Jason McKinney (affiliation), Corey Latta (affiliation), Giselle Hinterholz (affiliation)

This panel examines how generative AI unsettles the relationship between authorship, memory, and creativity. Dr. Jason Lee McKinney and Dr. Corey Latta draw on Kurt Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron to argue that AI flattens creative distinction by eliminating the process - struggle, failure, and risk-that makes art meaningful. When friction is removed, creative labor becomes commodified and the extraordinary erased, echoing Vonnegut’s warning against enforced sameness.
Complementing this critique, Giselle Hinterholz investigates the thresholds between authorship, technology, and memory by reworking family photographs and intimate archives with generative AI. Her practice reveals AI not as a neutral tool but as a device that generates estrangement and uncanny echoes of intimacy. These interventions transform the archive into a speculative space where memory appears simultaneously fragile and reconfigured, challenging notions of authenticity and exposing the vulnerability of memory itself.
Together, the presentations illuminate what is at stake when machines bypass process and transform memory into malleable code - when echoes replace meaning.

Brendan Ciecko (affiliation), Corinna Kühnapfel (affiliation), Theresa Demmer (affiliation)

As digital and immersive technologies reshape the ways we encounter and interpret art, new questions arise at the crossroads of neuroscience, aesthetics, and technology. Perception, Presence, and Pixels: Neuroscience at the Intersection of Art and Technology explores how the human brain processes authentic artworks, digital reproductions, and AI-generated creations, and how these different modes of encounter influence perception, emotion, and cognition.
Drawing on recent empirical research in neuroaesthetics and cultural digitization, the panel investigates how perceived authenticity and sensory context shape the viewerʼs engagement and sense of connection. It examines whether immersive and virtual environments can replicate — or even enhance — the aesthetic and educational impact traditionally associated with in-person experiences.
By integrating findings from neuroscience, psychology, and art theory, the discussion highlights how technological mediation transforms our emotional and neural responses to visual culture. It also revisits enduring philosophical ideas about the “aura” of art in an age of mechanical and digital reproduction.
Ultimately, this session aims to advance an interdisciplinary understanding of how perception, presence, and technology intersect — offering insights for cultural practitioners, designers, and policymakers seeking to create more inclusive, meaningful, and cognitively informed art experiences in a rapidly evolving digital world.

Jeanne Criscola, Peggy Bloomer, Elena Grossman, Nan Hu, Wujun Wang

This panel examines how emerging creative technologies—especially participatory and interactive platforms—are reshaping curatorial practice and cultural storytelling. At its center is a global digital initiative inviting artists, technologists, educators, and students to co-design an online cultural platform that serves both as experimental canvas and critical forum. The project emphasizes student participation as co-authors of systems, highlighting how interface design, algorithmic filters, and governance protocols directly shape visibility, authorship, and representation.
Bringing together designers, educators, technologists, and scholars, the panel asks: Who shapes digital narratives, and through what systems? How can cultural platforms resist reproducing hierarchies and exclusions? What does shared authorship look like in a networked world?
By weaving project documentation, student experiences, and design experimentation, the session reframes digital technologies not as neutral tools, but as active mediators of cultural memory, meaning, and participation—opening possibilities for more inclusive, equitable, and transformative narrative systems.

Fabian Ombui, Thomas Lidy, Aaron Windfield

We are living through a pivotal moment when technology is not only transforming industries but reshaping the very foundations of how culture is produced, shared, and experienced. This convergence of culture and technology, often termed culttech, is reshaping creative processes, audience relationships, and the boundaries of expression. Generative AI poses both extraordinary creative potential and profound structural challenges, impacting authorship, economic systems, audience engagement, and the ethics of expression.
This roundtable will examine how creative resistance and persistence can materialize through convergent interventions in technology, economics, and policy. Our aim is to support creator agency, foster sustainability, and drive ethical cultural innovation within AI-mediated environments. This transformation extends beyond new tools, representing a structural shift affecting economic models, social dynamics, and communities worldwide.

Central Question:
How can integrated technical, economic, and policy interventions foster creative resistance and persistence, driving a structural shift toward cultural ecosystems that center creator agency and emotional integrity in AI-mediated environments?

Samuel Bianchini, Gwenaelle Lallemand, Maria Ptqk

How can we account for practice-based research at the intersections of art, design, and sciences in ways other than text-based format? The traditional methodologies and forms for journal articles are not always adapted to research that explores sensorial and singular forms. Arising from this observation, the .able journal is designed as an innovative valorization of interdisciplinary research, thanks to image-based formats.

.able is a peer-reviewed international journal investigating what academic publishing could be when stepping further than the conventions of traditional print publishing to engage with the full potential of multimedia and multi-platform environments, starting with smartphones. As a free-of-charge, digital publication, accessible
through a distributed system, the aim of publishing these visual essays is to make a lasting contribution to the research-creation communities and, more broadly, to society, in areas where other forms of publication have proven to be reductive.

Building on this premise, the roundtable at REACT 2025 will reflect on the stakes and mechanisms of a journal such as .able, while presenting three case studies of published visual essays, highlighting both the diversity of projects and the paradigm shift this form of publication entails.

Endre Papp, Margarete Reichel-Neuwirth, Zsófia Szemerédy, Iphigenia Taxopoulou, Dr. Gábor Egri, Alexander Kosnopfl

Research and experience show that, in the long term and on a broader scale, doom-and-gloom messages hinder dialogue, paralyze the audience, and limit action. In contrast, positive, action-oriented storytelling that stimulates the right brain can initiate change, — and culture has a breakthrough role to play in this.

This roundtable gathers theatre, film, and cultural professionals from across Europe to explore how creative institutions can lead the way in sustainable transformation, turning environmental responsibility into inspiration, identity, and audience engagement.

Valerie L.M. Messini, Bence Pap, Martina Menegon

This panel explores how Extended Reality (XR) and digital media can be integrated into artistic education without privileging technology over artistic thinking. Bringing together artists/architects and educators Martina Menegon, Valerie Messini, and Bence Pap from the University of Applied Arts Vienna, it focuses on teaching art as a conceptual practice in which tools—digital or analog—serve the development of critical, embodied, and spatial inquiry. A central aim is to demystify technology by encouraging students to access and appropriate technical knowledge independently, revealing digital tools as open and learnable rather than opaque. Technical limitations are approached not as obstacles but as productive constraints that foster experimentation, adaptability, and creative problem-solving. The seminars are deeply situated — on one side through the self, the body, and the glitch, and on the other through the architectural and spatial contexts in which artistic processes unfold. Through examples of student projects and classroom experiments, the panel demonstrates how situated, concept-driven pedagogy cultivates critical digital fluency and enables new forms of embodied, spatially aware artistic practice.

Patrick Fuery, Gabriela Chihan Stanley

The Dream Machine is a device that produces hallucinogenic, dream-like experiences, each unique to the user. It has conceptual implications for various fields including psychology, neuroscience, art, and culture, but perhaps its greatest significance rests in challenging the idea that we all see the world the same. Just as a dream is unique, the hallucinations reveal how each of us experiences the same stimuli but ‘dream’ differently. The Dream Machine presents the capacity to reveal to its users one of the most complex ideas about our phenomenological and neurocognitive place in the world. That is, perception diversity is not an aberration, but rather the shared experience of our everyday existence. What presents itself as a perceptual and neurocognitive experience, also provides new ways of considering the intertwinings of technology and creativity.

The panel will discuss how technology and acts of dreaming can be seen as processes built on emotions and senses of the self.

Wyatt Jones, Stiles Logan, Amanda Nelms

This panel explores an interdisciplinary approach to the intersection of creativity, skills needed to navigate the evolving culture-tech landscape, and Career Readiness (WEF, 2025). The panel will share a brief overview of each of their perspectives about creativity, technology tools, such as GenAI, and Career Readiness as well as an overview of their individual work, including lessons learned. The intersection of preparation to enter a workforce that demands competencies such as creative thinking and the ethical use of GenAI must be grounded in the funds of knowledge students bring to the classroom. Many studies have been conducted related to the use of GenAI in the university setting; however, the student perception is often missing from the narrative. An interdisciplinary approach to creativity and technology tools, in this case GenAI, to inform university pedagogy will be explored with an aim to focus on the student presenters’ funds of knowledge related to approaching an ever-evolving cult-tech landscape.

Zoe Chan, Paul Shepherd, Sijia Liu

Climate communication has focused on the immediate impacts of climate change on humans, but awareness of planetary-scale futures is needed to foster long-term pro-climate action. Recognizing the imperative need to foster sustained pro-climate action and instill a deeper understanding of the far-reaching consequences of climate change, designed the participatory art project, NONHUMOTION. Applying a speculative participatory lens to empower participating artists to envision themselves as species other than human, creating narratives, artifacts, and movements based on these narratives that reflect climate futures. These expressions were presented using interactive motion capture installations, episodic performances, and sculptures built from found materials. This work challenges human-centered thinking, exploring participatory practice as a way of sensing long-term impacts of climate change. Through the utilization of interactive motion capture installations, captivating episodic performances, and the ingenious repurposing of found materials into sculptures, NONHUMOTION challenges the prevailing human-centric worldview in climate discourse. By embracing participatory practices, this project invites a nuanced exploration of the enduring impacts of climate change, inviting participants to engage with the subject matter in a profound and introspective manner. To deepen the dialogue with the broader audience, we propose this panel to discuss the speculative climate world, nonhuman perspectives, embodied participation, and mixed-media environmental storytelling. Through a series of presentations followed by an interactive discussion, the panel aims to inspire attendees to rethink their engagement with climate issues, encouraging collaborative exploration of solutions that transcend traditional boundaries.

Peter Hochenauer, Katharina Roetzer, Gloria Bottaro, Stefanie Alice Hofer

This panel explores how learning is being reimagined in response to cultural transformation in the context of generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI). Bridging cognitive science, education, and creative practice, the three panel contributions examine emotional, social, and cognitive dimensions of learning across the lifespan, ranging from early childhood to higher education. Each approach is grounded in qualitative or conceptual research and reflects a commitment to interdisciplinary pedagogy and culturally attuned design.

One presentation introduces “emotional enabling spaces” that support co-creation through fostering trust and assisting learners to navigate uncertainty in hybrid learning environments. Another develops a socio-technological framework for AI literacy in early childhood, emphasizing joint learning through play to address socio-cultural implications of children’s interactions with AI. The third contribution reflects on higher education in the age of GenAI, proposing an enactive model of learning that is based on identity, judgement, and epistemic agency.

Together, the three contributions provide conceptual and practical strategies for shaping human-centered education in an increasingly AI-mediated world. This panel invites educators, artists, designers, and researchers to rethink how learning environments can be emotionally resonant, socially inclusive, and critically engaged with technology.

Viktória Szabó, Evelin Horváth, Péter Janzsó and Tamás Bokor

The rise of generative AI has profoundly transformed how knowledge is created, communicated, and taught, calling for new literacies that bridge creativity, critique, and computation. This panel brings together four empirically grounded studies from design, media, and research education to examine how AI reshapes foundational skills such as language, authorship, perception, and judgment in the classroom. The first presentation explores prompting as a new form of creative communication in design education, revealing how students develop hybrid literacies that merge linguistic nuance with visual reasoning. The second investigates audience perceptions of anthropomorphic AI agents in marketing, arguing for media literacy frameworks that address affective and cultural dimensions of posthuman representation. The third offers a large-scale content analysis of AI’s presence in Hungarian student research (2015–2023), highlighting disciplinary disparities and raising questions of access and epistemic equity. The fourth applies the European Commission’s AI Literacy Framework to experimental higher education projects, identifying pedagogical strategies that cultivate critical, ethical, and creative AI engagement. Together, the panel redefines literacy as an adaptive, interdisciplinary capacity to think with, through and against technology.

Elke Reinhuber, Silke Helmerdig, Bettina Bruder

This panel explores the intersection of art, AI and education. The analysis reveals that despite the rapid advancement of AI, hands-on, tactile experiences remain essential – and even gain importance – in the creative process. Furthermore, it emphasizes that creative education isn’t just about personal development, but also a driving force for sustainability, social change, and a critical engagement with reality in an increasingly digitalized world.

The first proposal from Elke Reinhuber underscores the continued importance of “learning by doing.” It argues that genuine creative development, the formation of an individual style, and the discovery of unique ideas are inextricably linked to manual skills and “tacit knowledge” – knowledge acquired through experience. While AI can be a useful tool for shaping prompts, simplifying research, or generating instructions, it cannot replicate the deep, embodied learning that arises from the physical process of creation. Examples like making pinhole photographs or cyanotypes illustrate how the material process of crafting encourages experimentation fostering tolerance for errors, and yielding unexpected,
innovative results.

The second proposal from Bettina Bruder broadens the perspective, viewing creative education as an engine for societal progress. It advocates for a STEAM approach (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics), promoting the integration of sustainability ideas into creative disciplines. Combining traditional analogue methods and devices like Foucault pendulums, potato printing or camera obscuras with digital platforms and AI tools may fuel innovation. Through this engagement and encounters ethical challenges, including algorithmic biases, energy consumption, and potential sociopolitical impacts may be raised and discussed further. Therefore, educators must integrate these discussions into the curriculum and cultivate a generation that employs AI responsibly and designs innovation ethically.

The third proposal from Silke Helmerdig raises a philosophical question regarding the understanding of images in an age where AI-generated images can simulate reality. Traditional photographs are increasingly losing ground as the primary source of information, as AI images can create realities that never existed – termed “simula.” To understand the reality of images and critically evaluate AI’s output, a return to analogue
techniques and an understanding of the physical fundamentals of image creation are deemed essential. This practical experience allows AI to be used not only for image generation but also for reflection on trust and reality.

In conclusion, the three proposals consistently highlight the importance of practical, tactile experience in the creative process. While AI is acknowledged as a powerful tool and potential co-creator, it's made clear that it cannot replace the full range of creative abilities. Furthermore, the necessity of critical thinking and ethical reflection in creative work is emphasized, to responsibly harness the potential of AI and address the challenges it presents.

The key takeaway for learners and educators is that developing manual skills not only serves artistic development but also strengthens the ability to critically question and actively shape an increasingly AI-generated reality. By connecting traditional techniques, digital tools, and a solid understanding of ethical implications, we can cultivate a new generation of creative minds capable of positively influencing the world of tomorrow.

Yanai Toister, Onur Birol, Elena Peytchinska, Thomas Ballhausen

How do generative AI systems reshape cultural production while preserving elements of existing creative frameworks? What kinds of agency emerge through collaborative processes between human creators and computational systems? This panel examines these questions through the conceptual lens of "skewing"—a spa3al opera3on offering a nuanced alternative to narratives of either conservative preservation or radical technological disruption. Skew, in architectural terms, refers to a precise form of displacement: a volume is shifted such that its mass remains intact and its base undisturbed, while its vertical planes are tilted—displaced in parallel, not distorted. As outlined in Opera&ve Design: A Catalogue of Spatial Verbs by Anthony Di Mari and Nora Yoo, this movement enacts change without collapse. Transposing this architectural verb into cultural practice, "skewing" suggests adapta3on that maintains structural integrity while allowing intentional deviation from established paths. It becomes a metaphor for operating within systems while resisting their normative alignments—through speculative design, synthetic fiction, technosymbiotic performance, or embodied co-authorship with AI. Our presentations span posthuman feminist theory, media philosophy, and practical methodologies for AI-mediated documentary and educational co-creation, proposing new vocabularies for inhabiting contemporary cultural production critically.

Сyran Aouameur, Javier Nistal, Stefan Lattner, Richard Graf

The AI Music Panel – REACT 2025 explores how artificial intelligence is transforming musical creativity, production, and education. Three talks offer complementary perspectives on the evolving dialogue between human artistry and machine intelligence.

Richard Graf (JAM MUSIC LAB University Vienna) discusses Music and AI: The Future of Creative Collaboration, emphasizing the educational and artistic implications of AI in music. His contribution outlines strategies for integrating AI ethically and creatively, ensuring that future musicians harness its potential while preserving artistic integrity and human-centered creativity.

Cyran Aouameur (Sony CSL Paris) presents Designing Creative AI Instruments, focusing on user-centered design principles and interaction models that empower musicians to collaborate with, rather than be replaced by AI. The talk highlights how UX design and human-AI feedback loops shape trust, perception, and creative control.

Javier Nistal or Stefan Lattner (Sony CSL Paris) address in Attribution-Aware Generative AI the ethical and legal issues surrounding data use, authorship, and fair compensation. They introduce mechanisms for attribution-aware generative systems, proposing transparent frameworks for rights management and accountability in AI-based music creation.