guided participants through interactive dialogues, real-time image generation, and a final audio-visual performance.
Here’s a breakdown of our contributions to the conference.
1. Interview with the Minister for Culture, NRW — A Real-Time AI Conversation
The first of our interventions was an AI-driven interview with Ina Brandes, the Minister for Culture of North Rhine-Westphalia. We used a chatbot powered by OpenAI’s GPT and developed a customized setup through TouchDesigner and DotSimulate tools (DotSimulate on Patreon). The goal was to engage the Minister in a dynamic conversation about the potential and challenges of AI in the cultural sector.
To make the dialogue more immersive, we implemented Speech-to-Text and Text-to-Speech functionalities, allowing the Minister to converse with the AI naturally, as though speaking to another person. In parallel, a second AI analyzed the ongoing conversation and gerated image prompts in real time. Using Stream Diffusion, I created a realtime AI-Image stream, visually capturing key moments and ideas from the interview.
2. AI Chatbot Conversations with All Participants — A Personal Exploration of AI and Culture
Following the minister’s interview, we broadened the experience to include all conference participants. We developed a chatbot that each attendee could access via their smartphone, initiating a private conversation about their perspectives on AI in culture. This chatbot encouraged users to reflect on their thoughts, exploring questions about AI’s creativity, ethical implications, and its potential to influence the cultural sector.
At the end of each conversation, the chatbot crafted an image prompt that aimed to capture the participant’s views and sentiments. Using the prompt, the AI then generated an image which was stored in a cloud database, forming a collection of visual responses that reflected the diversity of ideas and opinions shared by participants. This part of the project made AI not just a passive topic of discussion, but an active tool for exploration and expression.
For more on this interaction, read:
You can still test the chatbot here until the budget for it is up:
3. MUSE oder MONSTER, an Audio-Visual Performance
The concluding event of the conference was an audio-visual performance, bringing together the AI-generated images collected during the chatbot conversations. Tobias Hartmann experimented with AI music generators like Suno to explore and test the limits of various music generators. We especially loved the output music when the AI was close to breaking down, as it introduced a kind of creative-error, that we would also try to capture had we written the music by hand. By separating the compositions into individual stems, Tobias ensured the music could be dynamically remixed during the performance.
The performance itself was a glitch-inspired mashup of visuals and sound. Using the remixed AI music as a foundation, I layered the AI-generated images form the participants conversations from earlier to create a dynamic and responsive visual show. The idea was to play with color, shape, and content, highlighting both the similarities and contrasts in the participants’ visual outputs. Projected on a large cinema screen, the performance aimed to immerse the audience in a shared sensory experience, reflecting the diversity of ideas collected throughout the day.
To learn more about the discussions and impact of the performance, check out:
Prompting for Paradise: An Artistic Intervention by CYLVESTER
Our work was part of a larger production, “Prompting for Paradise,” designed by SAVE THE WORLD and CYLVESTER, with the support of Nicola Bramkamp in dramaturgy and Anna Tenti in scenography. The project sought to explore core questions: Can AI express or understand human values like loyalty and responsibility? Where is the line between AI’s capabilities and the irreplaceable creativity of humans? And most importantly, how can AI serve as both a tool and a muse for artists and culture-makers?
The experience was deeply interactive — a unique combination of dialogue, technology, and artistic expression. The participants didn’t just listen; they actively engaged with the AI, becoming co-creators of the final performance. As a collective, their conversations and reflections were transformed into a diverse and evolving tapestry of AI-generated visual art.
For a detailed program description, read: