SAAI–Super Artistic AI–Factory is an international contemporary art based hackathon on artificial intelligence.

SAAI Factory calls for hackers, artists, coders, designers, tech evangelists, creatives, and developers from all disciplines to explore artificial intelligence as a means and field of artistic practice.

We invite projects throughout all artistic domains, Text, Writing, Music, Sound, Image, Pictures, Movement and Motion.

Participants from art and tech will be brought together through online social encounter and match-making to form international teams.

Internationally renown and dedicated mentors of the field will give talks, workshops and guidance throughout the hackathon.

All partaking creators, project ideas and prototypes will be presented at the International Summer Festival in Hamburg.

Six projects will be selected by the jury for post-production. These projects and prototypes from the hackathon will be shown in subsequent showcases and exhibitions around the world, such as ZKM – Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, 1st AI-Biennale in Essen, KAUST University in Thuwal, online at nexmuseum.io, and others.

How it works: You can register with skills or ideas. We encourage you to build international teams, consisting of artists and coders, max 5 persons. Team building should be finished by August 15th, 2021.

Important Dates

Kick-off AI Art Symposium: Kick off Event, Lectures, Talks, Workshops August 6-8, 2021. The program will be announced soon, stay tuned!
Local hackathons and international interim presentations happen on August 20/21, 2021.
Final deadline is due on September 14th, 2021.

Requirements

Before the submission deadline, September 14th, teams will submit working links to their github repositories for the judges to be able to verify/test the application.

As part of the judging criteria, teams may be required to show their projects to the panel of judges. This will be done via Zoom screen-sharing.

Teams are strongly encouraged to present a demo of what you have built. This demo may include a pitch, demo, and may take any electronic format that can be presented over Zoom.

Teams are encouraged to present what you have done even if your hack is broken or you weren’t able to finish.

It's okay if you didn't finish your hack. Demoing your team’s progress and product is a chance to share with others what you learned and what you tried to build— the value is in your ideas!

Winners may be announced on SAAI Factory’s and its partner’s websites and/or social media channels. We may require winners to send us their personal images and/or other limited personal information, in order for us to announce the results. By participating in the hackathon, participants agree to the collection and usage of personal data that they have provided to us for the purpose of announcing the winner of the hackathon on public channels.

Hackathon Sponsors

Prizes

$25,000 in prizes

Prize for Interaction

Best Project Creating Interaction between Humans, AI/ML, Datasets and Neural Networks
• $2,000 for Post-Production
• Presentation in the upcoming exhibition series
• Blog post featuring your project
• A unique SAAI Factory NFT

Prize for Interoperability

Best Project Challenging Interoperability or Synesthesia between Text, Music, Image and Motion
• $2,000 for Post-Production
• Presentation in the upcoming exhibition series
• Blog post featuring your project
• A unique SAAI Factory NFT

Prize for Momentum of Creation

Best Project Identifying the Momentum of Creation, Inspiration Coming Alive
• $2,000 for Post-Production
• Presentation in the upcoming exhibition series
• Blog post featuring your project
• A unique SAAI Factory NFT

Prize for Advanced AI

Best Project Integrating Advanced Machine Learning Knowledge
• $2,000 for Post-Production
• Presentation in the upcoming exhibition series
• Blog post featuring your project
• A unique SAAI Factory NFT

Prize for AI, Art and Society

Best Project Concerning AI/ML, Arts and Society
• $2,000 for Post-Production
• Presentation in the upcoming exhibition series
• Blog post featuring your project
• A unique SAAI Factory NFT

Prize for Awesome

Best Project Being Just Awesome
• $2,000 for Post-Production
• Presentation in the upcoming exhibition series
• Blog post featuring your project
• A unique SAAI Factory NFT

Audience Award @Public Voting

Project Receiving most of the Public Votes
• $1,000

SAAI Factory Award for Participation (300)

Reward for Each Participant
• A unique SAAI Factory NFT

Judges

Mohamed Elhoseiny
Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the Visual Computing Center at KAUST

Bettina Steinbrügge
Director at Kunstverein Hamburg, Professor at University of Arts Hamburg

Florian Dohmann
Co-Founder and Chief Creative of Birds on Mars

Archana Prasad
Art, Tech, Community Researcher, Founder of Jaaga.in & Dara.network

Luba Elliott
AI Art curator

Ludger Brümmer
Composer, Professor for Composition and Digital Media, Director of the Hertz Lab at ZKM

Barry Reese
Insight & Data, Capgemini Germany, Munich

Lia Coleman
AI Artist & Researcher, Adjunct Professor at RISD

Célia Bugniot
Head of Business at Veesual

Isaac Sullivan
Artist, Dubai

Anurag Priyadarshi
Founder & Lead AI Engineer at Scientist Tech | Urban AI

Werner Bogula
Digital Enabler at Artificial Intelligence Center Hamburg (ARIC)

Adela Goldbard
Artist and Filmmaker, Assistant Professor at RISD

Christoph Schindler
Head of the Bachelor's Programme in Object Design, HSLU Lucerne

Peter Kabel
Serial Entrepreneur and Professor für Interaction Design at HAW Hamburg

Paulina Zybinska
Creative Technologist and Interaction Design Lecturer at ZHdK

Tristan Behrens
AI Expert, AI Musician

Areej Al-Wabil
Director of the AI Center, Alfaisal University, Research Affiliate at MIT

Michelle Cheung
Product Designer, Facebook AI

Rik Reinking
Woods Art Institute

Christoph Faulhaber
Artist and Filmmaker, Hamburg

Richard Roehrhoff
CEO EMG – Organizer AI-Biennale Essen

Marc Schipper
Professor of Psychology at HKS Ottersberg

Dev Aggarwal
Technical Founder Dara.Network

Judging Criteria

General
The Hackathon will be evaluated by a panel of judges selected by SAAI Factory. One of the main goals is to recognize the potential of the projects for further development and presentation.
Creativity and Originality
How unique and creative is the project from an artistic perspective? How original and innovative are the depicted concept, vision, and visual theme? What are the references to contemporary art?
Art and Technology
How effective is the infusion of technology to enhance the work? Does it integrate deep learning in an innovative, unexpected way? Is it showing a new approach towards data input, data output or dataset ? The level of complexity of the usage of AI/ML/DL.
Potential for Further Development - Feasibility
Does the proposed prototype have the potential to grow and deliver the imagined result in the post-production stage? Are the team’s skills able to maintain and improve the project? Did they utilize the tools in the best way?
Clarity and Quality
Is the depicted theme clear to the viewer? How well is the concept reflected on the piece? Does the artwork stand on its own as a complete and outstanding work of art? Does it work outside of the competition ?
Inspiration
Can the project inspire other ideas?
Scale of Awesome
Something in the project that is beyond the expected, surprising, and exciting.