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Orpheus Instituut announces Keynote Speakers for Decentralised Creativity and Agential Systems in Music

News May 7, 2025

Conference taking place in November in Ghent

The conference organised by Adam Łukawski, Martin Zeilinger will explore how emerging technologies—especially generative AI and blockchain—reimagine the current notions of creative agency. We are happy to announce 4 keynote speakers.

This conference examines how emerging technologies reshape creative agency in music and sound art. We explore collaborations between human and non-human agents, the role of decentralised systems like blockchain, and the aesthetic and ethical implications of posthuman creativity. By bridging historical frameworks and contemporary technological practices, the event invites reflection on how artistic systems evolve, challenge authorship, and redefine what it means to create.

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Timothy Morton

Timothy Morton (Professor and Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University) is a philosopher and critical theorist whose work bridges object-oriented ontology, ecological thought, and art, best known for developing the concept of ‘hyperobjects’ and advocating for perspectives of radically entangled existence that dissolve boundaries between human and nonhuman actors and systems.

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Credits: Lucija Novak

Artemi-Maria Gioti

Artemi-Maria Gioti (Professor of Artistic Research in Music, Mozarteum University Salzburg) is a composer and artistic researcher. Her compositional work centers on the concept of interactive compositions: musical works that involve real-time interaction between human musicians and interactive music systems incorporating Machine Learning (ML). Her artistic research explores how the use of ML in these works impacts the ontological entities of "author", "composition", "performance" and "musical work", and aims to produce critical insights into ML and AI gained through (auto)ethnographies of the creative process.
P P Victoria Ivanova

Victoria Ivanova and Eva Jäger

Victoria Ivanova is a strategist, currently R&D Strategic Lead as part of Serpentine's Arts Technologies team where she leads the Future Art Ecosystems project that incubates new infrastructural prototypes at the intersection of culture, technology and society. She publishes and consults on innovative approaches to org design, policy, finance and rights. Her PhD, Infrastructural Praxis: A New Model for Art & Technology Curation and Organisational Innovation, positions art and technology as laboratory for testing new legal and economic models. Most recently, she led the Trusted Data Intermediary project together with Jennifer Ding, and co-designed a stewardship technology for art in partnership with RadicalxChange.

P P Eva Jager c Paul Gordon square

Credits: Paul Gordon

Eva Jäger is a London-based artist and curator, currently Curator of Arts Technologies and Creative AI Lead at Serpentine. She commissions artists working with advanced technologies and collaborates alongside these creators in teams that design novel approaches, workflows and philosophies for emerging tech. Most recently, she curated ‘The Call’ a project and exhibition in collaboration with the artists Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst. Eva also contributes to the Future Art Ecosystems project, working on annual briefings and prototypes, and serves as Co-Investigator of the Creative AI Lab (a joint initiative between Serpentine Arts Technologies and King's College London).

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Primavera De Filippi

Primavera De Filippi is a Director of Research at the National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS) in Paris and a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. Her work explores the legal and governance implications of blockchain technology and artificial intelligence, with a focus on trust and institutional design. She is the author of Blockchain and the Law (Harvard University Press) and Blockchain Governance (MIT Press), and was recently awarded a European Research Council grant. As an artist, she produces mechanical algorithms that instantiate her legal research into the physical world, such as the Plantoid project (http://plantoid.org)—a blockchain-based synthetic life form capable of collecting funds and autonomously commissioning its own reproduction.

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Adam Łukawski, Sonia De Jager, Martin Zeilinger in Den Haag

Convenors

The convenors for this event are Adam Łukawski and Martin Zeilinger.

Adam Łukawski is a music composer, computer programmer, and researcher at the Orpheus Instituut and Leiden University, focusing on AI and blockchain in music. His course "Posthuman Creativity Labs" has been taught in various formats at multiple institutions including Conservatorium van Amsterdam and Iceland University of the Arts. He recently co-edited (with Paulo de Assis) a book “Decentralised Music: Exploring Blockchain for Artistic Research” (CRC Press/Taylor&Francis). More information: www.adamlukawski.com

Martin Zeilinger is Senior Lecturer at Abertay University in Scotland. His research explores artistic uses of AI and blockchain, with a strong focus on digital art, cultural ownership, and creative agency. He publishes widely and curates international media art events that critically engage with emerging technologies.  More information: https://marjz.net/

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