SGN x Cohort: "Art After AI" — Panel + Networking Mixer

When a machine can make anything — any image, any text, any song — what can only be made in a room?

That question has never been more urgent. Live performance just posted its strongest seasons on record — audiences are paying more than ever for what can't be streamed, copied, or regenerated — even as AI floods the market for everything that can. What survives the flood, and what do we owe the people who still make things by hand?

This is the question behind "Art After AI," a free evening on the Lower East Side built like every good Cohort night: not a lecture, not a pitch — four people in honest conversation, then the conversation opens to the room.

In the conversation: four people who each live on both sides of that line.

Patrick McAndrew — Moderator & Panelist. TV host, actor and playwright — his musical The Startup had a sold-out run at The Flea, and his solo show Terms of Service won the award for Best Fiction at the 2024 United Solo Theatre Festival. He also advises companies on responsible AI and founded the Future of Entertainment Alliance, a think tank examining how AI reshapes storytelling and creativity — and he moderates tonight's conversation.

Michael Tay — Panelist. Singaporean writer and filmmaker (Columbia MFA; creator of the International Emmy–nominated series FAM!). A grant to develop a rom-com about a computer vision scientist for the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation started his engagement with AI. Since then, he's explored what the technology can't replicate: live, embodied work. His one-man play Mom and I Go to the Temple opens at The Tank this week.

Matthew James Scott Lee — Panelist. Filmmaker and AI-safety engineer, he first started his career in film in London, before retraining as an AI researcher at UCL. Now Chief Development Officer at Poseidon Research, a New York lab working to prevent AIs from covertly communicating, he is artist and engineer in one practice with both a TV drama about autonomous weapons and a novel about superintelligence in development.

Isaac Ting — Panelist. A product designer who both builds and studies AI systems — 7+ years of design experience, AI-powered systems shipped in the public sector before grad school, and now a Masters at NYU Tandon researching human-AI interaction: how context and memory shape conversations with AI, and how better safeguards keep them aligned with what people actually need.

No sides to take, no debate to win — there are no pure artists on one side and pure builders on the other: everyone on stage works the line between what machines can make and what only a body in a room can. They work through it in front of the room, then open it to everyone in it.

Food, drinks and venue sponsored by Singapore Global Network.

BONUS: Register and stay through to the end to stand a chance to win one of three pairs of free tickets to "Mom and I Go to the Temple", an original play by horror writer and Sundance alum Michael Tay, debuting the same week: https://tickets.thetanknyc.org/EventAvailability?EventId=155801

WHO'S IT FOR? Idea people. Founders. Builders. Creatives. Researchers. The Curious. Artists wondering what AI means for them — and tech people wondering what liveness means for the rest of us.

FORMAT: ~45 minutes of moderated conversation, then an open mixer over drinks — the kind of room where people actually meet and make things happen. Free, strictly non-profit.

"Art After AI" is co-hosted by Cohort NYC, supported by Singapore Global Network. ~50 guests. Lower East Side.

ABOUT COHORT NYC

Cohort is a space and home for ideas, and the people who think about them, create new ones, and build things from them. Many of us are founders, builders, artists, researchers, and their supporters here in NYC. Our goal is to turn the city into a campus after college. We hold idea and discussion events, coworking events for support and accountability for those building and creating things, and pure social events build genuine relationships and community.

ABOUT SINGAPORE GLOBAL NETWORK

Singapore Global Network (SGN) is a division of the Singapore government's Economic Development Board (EDB). SGN's mission is to build a global community with Singapore at its heart, creating meaningful connections between members.