About
Uncanny Tools is an experimental workshop series approaching AI as a strange instrument for creative practice.
Uncanny Tools is an experimental workshop series that approaches AI as a strange instrument poised to replace familiar tools and practices. We are searching for alternative practices and creative reinterpretations that bring us into conversation and critique with both the strange and familiar qualities of AI.
How could we come to recognize AI tools as brittle, inefficient, uncomfortable, absurd, and maybe even undermining the history, labor, and craft of creative acts? Could the slop be equally delightful: exquisite, atypical, playful, poetic? When do we choose to come face-to-face with the uncanniness of AI tools and imagine AI otherwise? How do we process our collective anxieties produced by this new and strange instrument?
This series aims to shift how AI is perceived: away from optimization and application, and towards mis-use, friction, and expressive counter-techniques.
Uncanny Tools will run in 2026 and 2027 and is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts Research Grants in the Arts Program.
Fig. 01 — AI Slop, Brian Bird