In the Meantime: Art Making Alongside Machine Intelligence
Artist Talk with Elsie Kagan & Carl Robichau
Saturday, August 8
1pm - 2pm Presentation / 2pm-2:30pm Conversatoin
Free ($5 suggested Donation)
All Ages
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"I think AI will probably, most likely, sort of lead to the end of the world. But in the meantime, there will be great companies." — Sam Altman, CEO, OpenAI
In the meantime, there will also be art.
The arrival of generative AI has unsettled the creative world. These tools produce extraordinary images, video, and music from simple prompts. Trained on appropriated work, they challenge livelihoods -- and the sense of meaning that making things has carried. They are wondrous and deeply unsettling.
Arguably, no technology has hit visual artists this hard since the camera. And we are only at the beginning.
Will AI be a threat to human creativity or a tool that extends it? What do we make of the techno-optimist vision in which humanity, freed from labor, spends its time in self expression?
This talk brings together artist Elsie Kagan, a fiercely analog painter who recently began engaging with generative AI, and Carl Robichaud, who works at the intersection of technology and global risk. Together they'll explore what it means to make things in 2026 and beyond.
Whether these systems will lead to the end of the world is to be determined, but for artists, they have already changed the world as we know it.
In the Meantime is part conversation, part provocation. Come ready to engage!
Elsie Kagan is a Brooklyn-based painter, originally from Berkeley, CA. Her work draws together divergent languages into conversation with a material-based approach to abstraction, creating visually dense and exuberant paintings. Recent solo shows include 'the drop falls' at 3s Artspace in Portsmouth, NH and 'the future is certain' in 2024 at the Shirley Project Space in Brooklyn, NY.
Kagan has attended residencies including TSA Chicago, R.A.R.O Madrid, Vermont Studio Center, Residency Unlimited NYC, and Chautauqua. Recent grants are from the NEA, and the Sustainable Arts Foundation. Kagan holds an MFA from the Tyler School of Art and a BA from Wesleyan University.
Kagan is the Founder and Executive Director of Interlude Artist Residency, specifically designed to address the unique needs of artist parents. A non-profit Residency program in Upstate New York, Interlude offers supportive and fully funded 3-week sessions for approximately 20 artists per year.
Carl Robichaud leads Longview's Nuclear Weapons Policy Fund, where he focuses on reducing the risks posed by nuclear weapons and emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence. Before joining Longview, he spent more than a decade leading grantmaking in nuclear security at the Carnegie Corporation of New York, one of the country's preeminent philanthropic institutions. His writing on public policy, foreign affairs, and technology has appeared in publications across the political spectrum. A lifelong believer in the power of the arts, he is co-founder and board member of Interlude Artist Residency — and, not incidentally, Elsie Kagan's husband.
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3S Artspace is funded in part by a grant from the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation.
Thank you to our lead sponsors: AC Hotel Portsmouth, The Brook, The Fabulous Find, The Kane Company/Tidemark, Katzman Contemporary Projects, Raka, Sheraton Portsmouth Harborside Hotel and Stirling Brandworks.