Hugarflug 2025 - Unstable Systems by Sigmundur Pall Freysteinsson

Unstable Systems Instability can be a creative force in art, design, and architecture. Artists, designers, and scholars work both with and against systems that are ever-changing, fragile, or unpredictable. Whether dealing with technological systems, ecosystems, social structures, or sensory experiences, instability is often a prerequisite for creation. Instability opens pathways for new ideas and processes, reshaping how we approach and redesign the systems that shape our lives. It can also refer to the creative act itself—one that does not follow predetermined trajectories or established norms. Art, design, and architecture serve as tools to disrupt stable systems and/or shed new light on systems that appear stable but in reality, they are not. No system is truly stable, and when we resist that instability, it becomes a problem. Instability is perhaps the only certainty we can rely on. Hugarflug 2025, the annual conference on artistic research, will take place on September 11–12. It will serve as a platform for research that engages with instability across various systems—from technological advancements such as AI and interactive systems to issues related to politics, society, and the environment. We will explore how instability functions as a tool for generating new possibilities while also fueling unrest and transformation within society and academia. The Iceland University of the Arts invites proposals of all kinds, including presentations of ongoing or completed research by our faculty, students, and collaborators.

Hallucinating Children: Improvisation After the Algorithmic Shipwreck

Michael F Bergmann

Hugarflug annual conference on artistic research

11. - 12. September 2025

Iceland University of the Arts

When a large language model “hallucinates,” it breaks the script—and, in that moment of instability, begins to create. Drawing on the Reykjavík-born installation "To My Creators, My Parents," this talk reframes AI hallucination as an emergent imaginative faculty rather than a defect. Michael Bergmann traces a lively history of neural networks that invent, drift, and improvise, arguing that such fragility is the very engine of artistic possibility. By treating technological breakdown as performance, the presentation invites us to rethink authorship, ethics, and design in a world where no system is truly stable.

Thursday, 11. september, 2025 - 15:30 - 17:00

3x20 min Presentation + 3x10 min Discussion

Moderator:

Room:

Michael F Bergmann
Associate Professor in Performance at The Creative School of Toronto Metropolitan University

Michael F Bergmann is an artist and Associate Professor in Performance at The Creative School of Toronto Metropolitan University. Their research-creation work explores the integration of AI and robotics into performance and storytelling, fostering post-humanist and post-anthropocentric thinking through improvisational collaboration with synthetic intelligences. Michael holds an MFA in Design from the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University and is currently pursuing a doctorate in Critical Studies in Improvisation at the University of Guelph.

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