Open Call for Participants: Leonardo CripTech AI Lab 2025

A virtual creative incubator that utilizes community-driven digital and new media art projects to engage, critique and reimagine the relationship between disability and artificial intelligence.

Leonardo CripTech Incubator is an art and technology program for disability innovation.  Encompassing labs, workshops, fellowships, presentations, publication, and education, this innovation incubator is a community platform for disabled artists to engage and remake creative technologies through the lens of accessibility. Employing a broad understanding of technologies, including prosthetic tools, neural networks, software, and the built environment, CripTech Incubator reimagines enshrined notions of how a body-mind can move, look, communicate. 

The rapid development and integration of artificial intelligence into many technical, social, and cultural systems has exposed the technology’s intrinsic faultlines. Much deserved critique has highlighted how AI can reiterate existing race and gender biases; this lab will explore the logics of ableism that also underpin many AI frameworks. AI applications, even when designed to be assistive, can sometimes amplify culturally dominant standards of “normal” and “ability.” What new paradigms might emerge when disabled creatives contribute to the creation and applications of machine learning? Disabled artists working with AI can help chart a path for algorithmic futures where disabled people’s ways of knowing and being are valued.

CripTech AI Lab is a virtual creative incubator that utilizes community-driven digital and new media art projects to engage, critique and reimagine the relationship between disability and artificial intelligence. This virtual lab spans a 4-month period that includes

• Creative, technical and conceptual workshops
• Guest speakers (scholars, artists, creative technologists)
• Individual project development
• One-on-one project review and advising sessions with the lead artist, culminating in a virtual exhibition, presentation and panel review.

Participants will explore themes such as: Algorithms of self-discovery and the creation of personal tools for personal discovery; data ownership; discovery through AI without being mediated through commercial platforms; using open source and indie “tools that don’t try to eat you”.

Participants will develop their cultural, technical, and historical literacies with the goal of being able to articulate their unique relationship to AI as disabled artists and the future of AI for all.

 

Lead Artist

CripTech AI Lab will be led by artist M Eilo (BlinkPopShift). M Eilo uses castoffs, computers and community to explore disability as a hotbed of innovation. M is best known for their computational prosthetics including Prosthetic Memory, a homemade AI built to offset the artists long term memory loss, and Masking Machine, a wearable computer which automatically masks the artist’s face and simulates eye contact in social interactions. Some of M’s past work include: Prosthetic Memory, AI Acne, Masking Machine, Performance, Masking Machine, Photography Series, Visually Similar

The AI hype train has derailed. We know all about the environmental impacts, the stolen data, and the sheer boring slop. But is it the algorithms? Or is it the billionaires controlling them? And what happens when artists play puppeteer, shaping AI not for growth, not for profit, but for personal agency, creative discovery, and community power? - M Eilo (BlinkPopShift)

 

The Lab Consists of Four Activity Phases:

1. Artist Talk

A presentation by lead artist, M Eilo, introducing the participants and the public to their creative practice.

2. Workshops

A workshop series led by the lead artist. Workshops will include learning about data sets, labeling, model types and design ethics, which will inform participant engagement with and investigation of existing algorithms and tools readily available on the market. Community-building sessions will encourage connection between cohort members, and discover synergies between their practices as well as the potential for collaboration.

3. Project Development

Participants prototype artworks that apply workshop skills, as well as creative access (captioning, description, etc) for these works. They will develop documentation of their process in an appropriate medium.  One-on-one sessions will enable participants to meet with the lead artist, receive feedback and guidance about their project, and identify avenues for development.

4. Outcomes: Panel Review and Virtual Exhibition

The lab culminates in a public panel review wherein participants will present their projects to a panel of guest experts for feedback about storytelling, coherence, and further development.  Project documentation (image, text, video) will be showcased online in a virtual exhibition.

All meetings will be held synchronously, and we will have a space to gather and connect asynchronously. Meetings will be held on Zoom, and Discord will be used for asynchronous participation.

Lab activities will begin in July 2025 and run through November 2025.

 

Eligibility

We are seeking individuals and small groups that center disabled artistry, experience, and leadership. (For more about how we understand disability and access, see here).

Successful applicants will receive a 100% Scholarship, covering course tuition and all required course software. At the end of the lab, we’ll commission AI-related artworks from all participants for $500 a project.

We are open to applicants from anywhere around the world, the Leonardo/ISAST team and the lead artist are based in the Pacific Time Zone (PT), and all lab activities will be held between 9 AM and 5 PM PT.

 

Diversity

Leonardo is committed to diversity and encourages applications from BIPOC, women, the

LGBTQIA+ community, and persons with disabilities, as well as applications from researchers

and practitioners from across the spectrum of new media disciplines and methods.

 

Application Process

You will submit your application on the linked portal, including upload of the following in a single document (doc/docx/pdf). Feel free to use our premade template to assist in your application:

1. Answers to the following questions, please keep responses around 150-300 words each:
   1. Briefly describe your art practice.
   2. Describe your background and interest in disability and access.
   3. Describe your interest and experience with digital tools/platforms and if/how they are integrated into your art practice.
   4. Describe your interest in and experience with artificial intelligence tools and technologies. All experience levels are welcome.
   5. We know there are ethical, environmental, and economic challenges – and potentials – caused by the use and implementation of AI. What are some interventions you are already making or hope to make?
   6. We want to learn more about you. What do you hope to learn and contribute to this collaboration? What communities are you part of and/or do you hope your work will reach?
2. 2-3 work samples either as links or uploads (No more than 5 minutes per sample). Feel free to share completed or works-in-progress related to what you’d like to work on in this lab. Please be sure links/works are accessible and permissions are set for viewing.
   1. For each work sample, please include a few sentences letting us know why these projects excite you.
3. Three References (Name, Title, Organization, Affiliation, Email, Phone Number). References can come from a variety of relationships, including professional contacts, colleagues, peers, or even personal friends who can speak to your character, skills, and abilities.

We will also be asking for contact details, a short bio, website, field of study, and social media. This information will be kept internal unless you wish to be included into the Leonardo member directory.

In place of a written document, applicants also have the option of submitting an audio or video response to the questions above and submitting links to work samples separately. Please keep the total time 15 minutes or under and ensure your submission is accessible via a shareable link set to public or viewable to anyone with the link (YouTube, Vimeo, Google Drive, DropBox, etc.).

 

APPLY NOW

Application Deadline: 1 May 2025 AoE (Anywhere on Earth)

If you have access questions or need assistance, please contact criptech@leonardo.info

CripTech AI Lab is a Leonardo Lab supported by the Ford Foundation and Ability Central.

 

 

About Leonardo

Fearlessly pioneering since 1968, Leonardo serves as THE community forging a transdisciplinary network to convene, research, collaborate, and disseminate best practices at the nexus of arts, science and technology worldwide. Leonardo’ serves a network of transdisciplinary scholars, artists, scientists, technologists and thinkers, who experiment with cutting-edge, new approaches, practices, systems and solutions to tackle the most complex challenges facing humanity today.

As a not-for-profit 501(c)3 enterprising think tank, Leonardo offers a global platform for creative exploration and collaboration reaching tens of thousands of people across 135 countries. Our flagship publication, Leonardo, the world’s leading scholarly journal on transdisciplinary art, anchors a robust publishing partnership with MIT Press; our partnership with ASU infuses educational innovation with digital art and media for lifelong learning; our creative programs span thought-provoking events, exhibits, residencies and fellowships, scholarship and social enterprise ventures.