The Center for the Arts of Homer is launching a new series of panels and public conversations exploring the many intersections of Artificial Intelligence—beginning with the arts, and expanding outward into broader human, cultural, environmental, and economic questions.
ART X Artficial Intelligence
Thursday, March 19 at 7:00pm
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From visual art and music to writing, performance, and design, these conversations explore how artists are using, questioning, resisting, and reshaping AI—and what that means for creativity, authorship, labor, and the future of creative work.
Panelists:
Adam Peruta
Adam Peruta is an associate professor at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University and the director for the advanced media management master’s program — a program that puts students at the intersection of media, technology and business, all with a focus on emerging technologies.
He teaches courses in emerging media such as AI, UI/UX design, media entrepreneurship and product development. For his efforts in the classroom, Syracuse University awarded him with the Meredith Teaching Award — the university’s highest honor for outstanding teaching. Due to his mentoring and advising, his students have won 100+ awards in national competitions. LEARN MORE
Rebecca Ruige Xu
Rebecca Ruige Xu is a Professor of Computer Art at Syracuse University whose research explores the intersections of AI, data visualization, experimental animation, and interactive media. Her work investigates how emerging technologies reshape creative practice, authorship, and aesthetic experience through artistic data representation, visual music, and digital performance. Xu’s projects have been exhibited internationally at venues including SIGGRAPH, Ars Electronica, ISEA, and IEEE VIS. She serves as Chair of the ACM SIGGRAPH Digital Arts Committee, Co-Chair of the IEEE VIS 2023 and 2024 Arts Program, and is Co-Founder of the ChinaVis Arts Program. She has professional experience in computer animation, visual effects, digital media, and UX design in both China and the United States. LEARN MORE
Ruth Martinez-Yepes
Ruth Martinez-Yepes is a Colombian transmedia artist and a Cornell Ph.D. candidate in the Information Science program who is working on art-based research. Her work has focused on creating metaphors to explore the relationship between automation, embodiment, data, and subjectivity. Firstly, to examine the intersection of her identity as a Latina artist with the consequences of automation. Second, through the use of different mediums, she aims to approach the narrative of technology as neutral and immaterial critically. Before joining Cornell, she worked as a master facilitator on a gendered-focused Art+STEM educational program supported by Maloka Interactive Museum and the Colombian Ministry of Information Technologies and Communications. Additionally, she was a professor in the Design department at Universidad de Los Andes. LEARN MORE
Crystal Lyon
Crystal Lyon is the Teacher of Graphic Communications in the Career and Technical Education Program at OCM BOCES, Cortlandville. There, she guides high school 11th- and 12th-graders in cultivating their skills and knowledge through the design process, laying a strong foundation for critical and creative thinking in graphic design, photography, digital video, animation, and video game design with the potential to earn college credit before graduation. Lyon also teaches art courses for non-art/design majors at Tompkins Cortland Community College. Lyon maintains an art space, Living Illusion Studio, located on the third floor of the Cortland Corset building, where she collaborates with or supports other creatives across a variety of disciplines.
Lyon draws on over twenty years of professional experience as a multidisciplinary artist and designer dedicated to developing creative confidence in others. She has been a leader and collaborator in the Cortland community on a number of initiatives, including, but not limited to, Cortland Downtown DRI Public Arts Project, Crown City Mural Fest, and Gears to Corsets Cortland County Steampunk Festival. Community art projects include the mural located on the Cortland Corset Building and the play Love, Billy, based on the love letters of Grace Brown, performed at the Performing Arts Department in collaboration with Cortland Repertory Theatre. Lyon is also an annual contributor to the LUMA Projection Arts Festival in Binghamton, New York. Lyon’s personal passion projects include writing, designing, typsetting, and self-publishing novels based in a dark fantasy world.
Joe Salzone (moderator)
Joe Salzone is the Operations Manager/News Director for the Cayuga Radio Group and host of 607 This Morning on WHCU, joining in June 2020. Joe’s been working on the air and behind the scenes in radio since he was 16.
A native of Long Island, Joe has spent the last 12 years living and working in the Finger Lakes and Central New York, most recently as the producer of a popular morning show in Syracuse.
Formerly a resident of his “adopted hometown” of Auburn, Joe now resides in Cortland. He sits on the board of directors for Auburn Regional Media Access and Auburn Chamber Orchestra. In his spare time, he enjoys checking out breweries, diners, and sleeping.
As the series evolves, discussions will widen to include AI’s impact on culture, community life, environmental systems, education, and economic development—recognizing that creative inquiry is often where society first encounters change.
C4A exists to foster critical thinking, creative expression, and community connection. ART × ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE continues that mission by creating a forum where artists, educators, and professionals can speak honestly—without hype, fear, or dismissal—about what creativity looks like now, and what it may become.
REGISTER HERE