Hello, my name is Alexa Steinbrück - I am a software developer, artist, AI researcher and educator based in Leipzig, Germany.
I love to demystify Artificial Intelligence, think about the intersection of AI & Creativity, and develop experimental interfaces.

During the last 2,5 years I co-lead the XLab, the first dedicated lab for AI & Robotics at a German art & design university (Burg Giebichenstein). Since November 2022 I joined the AI+D Lab at HfG Schwäbisch-Gmünd as a researcher as part of KITeGG, a joint research project of 5 universities on the integration of AI in design education. I am the co-host of the podcast "Towards co-creation" in which we speak with artists and designers on how they apply machine learning in their creative practices. My educational background reflects my long term interest in the intersection of computation and cognition, language, art and AI: I studied Fine Art in Germany and France and then did a BA in Artificial Intelligence (2013) at the University of Amsterdam.

Conference curation/organization
"Reshape forum for Artificial Intelligence in Art and Design" (8-12 May 2023)

In the spring of 2023 I curated and organized the 5-day conference at the Hochschule für Gestaltung Schwäbisch Gmünd packed with talks, panels and workshop of international experts from the area of design, art and research.

AI/ML Design Education Community 2023

Talk @ NeurIPS
Workshop on Machine Learning for Creativity and Design

In 2022 I was honored to be invited as a speaker to the NeurIPS conference. My talk focused on the adoption of generative AI models by creatives, the diversity of user experiences and questioned the narrative that this new generation of generative AI tools is providing "super powers" to creatives

NeurIPS AI/ML Research Language Co-creativity Community 2022

Emotional Glossary for Creative AI

How does it feel to work creatively with machine learning? This crowd-sourced project attempts to map the landscape of emotions that we observe when we interact with generative machine learning systems in a creative manner.

AI/ML Research Language Co-creativity Community 2022 (ongoing)

XLab @ Burg Giebichenstein

For 2,5 years I was the co-lead of the first lab for AI & Robotics at a German art university: The XLab at the University of Art and Design Burg Giebichenstein

AI/ML Research Teaching Co-creativity 2020-2022

Podcast "Towards co-creation"

Tech/Art Podcast where my co-host Simon and I chat with designers and artists about how they use machine learning and other AI tools in their creative practices

AI/ML Research Co-creativityCommunity 2021 (ongoing)

Verboscope

A conversational interface for text2image for collaborative imagination (Stable Diffusion)

AI/ML Design Interfaces Co-creativity Programming 2022

See more

Demystifying Artificial intelligence has many faces for me, from language to images: Improving the visual representation in media (Better Images of AI), analysing the very words used in public conversations about AI, finding new metaphors, giving workshops to teach the technical basics of machine learning, explaining the code of a public Colab notebook line-by-line or narrating the (sometimes funny) fails and limits of so called "intelligent" systems.

I am very passionate about this, because it's both political and personal: Read more

The Literal Unseen

Visualising artificial intelligence

AI/ML Research Language Co-creativity 2022

Better Images of AI (BIOAI)

A campaign and community to improve the visual language for AI

AI/ML Awareness Campaign Community 2021 (ongoing)

AI Myths

Busting the most common myths about Artificial Intelligence

AI/ML Website Campaign 2019, with Daniel Leufer (Access Now / Mozilla fellow)

AI Fails - Horrible or Adorable (Talk)

I gave a talk at the "KI & Wir" conference, showcasing both fun and weird fails of Artificial Intelligence as well as heavy and harmful incidents.

AI/ML AI Education 2021

See more

Talks & Interviews

2023

• Opening speech @ Reshape forum for AI in Art and Design (HfG Schwäbisch Gmünd, May 2023) Transcript
• Happy to announce that my workshop paper "Creative ownership and control for generative AI in art and design" co-written with Aeneas Stankowski was selected for the "Generative AI and HCI" Workshop @ ACM CHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems(Hamburg, April 2023)
• Interview for Training the Archive @ Ludwig Forum and Hartware MedienKunst Verein (HMKV) - Watch here (coming soon)

2022

• Talk @ NeurIPS Workshop on Machine Learning for Creativity and Design titled "Emotional Glossary of Creative AI"
• Panel discussion Sensing the Synthetic @ Uroboros Festival, Prague (CZ) - Watch
• Interviewed for Hurra Hurra Podcast (in German)
• Panel discussion @ Hidden Layers, Cologne (DE)
• Panel discussion @ Dataweek Leipzig (DE)
• Talk "Democratization of access to artificial intelligence" @ Thinktank "State, Structure and Future of Streaming" organized by Sphere Radio and Hitness Club, Leipzig (DE) - Watch here

2021

• Lightning talk about creative AI and dataset practices an event about AI & Copyright @ the law school of Martin-Luther-University in Halle (DE) - Watch here
• Talk "AI Fails - horrible or adorable?" @ "KI und Wir" Convention, Magdeburg (DE) - Twitter
• Talk at Creative AI Vernissage @ Mozfest, Online/London, together with Moving Target Collective - Watch here
• Video interview about my art work "Latent Riot" with Douglas Arellanes (Mozfest) - Watch here
• Video lecture "Introduction to voice technologies" @ University of Art and Design Burg Giebichenstein (as part of the semester project "Talk to me") - Watch here
• Talk "Die Bildsprache Künstlicher Intelligenz" together with Amelie Goldfuß @ "KI+Wir" Ringvorlesung - Watch here

2020

• Interviewed for AIGA Eye on Design "What would a Feminist Alexa Look, or Rather Sound, Like?" by Madeleine Morley - Read here
• Interviewed for Adobe XD Blog "Could there ever be such a thing as a feminist Alexa" by Madeleine Morley - Read here
• Interviewed for Last week in AI Podcast about the project AIMyths.org - Listen here

Podcast

Since 2020 I am co-hosting the podcast "Towards co-creation" together with Simon Maris , our guests are artists, designers and musicians who use machine learning in their creative practices

• Episode with Lenka Hamosova (Visual artist & Researcher)
• Episode with Hexorcismos (Sound artist)
• Episode with Claire Glanois (Mathematician and Reinforcement Learning researcher)
• Guest: AATB (Artistic studio for non-industrial robots)

Workshops & Teaching

2022

• Getting Started Workshop "AI + Creativity" @ University of Art and Design Burg Giebichenstein, Halle Germany

2021

• Development of Open Educational Resources (OER) about creative uses of AI with University Cologne
• Introductory workshops for Creative AI @ University of Art & Design Burg Giebichenstein Halle
• Workshop on creative writing with GPT-3 in the context of speculative funeral practices @ BWA Wroclaw galery of contemporary art in Wroclaw (PL)

2020

• Introductory workshops for Creative AI @ University of Art & Design Burg Giebichenstein Halle

2019

• Workshop on designing intelligent voice assistants @ Mozfest in London.
• Mentor @ Storytellers United Hackjam (co-organized by BBC) in Manchester (UK)
• Mentor for learning programming challenge of MDR Wissen Podcast, Leipzig (DE) Listen here

Writing

• Learnings after 2.5 years of running an AI lab at an Art University (XLab)
• Interview with the team behind "Dreaming beyond AI" for Better Images of AI blog
• Explaining the code of the popular text-to-image algorithm (VQGAN+CLIP in PyTorch)
• How to configure your Raspberry Pi Zero to play videos in a loop (= cheap and flexible solution for video art installations)
• 10 useful things about Wikidata & SPARQL that I wish I knew earlier
• How do blind people imagine AI? An interview with programmer Florian Beijers for Better Images of AI blog
• Daring more raw AI-ness, a critique of personified voice assistants
• VQGAN+CLIP — How does it work?
• AI at the art school — critical and creative AI research at the XLab
• “My name is Alexa and I’m not your personal assistant” — Workshop at Mozfest (London 27/10/19)
• Personified machines — How voice assistants are anthropomorphised and what this has to do with our AI literacy
• [PDF] Conceptual Blending for the Visual Domain (BA Thesis, University of Amsterdam, Artificial Intelligence)

Exhibitions

• Zentrum. ideal art space, Leipzig + virtual @farspace.org, 2/2023
• BurgLabs present. Futurium Berlin, 08/2022
• (Y)our data is a battlefield. Kunstverein Meißen, 2022
• New Now Festival. Zollverein UNESCO World Heritage Essen, 2021
• Mozfest / Creative AI Vernissage, London & remote, 2021

Bio

I am @alexabruck on Twitter and Github!

*1987 born in Dresden, Germany

Work

• Since 11/2022 Researcher at AI+Design Lab of University of Design HfG Schwäbisch-Gmünd (DE) as part of KITeGG (a joint project of 5 German universities on the integration of AI in design teaching)
• 2020 - 2022 Research associate at XLab (Lab for AI & Robotics) of University of Art and Design Burg Giebichenstein, Halle (DE)
• 2018 - 2020 Self-employed Software Developer, Leipzig (DE)
• 2017 - 2018 Frontend Developer at InVision, Leipzig (DE)
• 2016 Google Newslab Fellowship at Zeit Online (scholarship), Berlin (DE)
• 2013-2016 Self-employed Software Developer, Leipzig (DE) and New York (US)
• 2015 Software Developer for the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA), United Nations Headquarters, New York (US)

Education

I have a BA in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Amsterdam (NL) and a diploma of Fine Arts from the Art University Toulouse (FR).

• 2013 Bachelor of Science „Artificial Intelligence“, Universiteit van Amsterdam
• 2010-2013 Studying „Artificial Intelligence“ at Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen and Universiteit van Amsterdam
• 2010 Diplôme nationale d'arts plastiques, Ecole des beaux arts Toulouse, France
• 2009-2010 Studying "Fine arts", Ecole des beaux arts Toulouse, France
• 2008-2009 Erasmus at Ecole d’art d’Aix-en-Provence, France
• 2006-2008 Studying "Fine Arts", Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Dresden