The Culture Code
Generative AI, Data and Societal Futures
The Culture Code: Generative AI, Data, and Societal Futures
Event Type: Research Seminar, Panel Discussion & Artistic Performances
Event Date: February 13th, 2026 (Friday); 08:45 - 18:00
Location: Chalmers Main Campus Johanneberg - A Working Lab Studio - Sven Hultins plats 5
Registration Link: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/e/X4ufQLyTnQ
For questions, please contact Kıvanç Tatar: tatar@chalmers.se.
Abstract
Generative AI technologies are transforming cultural production, creative practices, and societal narratives at an unprecedented scale. While these systems offer new opportunities for democratizing access to cultural resources and enabling innovative forms of expression, they also raise critical concerns around bias, representation, sustainability, and ethics. This event, part of the AI Futures of Culture and Memory WASP-HS research cluster and funded by the VR networking project The Culture Code: Developing Deep Sustainable AI, brings together scholars, practitioners, and artists to examine the societal impact of deep generative models.
The program will feature research seminars, expert panels, and artistic performances, creating a unique space for interdisciplinary dialogue and creative exploration. Topics include synthetic data, cultural bias, and representational politics, alongside reflections on how generative AI reshapes notions of authorship, creativity, and historical consciousness. The event aims to foster collaboration toward designing inclusive and ecologically responsible AI systems that support sustainable cultural futures.
Program
February 13th
Location - Chalmers Main Campus Johanneberg - A Working Lab Studio - Sven Hultins plats 5
| Time | Presenter | Title |
|---|---|---|
| 08:45 - 09:00 | Fika | |
| 09:00 - 09:15 | Introductions | |
| 09:15 - 10:00 | Coppélie Cocq | Digital Transformation, Indigenous Rights: Epistemic and Data Sovereignty in Sápmi under Generative AI |
| 10:00 - 10:45 | Anna Foka | Simulating Curation with Computer Vision |
| 10:45 - 11:15 | Fika | |
| 11:15 - 12:00 | Andre Holzapfel | Environmental impact and political ecology of music-Ai |
| 12:00 - 13:00 | Lunch | |
| 13:00 - 13:45 | Erica Johnson | Balancing acts. Bias, representation and multiple ontologies in synthetic tabular data |
| 13:45 - 14:30 | Francis Lee | Synthetic data: some questions about the reality of data |
| 14:30 - 15:00 | Fika | |
| 15:00 - 16:00 | Panel Discussion | All Speakers |
| 16:00 - 16:45 | auto_impulse | Exposing the Bias in Artificial Intelligence |
Presenters
Erica Johnson
Professor, Deputy head of Department of Thematic Studies (TEMA), Linköping University
My research explores how the world becomes data. With a background in Science & Technology Studies and medical humanities, I’m looking at the nexus of ontologies, epistemologies and AI. What happens when the data that represents the world meets AI? https://liu.se/en/employee/erijo72
Francis Lee
Associate Professor, Södertörn University & Chalmers University of Technology
Francis Lee is an Associate Professor at Södertörn University, Media Technology and Chalmers University of Technology at the Division of Media Technology and the Division for Science, Technology, and Society. His research examines how digital technologies—such as algorithms, artificial intelligence, and big data infrastructures—shape our understanding of the world.
Lee’s research is grounded in the tradition of Science and Technology Studies (STS), focusing on how technologies shape how we classify, value, and understand society. Drawing on STS perspectives that emphasize the co-production of technology and the social order, his work investigates how technologies become intertwined with knowledge production. His current projects explore how artificial intelligence and big data are reshaping biomedical research practices and knowledge production.
Anna Foka
Professor, Department of Archives, Libraries, and Museums at Uppsala University
Anna Foka is Professor in Digital Humanities at the Department for Archives, Museums and Libraries (ABM), the director of the international research cluster AI Futures of Culture and Memory, the founder of the Centre for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences, and the coordinator of DASH: Data, Culture and Society, Critical Perspectives. Anna is the national mentor for AI in SKERIC. Her research interest revolve around critical perspectives on the nexus of technology, culture and memory.
Coppélie Cocq
Professor in Sámi studies and digital humanities at Umeå University, and Research director at Humlab, and Deputy director of the research infrastructure Huminfra.
I have a Ph.D. in Sami Studies (2008) with the thesis Revoicing Sámi narratives. North Sámi storytelling at the turn of the 20th century (Sámi Dutkan, Umeå University).
I conduct research within the focus area of digital practices. My research interests are cultural forms of expression, storytelling and narrative (from oral to digital) as well as critical studies in minority and indigenous research. Ethical and methodological perspectives on digital research, for instance the consequences of digitalisation and AI for our societies and in research, are other topical issues in my research.
I am deputy director of the research infrastructure Huminfra. and co-editor for the Journal JAF: A Global Quarterly.
Andre Holzapfel
Associate Professor of Media Technology with specialization in Sound and Music Computing, Division of Media Technology and Interaction Design, KTH Royal Institute of Technology.
My research focuses on the intersection between music and technology, for instance, by using computational analyses in studies of music corpora or by investigating the development of technology for creative purposes. I have contributed to the computational analysis of rhythm in the field of Music Information Retrieval, and have focused my ethnographic work on music and dance in Crete, Greece. My multidisciplinary background helps me to investigate the potential of combining quantitative, computational methods with qualitative, ethnographic methods in music research, an investigation that I like to refer to as Computational Ethnomusicology.
Organizers
Leaders
Kıvanç Tatar
Associate Professor, Data Science and AI division, Computer Science and Engineering Department, Chalmers University of Technology.
Kıvanç Tatar is leading AI in Computational Arts, Music, and Games research group and one of the co-leaders of WASP-HS research cluster AI Futures of Culture and Memory. He is a researcher and artist-technologist, working in the intersection of machine learning, artificial intelligence, music and multimedia.
Elena Malakhatka
Project Manager at Chalmers Next Labs
Elena conducted her PhD at KTH Royal Institute of Technology within the Human-Building Interaction field while directing large-scale festivals and cultural events in Sweden. She recently concluded her post-doctoral fellowship at Chalmers University of Technology at the School of Architecture and Civil Engineering. Currently, she works at Chalmers Next Labs with Urban Analytics and Research & Innovation.
Team
Xuechen Liu
Communications and Web
Post-Doctoral Fellow, Data Science and AI division, Computer Science and Engineering Department, Chalmers University of Technology
Hugh is an interdisciplinary researcher using emerging technologies to create meaningful experiences for people. Currently, Hugh’s research explores game studies knowledge discovery, completion, and utilization through machine learning and artificial intelligence, with the aim of enabling explainable and accessible game design.
Kelsey Cotton
Technical Director
Ph.D. Student, Data Science and AI division, Computer Science and Engineering Department, Chalmers University of Technology
Changheon Han
Registrations
Ph.D. Student, Data Science and AI division, Computer Science and Engineering Department, Chalmers University of Technology
Changheon Han is an AI researcher and creator working at the intersection of music and artificial intelligence. He earned his master’s degree in Artificial Intelligence from Hanyang University and has conducted research at institutions including Sony Europe and Singapore Management University, focusing on Music Information Retrieval, text-conditioned music source separation, generative models, and representation learning.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program – Humanities and Society (WASP-HS) funded by the Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation and the Marcus and Amalia Wallenberg Foundation.
This work is funded by Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet) Network grant for planning future excellence clusters for groundbreaking technologies titled The Culture Code: Developing Deep Sustainable AI.
