Creative AI Meetup: May Edition

This event will host talks from artists and researchers presenting AI technologies and their creative applications. It is organised by curator Luba Elliott.
Event schedule:
18:00 Doors open
18:30 Introduction by event curator Luba Elliott
18:35 Aaron Hertzmann, Principal Scientist at Adobe Research: Per-Fixation Perspective in Art and Photography
19:00 Vivek Veeriah, Research Scientist at Google DeepMind: Generating Creative Chess Puzzles
19:25 Gabriela Tropia, Artist-Filmmaker and Educator, AI, film and digital necromancy
19:50 Talks finish, networking with drinks & food
20:30 Event close
We are grateful to Adobe for hosting & sponsoring the event.
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More on talks and speakers:
Aaron Hertzmann, Principal Scientist at Adobe Research: Per-Fixation Perspective in Art and Photography
Conventional theories of pictures based on linear perspective projection fail to explain the kinds of pictures that we actually make and see in the world. I propose a new approach to understanding how human vision interprets 3D shape in realistic pictures, specifically focusing on perspective. This theory combines ideas from art history, human vision, and computational photography, and gives new insights into the use of perspective in painting, photography, and digital imagery.
Aaron Hertzmann is a Principal Scientist at Adobe Research, and Affiliate Faculty at the University of Washington. He received a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Art at Rice University and a PhD degree in Computer Science from New York University. He was previously a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Toronto for ten years. He has published over 125 papers in computer graphics, the science of art, and AI. He is an IEEE Fellow, an ACM Fellow, and winner of the 2024 SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award. His research led to a Technical Emmy Award won by Adobe in 2025.
Vivek Veeriah, Research Scientist at Google DeepMind: Generating Creative Chess Puzzles
While Generative AI rapidly advances in various domains, generating truly creative, aesthetic, and counter-intuitive outputs remains a challenge. Looking at chess puzzles, we introduce a reinforcement learning framework with novel rewards based on chess engine search statistics. The rewards are designed to enhance a puzzle's uniqueness, counter-intuitiveness, diversity, and realism. Our puzzles meet novelty and diversity benchmarks, retain aesthetic themes, and are rated by human experts as more creative, enjoyable, and counter-intuitive than composed book puzzles, even approaching classic compositions.
Vivek Veeriah is a Research Scientist at Google DeepMind, where he builds creative agents that discover new knowledge and continuously improve over time. He has worked on notable projects including AlphaProof, Creative Puzzle Generation, and AlphaZero_db. His research spans diverse fields, including Large Language Models (LLMs), Reinforcement Learning (RL), Reasoning and Synthetic data generation. He holds a PhD in Machine Learning from the University of Michigan.
Gabriela Tropia, Artist-Filmmaker and Educator, AI, film and digital necromancy
Gabriela Tropia will discuss her artistic practice across dance, film and AI. She will present an extract from her award-winning AI film Organising Principles of Experience, in which she digitally resurrects experimental filmmaker Maya Deren and invites this AI model to imagine new films. Drawing on her background in dance, the talk explores choreography and directing performance in AI generated videos, offering insights into embodiment, collaboration and authorship.
Gabi Tropia is an artist-filmmaker and educator working across film, performance, and emerging technologies. At Central Saint Martins (UAL), where she leads the MA Performance: Screen, she is developing ways to collaborate with AI and exploring the creative possibilities of AI film as a new medium. She previously founded the first MA Screendance course in the world. Her shorts have been screened at Cinedans Amsterdam, Passion for Freedom, Sadlers Wells and the National Museum of Singapore.