Metacreation Lab Newsletter | April 2025

Missed the Autolume Workshop? Watch It Online Now

After holding Autolume workshops in Toronto, Montreal, and Berlin, we brought the Autolume workshop online earlier in April, and the recordings are now available.

Whether you're new to Autolume or want a refresher, this hands-on session walks you through training your own generative models, creating real-time visuals, and exploring interactive art, all without writing a single line of code.

Join our mailing list and hop into the Discord channel to stay in the loop and connect with others using Autolume.

Metacreation Lab at ISEA2025 in Seoul

The Metacreation Lab will be at ISEA 2025 with both a paper presentation and a live performance.

PhD student Arshia Sobhan, with Dr. Philippe Pasquier and Dr. Gabriela Aceves-Sepúlveda, will present “Broken Letters, Broken Narratives: A Case Study on Arabic Script in DALL-E 3”. This critical case study examines how text-to-image generative AI systems, such as DALL-E 3, misrepresent Arabic calligraphy, linking these failures to historical biases and Orientalist aesthetics.

The preprint is available here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.20459

In collaboration with sound artist Joshua Rodenberg, Arshia will also present “Reprising Elements,” an audiovisual performance combining Persian calligraphy, sound art, and generative AI powered by Autolume. This performance is an artistic endeavour that celebrates the fusion of time-honoured techniques with modern advancements.

Watch: https://youtu.be/ykNt7lNeL34?si=AIQUGKFDD0iVgt99

Call for Papers – EXPANDED 2025 at Ars Electronica

The 13th edition of the EXPANDED Conference, focusing on animation and interactive art, will be held from September 3–5, 2025, at the Ars Electronica Center in Linz, Austria, as part of the Ars Electronica Festival.

Organized in cooperation with ACM, the conference invites submissions in categories of Research Papers and Art Papers. Topics of interest include AI-generated images, generative art, virtual production, human-AI collaboration, XR, and more.

Submission deadline: April 27, 2025

Vancouver AI – April 30 at the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre

Metacreation Lab has proudly supported the Vancouver AI Community Meetup since the beginning. This time, Mission #16 of BC’s vibrant AI community meetup series. This edition features a talk by Philippe Pasquier, exploring the latest in generative and creative AI systems.

Also on the lineup is a special performance by K-PHI-A, a live trio featuring Philippe, PhD student Keon Ju Maverick Lee, and VJ Amagi (Jun Yuri). Their piece, Revival, is an improvisational audiovisual performance where human musicians and AI agents co-create in real time. It blends percussion, electronics, and AI-driven visuals using Autolume and other systems developed at the Metacreation Lab.

MIDI-GPT Paper Now Available in AAAI Proceedings

Our paper “MIDI-GPT: A Controllable Generative Model for Computer-Assisted Multitrack Music Composition” is now officially published in the proceedings of the 39th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence.

MIDI-GPT leverages Transformer architecture to infill musical material at both track and bar levels, with controls for instrument type, style, note density, polyphony, and more. Our experiments show it generates original, stylistically coherent compositions while avoiding duplication from its training data. The system is already making waves through industry collaborations and artistic projects.

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