Ghost in the Loop: Photography & AI Micro-Commissions
EUR 1,500 micro-commissions for UK/German artists exploring AI's impact on photography and computational culture.
The Photographers' Gallery and Goethe-Institut London are offering two micro-commissions of EUR 1,500 each for artists investigating the cultural and aesthetic implications of producing art for machines. This R&D collaboration focuses on how photography intersects with computational culture, AI systems, and machine audiences. Artists and collectives from the UK or Germany working across photographic, digital, and moving image practices are invited to submit proposals. Key themes include human-in-the-loop systems, machinic audiences, emotion detection, synthetic cultures, AI-driven creative infrastructures, and emerging aesthetics shaped by artificial intelligence. Proposals may explore artworks created for non-human agents like social media bots, AI companions, or automation systems. The initiative examines how feedback loops shape artistic production and the implications of making work for machine viewers. Selected projects will contribute to research featured on Unthinking Photography platform and presented at The Photographers' Gallery. This opportunity builds on TPG's pioneering work since 2012 in digital technologies and photography's relationship to computational culture, combined with Goethe-Institut London's focus on art, technology, ecology intersections including DAOs, blockchain, AI, and quantum technologies.