{"id":18139,"date":"2024-11-06T10:40:53","date_gmt":"2024-11-06T09:40:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kingkong-mag.com\/?p=18139"},"modified":"2024-12-03T15:32:05","modified_gmt":"2024-12-03T14:32:05","slug":"kikk-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kingkong-mag.com\/en\/kikk-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"KIKK 2024: the truth, and nothing but the truth"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nIn today\u2019s digital age and the era of the development of generative artificial intelligence (AI), the KIKK Festival this year aimed to disentangle the true from the false. From October 24 to 27, four days free of dogmatism where creatives, digital professionals and plain old techies met face to face. A common desire: to share a form of truth based on the experiential and the trustworthiness of our sensory perceptions.\n\r\n<\/p>\n\n\n

Thursday, October 24. Namur. Place d\u2019Armes. A good month after the F\u00eates de Wallonie, celebrated at a frenetic pace, p\u00e9quet drinks and vivid colours made way for the thirteenth edition of KIKK. The international Festival of digital and creative cultures which took over the Walloon capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People come to KIKK to learn, be inspired, debate, co-build, network, but also to celebrate. And, in a few figures, it amounts to: 3,000 professionals (around 50% of whom are international), 53 nationalities represented, 47 talks, 9 workshops and masterclasses, 100 entrepreneurial projects present at the KIKK Market<\/a>, and 10 networking events. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As far as the general public is concerned, some 28,000 visitors meandered the streets of the city on the Meuse under stunning skies. Aficionados and novices appreciated the 70 art installations spread across 12 of the city\u2019s iconic sites. On their own, with friends, but above all as families. Because the kids had not been forgotten. The programme also gave prominence to workshops considered from a child\u2019s eye level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u00a9 Quentin Chevrier<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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\u00a9 Bryan Nicola Maxwell<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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\u00a9<\/strong> KIKK asbl<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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\u00a9<\/strong> Antonin Weber<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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\u00a9 Bryan Nicola Maxwell<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

On the talks menu were highly topical subjects such as creative coding, data visualisation, AI, brand image and strategy, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), bioart, design, research and many others. For the first time, the event provided the opportunity of bringing Friday to a close with a nocturne. The occasion to visit the art trail up to 22.00 and begin the weekend with a DJ set at La Nef<\/a>. A former church, today transformed into a cultural space and theatre. An absolute gem of Namur\u2019s recently acquired reputation for awesome coolness. Because if the organising team is able to vaunt stable visitor rates, its appetite to widen its outreach to less convinced audiences remains firmly in place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anatomy of a KIKK festival<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

09.40, bang on. The Theatre of Namur opens the festivities. \u2018Mastering the Art of Forward Thinking\u2019. The title of the talk given by the Latvian Liva Grinberga<\/a>, the Design Director at Media. Monks<\/a>, who is anything but monastic. The first talk of this 2024 vintage set the tone: \u2018In today\u2019s busy world, it\u2019s easy to feel stressed and overwhelmed by all the information and constant changes. When things get tough, we often stick to what we know, but that can hold us back and limit our creativity. What if we changed how we see things?\u2019, Liva Grinberga. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A long way removed from speeches involving leaps into the unknown and fake personal development, the speakers sketch out new creative pathways to learn to embrace change, in particular with AI, instead of being in absolute terror of these ongoing revolutions. They follow one another onto the stage. Onto the stages. Of the Theatre of Namur and the Bourse, as well as that of the Delta. Gr\u00e9gory Chatonsky<\/a>, Bruno Ribeiro<\/a>, Christina Tarquini<\/a>, Vall\u00e9e Duhamel<\/a>, Dr Formalyst<\/a>, etc. Although they all adopt different registers, their pathways resonate on the central narrative arc selected by KIKK. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few weeks before KIKK began, Marie du Chastel, the festival\u2019s curator, told to us that she felt this year has been, perhaps more so than others, witness to the malleability of our understanding of truth. \u2018We have also seen the boom of multimodal AI,\u2019 she argues during our video conference. \u2018Tools such as OpenAI\u2019s GPT-4V and Google Gemini enable us to process images and videos in an integrated way. We are now living in virtual worlds which act as often distorted mirrors of our realities.\u2019 In the era of deepfakes and generative AI, our perception is thrown into jeopardy. This post-truth society in which we are living progressively blurs the boundary between reality and illusion. To cut through this befuddled fog, the British artist, author and designer Brendan Dawes<\/a> for his part suggests investigating collaboration. And he is someone who has never been a massive fan of collective work. The space afforded when working alone as a single practitioner always seemed ideal. Yet, as the years slipped by, he was brought to understand that the computer was always an unnamed collaborator anyway and he came to appreciate the idea of collaboration, but above all the opportunities \u2013 and the challenges \u2013 it permits. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u00a9 Bryan Nicola Maxwell<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The names keep coming thick and fast. A few compromises have to be made between this talk or that one. And another attempt at truth emerges. Historical, this time. Having arrived directly from the Big Apple, the duo Peter Aigner<\/a> \u2013 Director of the Gotham Center for New York History \u2013 and Alex Wright<\/a> \u2013 an academic who juggles several functions simultaneously, but we will present him as the Head of User Experience at Google News \u2013 are still jetlagged. In a panel in partnership with the University of Namur<\/a>, Wallonie-Bruxelles International (WBI)<\/a> and wake! by Digital Wallonia<\/a>, the two experts reflect on the power of plural and historical narratives when they are placed in the service of the common good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stories to distinguish the true from the false<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

\u2018We are always considering the future of AI, but what of the present and the past of AI?\u2019, wonders Alex Wright. The New Yorker lingers for a moment on one of the precursors of the database, conceived by the German bibliographer Vincent Placcius. At the end of the seventeenth century, Placcius developed a physical system of note-taking called a \u2018scrinium literatum<\/em>\u2019(literary cabinet). This large wooden cabinet contains thousands of suspended paper cards. On each of them is a piece of information or an idea. The cards can be easily reorganised and indexed, thus enabling an efficient management of knowledge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Those who work with or are exposed to AI often have a tendency to look for the next innovation rather than considering what happened before the advent of these technologies, their history. However, it is the sole means of understanding the truth, in other words, what is happening today.<\/p>Alex Wright, UX EXPERT<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Whilst we no longer (or almost never) store our data on paper nowadays and the digital momentum we are living through offers infinite possibilities, AI combined with other disruptive technologies \u2013 VT, metaverses and the like \u2013 also allows voice to be given to the actors of History and thus the production of more inclusive historical accounts. Historical avatars, immersive environments, video games, applications, etc. \u2018Those who work with or are exposed to AI often have a tendency to look for the next innovation rather than considering what happened before the advent of these technologies, their history,\u2019 continues Alex Wright. \u2018However, it is the sole means of understanding the truth, in other words, what is happening today.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Une publication partag\u00e9e par KIKK festival (@kikk_festival)<\/a><\/p><\/div><\/blockquote>\n