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Karen Palmer      

Futurist & Thought Leader Using Immersive AI for Participants to Experience Societal Implications of AI and AI Bias; Award-Winning XR Creator; Winner of SXSW XR Competition 2023

Karen Palmer is the Storyteller from the Future, she is an award winning XR creator and futurist who explores the implications of A.I and technology on societal structures and the impact of in-equality.

She does this through enabling participants to experience the future today through her immersive experiences.

She creates films that watch you back using artificial intelligence and facial recognition technologies. The narrative branches in real time depending upon the participants eye gaze and emotions. Enabling participants to simultaneously experience AI bias, surveillance technologies and their potential integration into the everyday world around us and how that could be used to impact societal structures, human rights and civil liberties.

Palmer recently won the coveted XR Experience Competition at SXSW 2023 with her film Consensus Gentium. It is a powerful exploration into the implications of today's AI technology. This immersive experience is designed to drive discussion about data privacy, unconscious biases and the power of technology. Which transports audiences on a unique quest to discover what could come about if we succumb to unchecked surveillance.

There have been numerous interviews and articles on her work from Channel 4 News, BBC News, CBS News and press in Wired Magazine, Forbes, PC Mag, CBS TV, Fast Company, Engadget, The Guardian “It leapfrogs over VR.”

Palmer is a TED Speaker and has been described as a Thought Leader in A.I, Immersive Storytelling for Impact, Futurism and Tech. She has been featured in innumerable interviews and events. She has been opening Keynote speaker at AT&T Shape Conference, L.A, Wired for Wonder Festival Australia, Sydney & Melbourne, MIT and TEDx Australia Speaker at the Sydney Opera House. Delivered keynotes and workshops to corporate clients and Leadership Summits include Microsoft Seattle, Vertex Berlin, ThoughtWorks Toronto and Google Cultural Institute in Paris.

She has exhibited at The Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum NYC, the V&A London, PHI Centre Montreal, Sensory Stories Exhibition, Armoury Arts Week NYC, Museum of Modern Art Peru, International Film and Storytelling events include the SXSW, ARS Electronica, The V&A, the Netherlands Film Festival to the Future of Storytelling in NYC. She has worked closely with prestigious organizations such as the British Councils in Canada, Western Balkans, South Africa and Peru. Invited to speak, ZKM Living Amongst Intelligent Machines AI Conference in Germany. CPH:DOX, Art, Technology & Change to name a few.

2020 she received Honorary Mention for the STARTS Prize ARS Electronica for Perception iO, the future of law enforcement. This is A.I. Law enforcement training simulation which will watch you back. Perception iO will enable participants to experience how easily human bias can be intergraded into networks by humans and therefore understand the necessity for Transparency and Regulation in AI.

In 2017 her installation RIOT was acknowledged as one of the Digital Dozen Award for break throughs in storytelling. RIOT makes the player aware of their subconscious behaviour and enables them to consciously build new neurological pathways in their brain. Her work is at the intersection of Neuroscience, Behavioural Psychology and the Parkour philosophy of moving through fear.

She has been a research based artist working with Artificial Intelligence since 2015. Her Hack the Future Labs created 2020 are Think & Action Tanks at the intersection of Art, Film, Neuroscience Technology, Activism, Social Justice, Spirituality and the Parkour Philosophy of moving through fear. Creating interdisciplinary conversation and discussions to enable explorations of solutions for urgent issues impacting this rapidly changing society.

Speech Topics


Imagining the Future of Corporate Clients' Businesses

For corporate clients Palmer can envisage a new narrative for the future or their business, through a culture and global lens, to enable them to be optimally prepared for the Future. The objective is to inspire the Leadership Team to start to imagine the business's future for themselves.

Palmer has delivered these with great success to clients such as Vertex Leadership Summit (Berlin), NBC Universal DigiFest (London), TomTom (Data &AI Summit), ThoughtWorks Leadership Conference (Canada) to name a few.

Hack the Future Labs

In the time where she comes from they use the power of storytelling to envisage strategies of liberation. Empowering people to not just imagine alternative futures, but create the tools, networks, and open source tech to full-fill the visions.

Karen Palmer is currently in your time developing this blueprint now, titled "Hack the Future Labs," Think and Action Tanks at the intersection of Art, Neuroscience, Technology, Activism, Social Justice, Spirituality, and the Parkour Philosophy of moving through Fear.

Palmer shares her new immersive emotionally responsive film experience "Consensus Gentium." The film that watches you back using AI and facial detection technology to enable the participant to become conscious of their subconscious behavior.

The Talk Take away will be:

  • A call to action that will inspire the audience to activate their agency.

Hack the Futures Workshop

These Labs are designed to facilitate breakthroughs regarding creative practice, business strategy, ideas blockages or any other challenges. By enabling the team to become aware of limiting subconscious beliefs and harness the power of storytelling to create new narratives and develop the building blocks to actualize them in reality.

The Future Crashes into our Present

Karen Palmer is the Storyteller from the Future and she has come back to enable you to survive what is to come through the power of storytelling. This Talk is a cautionary tale of the impeding future crashing into our present and the potential role of the audience.

This Talk will cover Futurism Trends such as:

  • Surveillance Cities masquerading as Smart Cities.
  • Digital Colonisation : Exportation of Surveillance Cultures
  • Exploring the ethical implications and social ramifications of AI through storytelling.
  • Impending emergence of neural networked digital social platforms
  • Protocols developed by the Resistance-ranging from creating Open Source AI to to Democratisation AI & Data Democratisation and Hacking the psychology of Fear to name a few.

Popular Speaking Themes

  • Bias in AI: Palmer breaks down the importance of how Bias AI will impact society, in particular minorities, due to lack of representation. Her award winning immersive experiences enable the participants to experience the these bias Futures today.

  • Harnessing the Power of Fear: Palmer reveals what people can learn from (the urban inner city sport of) Parkour and the process of moving through fear.

  • World building for World Building: How we can access the power of storytelling to impact our reality.

  • How to activate Autonomy and Agency within individuals through the power of storytelling: Palmer explores how she developed strategies to activate agency in participants, transforming them from a disempowered mind to empowered mind through NeuroScience, Storytelling, and Parkour methodologies.

  • Why Smart cities are really Surveillance cities: Palmer's narrative story scape experiences prepares participants to navigate the future of a new digital colonization that discriminates against gender, race and class through bias AI systems.

News


UK creative artist Karen Palmer wins South by Southwest 2023 Award for innovation XR experience
Future Art and Culture is delighted to announce that UK creative artist Karen Palmer’s project CONSENSUS GENTIUM has won the XR experience competition at this year’s South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. The award-winning international artist and TED Speaker uses interactive storytelling to explore race, bias in technology and social justice.
SXSW Film & TV Festival 2023 Award Winners
Karen Palmer wins the XR Competition at SXSW for "Consensus Gentium."
NFF Conference: Speculative Fabulation
Karen Palmer, storyteller of the future, and film and media maker, will introduce her project Consensus Gentium, an emotion-driven film in which smartphone functionalities in the field of intimacy and authenticity are used to create a hyper-realistic experience of the social media of the future.

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