An interactive webinar exploring the intersection of traditional arts and technology, featuring expert discussions and live demonstrations of VR-TeaRoom.
Join the Futures Initiative of CUNY for our second webinar of the semester on October 15, 2026 at 1pm. You don’t want to miss this event!
Thursday, October 15, 2026
1: 00 pm – 2:00 pm
Description
How do historical compositions and classical cultural expressions converse with modern machine learning algorithms? As part of the Futures Initiative’s ongoing programming at the CUNY Graduate Center, this special interactive webinar explores the profound intersection of traditional arts and generative artificial intelligence.
In this engaging interview, Futures Initiative Graduate Fellow Nan Jia sits down with faculty expert Mari Abe Kole to examine how technology reshapes our understanding of tradition. Featuring live spotlights—including a demonstration of AI-driven symbolic music completion and classical style modeling—this discussion dives into the technical, cultural, and philosophical questions of our digital era.
The conversation will also feature Mari Abe Kole’s work with an immersive VR-TeaRoom, which she uses as a teaching tool to introduce students to Japanese tea culture. Rather than replicating the tea ceremony, the VR-TeaRoom invites students to notice what technology can and cannot convey, turning the gap between the virtual and the real into a lesson in itself. Together, the two projects offer contrasting perspectives on what it means to preserve and pass on a tradition through technology.
Key Themes:
- AI-Guided Music Generation: How autoregressive transformers and symbolic data modeling approach the nuances of classical compositions (such as Baroque music).
- The Bridge of Innovation: Balancing technical rigor with cultural heritage.
- Immersive VR as a teaching tool for Japanese tea culture.
- Empowering the Next Generation: Why interdisciplinary collaboration matters for future scholars, artists, and technologists.
Open to all students, researchers, and tech enthusiasts. Bring your curiosity and questions for our live Q&A session!
