A new exhibition at Outernet London is using artificial intelligence to imagine the future of Black British culture.
Launched on 7 October, Black To The Future was developed by technology company Media Stream AI who commissioned AI artists Olivia Ema and Samuel Adjaye.
Media Stream AI operates AI data centres, sells GPUs and robotics equipment, and runs the IntuiTV platform and Autonomous Production Studios, which use AI and real-time data to support media production.
Christopher Kenna, founder and CEO of Media Stream AI, said Black to the Future came from a desire to rethink the way Black History Month is usually presented. “Instead of talking about everything that has been and can’t be changed, we wanted to ask where we will be in the future,” he said. “When will there be a Black Prime Minister? Will a Black astronaut be the first person to land on Mars?”
Kenna said the idea developed into a wider look at how AI could be used to create new worlds and opportunities. “You can create any world you want and stick anyone in that world,” he said. “So why don’t we use that to create the world that we want, not the world that we’re living in right now.”
The piece was produced for Outernet’s large digital screens near Tottenham Court Road. Kenna said part of the aim was to show that advances in AI have made it possible for artists to create at scale without large budgets: “Normally it would cost about £100,000 to £250,000 to make a piece of content for that,” he said. “This cost less than £1,000 and took about two days to make. It was faster to create it than to render it out.”
He said the project shows how AI can help open access to creative spaces that were previously limited by cost. “Now our community can get our creative expression into these big places that before we wouldn’t have had the money to make content for,” he said.
Kenna described the project as a collaboration between artists and technologists. “I’m a mixed-race guy, British Jamaican, and I wanted to make sure there was Black female influence in there as well, not just all my ideas,” he said. He added that parts of the installation were influenced by films such as Inception, as well as by carnival culture and programmes shown on GenB TV and GenB Movies — the UK’s only Black British television and movie channels, which Media Stream AI also operates.
He said there had been no resistance to using AI for the project. “Nobody was against it. We are an AI company, so everyone from our side already builds AI tools or works in our data centres,” he said.
Kenna said the project was not about replacing creative jobs but about expanding opportunities. “This wasn’t about showing that people are going to lose their jobs,” he said. “We’ve just made the pie bigger so other artists can join.”
“The work reimagines how Black British history and culture is carried into the future,” Kenna said. “The past is not behind us but encoded in our present and our becoming. We believe the AI revolution will be the great equaliser, giving access to art, media and creativity to all and allowing the community to express itself in new ways.”
