Friday, 11th July 2025, 13:00-14:00 BST
This online session (MS Teams) can be booked by UAL staff and students via Eventbrite:
Join us to hear UAL students share their experiences using AI tools for learning and creativity, and discuss the challenges they face.
This event will be co-hosted with Maria Than.
Panellists include:
- Liza Abdrashitova, BA Illustration, CCW
- Yichu Li, MA Performance: Screen, CSM
- Chen Su, BA Graphic and Communication Design, CSM
- Shuyang (Frank) Wang, MA Design for Industry 5.0, CSM
Shared resources
We have created the following Padlet board where you will be able to access the readings, as well as add your questions and comments:
Short biographies
Maria Than
Maria Than FRSA is a Viet-British-French creative technologist, lecturer, designer, & co-founder of award-winning design practice Ricebox Studio. Using AR, illustration, moving image & creative AI, she explores fragmented identities, Viet and Tibetan buddhism, intergenerational trauma & escapism. She exhibited globally (London, Paris, New York, Toronto, South Korea, Budapest), with screenings in New York, London, Barcelona, Amsterdam and San Francisco. In 2021, she became a Fellow at the Royal Society of Arts for her period activism with Ricebox Studio & AR work. She teaches digital + social design, creative AI + ethics and creative technologies at UK universities, including Central Saint Martins, Camberwell College of Arts and University of Greenwich, and is a Digital Designer at Child Rights International Network. She was a Resident Creative Technologist at AIxDesign for the Story & Code residency, resident at Art School Plus in 2024 in the Art at Heart programme & was the winner / Resident Artist at arebyte Gallery’s Hotel Generation where she launched her 1st solo exhibition in 2024 exploring her Viet-Buddhist heritage called ‘Homage to Quan Âm’.
Website: https://mariathan.com
Instagram: @blurbnation
Other: https://kwaaiepier.nl/maria-than-rigor-discipline-and-organized-chaos/
Yichu Li
Yichu Li (she / her) is a London-based filmmaker, artist, and DJ whose work merges experimental film, generative AI, and live performance. A graduate of Central Saint Martins (MA Performance: Screen), her practice explores cyberfeminism, posthuman identity, and the entangled realities of digital consciousness.
Yichu’s work involves speculative storytelling and the integration of AI tools to reimagine memory, identity, and collective agency through the evolving language of synthetic aesthetics. Her recent project, YICHU 1.0—a three-chapter short film on digital afterlife and female-coded machine logic—has been officially selected at festivals including AI Film Awards Cannes, AI International Film Festival, UCCA AI Artist, IEEE ICME AI Gallery, and Asia Emerging Artist List etc.
Her recent audiovisual live performance, RAVE CINEMA, transforms techno DJ sets into immersive rituals with live-mixed AI visuals and myth-infused soundscapes. She positions AI not just as a tool but as a co-author—one that makes space for vulnerability, ambiguity, and soft power.
Yichu aims to carve out a future-facing space for female and marginalized voices in the age of intelligent systems, using art to question the aesthetics of control and the politics of machine intimacy.
Website: www.yichuliart.com
Instagram: @iliyichu
Chen Su
I’m a graphic designer passionate about cross-media design, particularly exploring how graphic communication can intersect with emerging technologies. My work focuses on using design to express emotion and ideas, placing strong emphasis on user experience and multi-sensory interaction. I see design not just as a tool for visual aesthetics, but as a medium for critical reflection and for connecting individuals with wider societal issues.
UAL showcase link: https://ualshowcase.arts.ac.uk/project/641545/cover
Shuyang (Frank) Wang
I’m a recent graduate from MA Design for Industry 5.0 at Central Saint Martins, where my work focused on how technology can amplify human ability rather than replace it. Over the past year, I’ve been exploring how AI tools can extend creative processes while preserving the human touch — especially in accelerating iteration, enabling quick experimentation, and expanding access to design for non-specialists.
Building on these experiences, my graduation project explored the spectrum of possible future collaborations between humans and AI, extending these scenarios into the physical world. I experimented with this idea through the design of a bionic mechanical hand capable of co-playing the piano with a human partner, aiming to reflect on the spectrum of human-AI creative interaction and shared skill development.
Website: jasonnade.com
Instagram: @jasonnade.svg