Can you vibe-code learning?

Any educator will tell you that it’s been a weird time to be in the classroom since LLMs came about—but teachers of creative technology have had a particularly disorienting experience. On the one hand, we embrace new tools and our ability to critique and experiment with them. On the other, these same tools are radically altering what it means to learn, to teach or even be in the classroom at all. What does it mean to teach creative tech when the tech we’re engaging with is reshaping creativity in real time?

We invite educators, students and practitioners at all stages to collectively consider questions we’ve all likely confronted in one form or another: should we allow generative AI in our curricula, and if so, how might we articulate its ideal use? How can we demonstrate these tools within creative projects without encouraging copy-paste practices or the wholesale outsourcing of understanding? And how will the ways we answer these questions shape classrooms and the field at large in the years to come? In contrast to your Chat log, this dialogue won’t necessarily suggest solutions and next steps, but will perhaps move us towards a shared mental model of where we are in the timeline.

Facilitated by Lai Yi Ohlsen

Lai Yi Ohlsen is an Internet researcher and artist. Her creative work has been supported by New Inc, Pioneer Works, Movement Research, Triple Canopy, BRIC and more. She is an adjunct lecturer at The New School in the Parsons Design & Technology Program and a Senior Product Manager of Performance and Network Quality at Cloudflare.

Panelists:

Sam Lavigne is an artist and educator whose work deals with data, surveillance, cops, natural language processing, and automation. He is a Creative Capital grantee, recipient of the Pioneer Works Working Artist Fellowship, and the Brown Institute’s Magic Grant. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Synthetic Media and Algorithmic Justice at the Parsons School of Design.

Carrie Sijia Wang is a socially-engaged artist and educator. Working with software, video, participatory experience, and performance, she creates digital fragments of reality that explore what it means to be human in a machine-coded world. Wang has been a 2024 Working Artist Fellow at Pioneer Works, a 2023 More Art fellow, a Year 8 member of NEW INC, and a 2020 Mozilla Creative Media Award recipient.

Tommy Martinez is an artist and programmer mostly working through research, sound and code. He creates software and musical systems for the internet, embedded devices, and for live multichannel performance. Thomas is currently an adjunct professor at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) and the Integrated Design & Media (IDM) program where he teach courses in electronic art.

Nancy Dayanne Valladares is an interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker and educator currently based in New York. Born in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Nancy’s practice is deeply influenced by the construction of Honduran national identity through botanical and agricultural regimes. Trained as a photographer and filmmaker, her practice examines the networks and flows of image making, and their technopolitics: from sensors, to servers, to precious metal extraction and the carbon intensive footprint of the cloud. Alongside Hsurae, Nancy runs Lythologies.org a decentralized research group interested in climate futures and new ecological imaginaries.

Teaching Creative Technology in the Age of AI