How to Find the Soul of a Sailor is a deeply personal and innovative project by Polish-British artist Kasia Molga that fuses past, present and future through the lens of artificial intelligence and memory. Centring on the Mediterranean sea, she envisages through the eyes of her late father, Tadeusz Molga, who was a devoted sailor and meticulously documented his passion for the ocean, which he shared with young Kasia as she accompanied him on his ship. Following his death fifteen years ago, Molga has addressed her profound sense of loss through his collection of diaries and remnants of his voice, creating an personal journey highlighting the fragility of our oceans, the ever-changing work conditions of sailors, speculating on the future and what her father would say.
She has used The New Real*’s specialised experiential AI platform, The New Real Observatory, to reimagine her father’s words, projecting them 50 years into the future in a powerful fusion of memory and technology, by blending generative AI tools with climate data to create an emotionally-charged narrative, visualising the past and future of our oceans, and combining English and Polish in a bilingual experience combining digital technology with personal history.
Part of the Institute for Design Informatics, Inspace gallery is a collaborative creative hub with a public programme connecting data, research and creative talent, hosting events and exhibitions for exploring, learning, debating and creating, via digital technologies, tools and data, exploring our roles in society through a creative lens. The Inspace City Screens form a unique seven-screen street-front projection space visible from the city’s Potterrow.
* The University of Edinburgh’s leading research hub on arts and AI, in partnership with The Alan Turing Institute, Edinburgh College of Art, and The Edinburgh Futures Institute, and affiliated to the Scottish AI Alliance, which is tasked with the delivery of the vision outlined in Scotland’s AI Strategy – launched in 2021 and lead by the Scottish Government.
