MAXforum:Understanding the Brains (Human & Machine) behind Jur A* Itch Park

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A.I. has woven itself into what feels like our molecular structure already. We prompt AI for all kinds of answers, for solutions to problems, mental and physical, for comforts we can’t get from friends or family. Are you beginning to feel it is your equal? Do you wonder who is prompting whom? These questions and many more will be addressed at Media Art Xploration’s MAXForum salon (conversation series) with creative technologists: Grayson Earle, PROMPT, and their machine. The duo will be premiering a new work with Media Art Xploration (MAXlive) that will feature an A.I. film director, conducting a filming with audience participation of Jur A** Itch Park - a new take on a family favorite infused with the singular humor of AI. There also will be a chance to learn more about their technology and process. Join us at the Center for Performance for some fun at the expense of the machine - who is kidding whom?

This conversation in our MAXforum Salon Series will be moderated by Kay Matschullat, Artistic Director of MAXlive and made possible with support from 1014. There will also be a small reception before the talk.

Grayson Earle is a contemporary artist and activist from the United States. His work deals with the role that digital technologies and networks play in protest and political agency. He is known for his guerrilla video projections as a member of The Illuminator, a guerrilla video projection collective, and Bail Bloc, a computer program that posts bail for low-income people. His film Why don’t the cops fight each other? (created while in residence with Media Art Exploration’s MAXmachina lab) deals with the source code governing police officers in video games and has been screened at SXSW in Texas, Oberhausen film festival in Germany, ACMI in Australia, and more. His art and research has also been presented at The Whitney Museum, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, and the Singapore Art Museum.

In the heart of New York City, 1014 brings people together from both sides of the Atlantic to creatively engage with today’s global topics. Offering a trans-Atlantic platform across society, culture, and ideas, 1014 seeks to explore the many challenges and opportunities of our time. Fostering partnerships, both personal and institutional, the organization inspires the creativity and imagination we need to collectively share our future and to contribute to today’s global debates.

Media Art Xploration (MAXlive) produces, develops, and deploys groundbreaking live-art experiences at the intersection of artistic expression, scientific inquiry, and technology. MAXlive believes that the intersection of art, science, and technology is a powerful and borderless catalyst for change. Our work is driven by a commitment to spark curiosity, provoke thought, and create transformative experiences that shape our future. We seek to expand the boundaries of what art can achieve and how it can inspire meaningful action in the world.

Artist Profiles

Grayson Earle

Grayson is a new media artist and educator. He has worked as a professor at Oberlin College, the New School, and the City University of New York. He is the co-creator of Bail Bloc and a member of The Illuminator art collective. His work uses the context of art to materialize ideas and forms surrounding the role that digital technologies and networks can play in protest and political agency. He exhibits inside and outside of traditional art spaces, working with guerrilla video projection, cryptocurrency, machine learning, simulation, sculpture, and the internet. Earle has held fellowships at Akademie Schloss Solitude, ZK/U, Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, and Pioneer Works. He has presented his work and research at The Whitney Museum of Art, MoMA PS1, Radical Networks, the Magnum Foundation, and Open Engagement. Recent exhibitions include the Brooklyn Museum (USA), Centro de Cultura Digital (Mexico), Kate Vass Galerie (Switzerland), and The Red House (Taiwan).

PROMPT

PROMPT is a Berlin-based artist collective whose practice engages critically with the narratives that coalesce around contemporary technologies. Oscillating between the euphoric imaginaries of fully automated luxury communism and the bleak specters of techno-feudalism or a runaway singularity, PROMPT probes the ideological fault lines embedded in our collective visions of the future. Their work destabilizes the dominant techno-utopian tropes by treating technology not as an inevitable force, but as a malleable and appropriable terrain—one that can be reimagined to contest and reconfigure existing power structures.Positioning themselves at the intersection of artistic inquiry and socio-political engagement, PROMPT has collaborated with a range of grassroots movements and activist networks. Their transdisciplinary approach frames artistic production as a potential site of resistance, where speculative aesthetics become tools for both critique and collective world-building.

Kay Matschullat

Kay Matschullat is an award-winning director, producer, and educator dedicated to deconstructing barriers and exploring inventive collaborations. She has directed world premieres of plays by Nobel Prize winner, Derek Walcott, and Pulitzer Prize winner, Ariel Dorfman, and had artistic residencies at Calarts, Dartmouth, Duke, and SCAD. She launched the IntheRaw program at Red Bull Theater and the New Play Program at Williamstown Theater Festival. After successfully launching the first online collaborative tool for script development, Matschullat founded Media Art Xploration (MAXlive) dedicated to increasing artistic exploration with and about the light speed advances in science and technology.

Tal Linzen

Tal Linzen is an Associate Professor of Linguistics and Data Science at New York University and a research scientist at Google. He studies the connections between human and artificial intelligence, focusing on language: what can AI systems teach us about humans, and how can we advance AI using what we know about humans? Before NYU, he held positions at Johns Hopkins University and Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. He has received awards from Google and the National Science Foundation.