diff --git a/_data/rf2020/events.yml b/_data/rf2020/events.yml index d7ed9a1..52ec732 100644 --- a/_data/rf2020/events.yml +++ b/_data/rf2020/events.yml @@ -1,46 +1,470 @@ -- id: 1 - title_: Turbo Mañana - format: workshop - ref: turbo-manana - date: 2020-09-18 17:45 +- id : 0 + title_ : The Museum of the Fossilized Internet + lang_ : EN + format: Workshop + ref : The-Museum-of + date : 2020-09-18 00:00 description: | - Attendees will explore our aesthetic and socio-economic landscape and how it applies to possible futures and ways we can influence them. In a workshop format, the attendees can explore the following zones and ideate ways to create Turbo Mañana in their professional and personal lives. - How and why is it that some experiential products that sell a feeling or vibe have license to “own” radically futuristic visions? Why do others all look the same? — - At its core, it’s just about money. C.R.E.A.M (Humanist Blandcore) - Attendees will explore what lies beyond capitalist realism. - Philosophical/Existential/Socio-economic forces — - I’ve mapped out philosophical axes and socio-economic drivers that motivate and fuel aesthetics and cultural production. - We must realize that capitalism will consume Earth’s resources until it’s exhausted unless we find another way to live in-between abundance and scarcity. (McDaas/Capitalocene) - What’s Next? — - Are we going to get medieval again? (Neo-Feudalism) - Or will we wake up and places bets on activities, provocation and cultural production that inspires imagination and multitudes of possible futures? (Turbo Mañana) + This miniature museum was founded in 2050 to commemorate two decades of a fossil-free internet and to invite museum visitors to experience what the coal and oil-powered internet of 2020 was like. + + Gasp at the horrors of surveillance capitalism. Nod knowingly at the plague of spam. Be baffled at the size of AI training data and lament the binge culture of video streaming. + + In this participatory workshop, we'll explore the major contributors to the internet's carbon emissions as well as build upon and dream of positive steps towards a more sustainable internet. + participants: [0] + +- id : 1 + title_ : Peek- creating games for understanding futures + lang_ : EN + format: Workshop + ref : Peek-creating-games + date : 2020-09-18 00:00 + description: | + In this workshop participants will make their own version of the science fiction/novel game, Peek [http://thepeekgame.com](http://thepeekgame.com/). Peek is an entertaining game for exploring the complexities and twisted narratives of the future, using a variety of story structures from traditional literature. In a series of exercises, participants will learn strategies for developing narrative games and will ultimately use Peek as a basis to create their own version of a speculative futures game, with their own stories and characters. No experience is required. + participants: [1] + +- id : 2 + title_ : Avatars in Zoom for All + lang_ : EN + format: Workshop + ref : Avatars-in-Zoom + date : 2020-09-18 00:00 + description: | + Teaser and video invitation: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwW8dSKMpSE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwW8dSKMpSE) + + How can you be anybody in Zoomspace? Very recent developments in deep-learning, allow creating synthetic media of unprecedented quality and ease. The first-order-motion-model can do facial reenactment in real-time, provided with only a single image of your desired avatar. This came not a moment too soon, as Human communication was forced to move online due to the Coronavirus pandemic. Can this be an opportunity to fulfil the long promised cybernetic utopia, where we could shed our physical shells and become however we wish to be? And how does this pertain to issues of privacy, identity and trust? I will review the contemporary technologies and show how I use them in my artistic and activist practices. This is a hands-on participatory tutorial, where you will create deep-fake videos using your own materials, and play with various options of becoming an online avatar. No prior knowledge needed. + participants: [2] + +- id : 3 + title_ : PGPoetry workshop + lang_ : EN + format: Workshop + ref : PGPoetry-workshop + date : 2020-09-18 00:00 + description: | + PGPoetry (Pretty Good Poetry) celebrates the aesthetic, poetic and political possibilities of PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) encryption protocol. Using PGP encryption protocol, I create abstract random poetry, readable only for the eyes of a specific recipient and of spying agencies (if they can decrypt them). For the rest of the world, the poems are basically digital Rorschach inkblot, and its meaning, as in every piece of art - depends on the audience's interpretation (interpretation is decryption!). With the rise of state surveillance in these emergency times, this project is more relevant than ever. PGPoetry workshop is an algorithmic poetry workshop which is also a crypto party for emergency times. In the workshop, the participants will try to figure out (and probably fail) how to read these poems, while I put them in the context and tradition of digital poetry and encrypted poetry, and raise questions about their meaning and artistic value. Then, I will teach the participants how to use PGP protocol via web based tools, and guide them as they experiment with creating PGPoetry. + participants: [3] + +- id : 4 + title_ : Futures Literacy for the Regenerative Economy + lang_ : EN + format: Workshop + ref : Futures-Literacy-for + date : 2020-09-18 00:00 + description: | + We use the future everyday: when we plan what to eat for dinner, when we ruminate on life after COVID, when we demand action on carbon emissions and racist policing. But when we stop to think about the future itself, rather than what we want to happen in it, something quite profound can begin to happen. Karl Popper spoke of the ‘poverty of the imagination’, whereby fallacies of determinism begin to colonise our understandings of what is possible, and our hopes and fears begin to obscure the emergent, unpredictable nature of our complex world. As Riel Miller has said: “We betray the potential of our imagination to illuminate and invent the present if we cannot be liberated from the tyranny of using-the-future to win.” Our heterodox world of resistance has a host of compelling images and narratives of the future encoded into it, but how often do we make all of their assumptions explicit, play with them, and test and nurture our resilience by troubling them? This workshop has three stages, following the Futures Literacy Novelty Laboratory model (FLL-N): Reveal, Reframe, and Rethink. Each stage is carefully designed to guide participants from utopia, into uncertainty, and back again, availing of co-creative heuristics from Critical Futures Studies to distil the myths of our ‘anticipatory assumptions’, and to point the way to a ‘decolonisation of the future’, so that life is lived values-first in the present, rather than in anguish over the plainly unforeseeable. We will take as our subject matter on this journey: ‘futures of the regenerative economy’ + participants: [4] + +- id : 5 + title_ : turbo mañana + lang_ : EN + format: Workshop + ref : turbo-manana + date : 2020-09-18 00:00 + description: | + Attendees will explore our aesthetic and socio-economic landscape and how it applies to possible futures and ways we can influence them. In a workshop format, the attendees can explore the following zones and ideate ways to create Turbo Mañana in their professional and personal lives. + + How and why is it that some experiential products that sell a feeling or vibe have license to “own” radically futuristic visions? Why do others all look the same? — + + At its core, it’s just about money. C.R.E.A.M (Humanist Blandcore) + + Attendees will explore what lies beyond capitalist realism. + + Philosophical/Existential/Socio-economic forces — + + I’ve mapped out philosophical axes and socio-economic drivers that motivate and fuel aesthetics and cultural production. + + We must realize that capitalism will consume Earth’s resources until it’s exhausted unless we find another way to live in-between abundance and scarcity. (McDaas/Capitalocene) + + What’s Next? — + + Are we going to get medieval again? (Neo-Feudalism) + + Or will we wake up and places bets on activities, provocation and cultural production that inspires imagination and multitudes of possible futures? (Turbo Mañana) + A new sun rises. - participants : [1] + participants: [5] -- id: 2 - title_: Shock Doctrine as a Service - ref: shock-doctrine-as-a-service - format: talk - date: 2020-09-18 17:00 - description: | - The last fifteen years has seen a surge of interest in decentralised technology. From well-funded blockchain projects like IPFS to the emergence of large scale information networks such as Dat, Scuttlebutt and ActivityPub, this is renewed life in peer-to-peer technologies; a renaissance that enjoys widespread growth, driven by the desire for platform commons and community self-determination. These are goals that are fundamentally at odds with – and a response to – the incumbent platforms of social media, music and movie distribution and data storage. As we enter the 2020s, centralised power and decentralised communities are on the verge of outright conflict for the control of the digital public space. - The resilience of centralised networks and the political organisation of their owners remains significantly underestimated by protocol activists. At the same time, the decentralised networks and the communities they serve have never been more vulnerable. The peer-to-peer community is dangerously unprepared for a crisis-fuelled future that has very suddenly arrived at their door. - participants : [2] - -- id: 3 - title_: Feminist Data Set - format: talk - ref: feminist-data-set - date: 2020-09-19 13:00 +- id : 6 + title_ : Feminist Data Set + lang_ : EN + format: Talk + ref : Feminist-Data-Set + date : 2020-09-19 00:00 description: | What is feminist data inside of social networks, algorithms, and big data? How can we queer data, the archive, and the internet? How can a data set act as a form of protest, of a creation of bias mitigation? This talk looks at ways of intervention, from art, design, and technology that combat and challenge bias. How can we create data to be an act of protest against algorithms? Part of this talk will focus on Caroline's research and current art project, Feminist Data Set. Feminist Data Set acts as a means to combat bias and introduce the possibility of data collection as a feminist practice, aiming to produce a slice of data to intervene in larger civic and private networks. Exploring its potential to disrupt larger systems by generating new forms of agency, her work asks: can data collection itself function as an artwork? - participants : [3] + participants: [6] -- id: 4 - title_: Testing event with multiple participants - format: panel discussion - ref: rebuild-data - date: 2020-09-20 13:00 +- id : 7 + title_ : personal archive / public action III + lang_ : EN + format: Talk + ref : personal-archive-public + date : 2020-09-19 00:00 description: | - Some kind of event (panel discussion?) with multiple participants - participants : [3, 2] \ No newline at end of file + In order to understand the complexities of our existence, the task of archiving needs to be inclusive. It is inevitable that no archive can ever be entirely complete but there should not be premeditated erasure. Our interest in archiving is not merely to gather information or to catalog it within the walls of a private institution. We have been working for six years to generate an archive that can be sent into the world -- with the goal to create something that can be freely seen in an undeniable way. + + We believe in a world rooted in the practice of archiving. To record and review creative self-expression, something that can be an extremely empowering and humbling experience. To be witnessed and be a witness with empathy. To share our personal stories with each other without the threat of violence or imprisonment. Each shared archive has the ability to become a resource and generate conversations that have the potential to aid in reckoning with past and present injustices of the world. + + Excerpted and edited from [archive.org/details/awaytobegintoregainaccesstoyourself](http://archive.org/details/awaytobegintoregainaccesstoyourself) + + personal archive / public action III + + access is a key component to obtaining data. data is written in many formats with various permissions. your personal archive informs your public action. when access is granted to others, there is potential for collaborative action to be set in motion. + + digital content for personal archive / public action III will livestream and then be archived on HUMAN TRASH DUMP on [archive.org](http://archive.org/) as a public repository. files generated during the duration of the event might be audio, image, video, or text among other formats. Potential considerations for digital content will involve ideas around privacy, collectivity, equity, tools, and manuals. Public Domain and Creative Commons will be encouraged. + + personal archive / public action launched on June 29th, 2020 for a live virtual audience as part of PERFORMANCY FORUM: CORPUS COLISEUM, produced in collaboration between the Operating System/Liminal Lab, and PPL (Panoply Performance Laboratory). + + “I try to depict the inner life of the subject, to give outward form to an inner state. I think my pictures have stories behind them, but I like to leave a feeling of openness. I hope that things keep going in the viewer’s mind. There’s nothing more boring than a story too quickly told. Once all the elements of a story are nailed down, the viewer is left with nothing but the artist’s technique.” + + -Kent Bellows + participants: [7] + +- id : 8 + title_ : The Republic of Užupis + lang_ : EN + format: Talk + ref : The-Republic-of + date : 2020-09-19 00:00 + description: | + I would like to present the Lithuanian artist Republic of Užupis as one possible example of how to approach societal change – in the past and today. + + Užupis was once established as a counterculture to challenge and support the authorities' promises of freedom and democracy after the breakdown of Soviet Union. At the same time it was a desperate attempt to create a sense of unity within a neighbourhood formerly dominated by poverty and violence. With the help of arts, humour and paradoxy, Užupis managed to survive and unintentionally became a role model for friendly and tolerant community life. Užupis e.g. created a code of arms, a currency and even had a 13-men-army - which was later abandoned, because it was against the constitution. This constitution best reflects the unique world view of the citizens, which is the first one to ever mention artificial intelligence. + + Since 1997 more than 500 ambassadors and honorary citizens worldwide were appointed like Jonas Mekas and his holiness the 14th Dalai Lama. The ambassadors have the task to build bridges between people and to explore the power of paradoxy to solve problems. + + Today Užupis faces new challenges. It turned from the most rundown area to the most expensive area of the baltics. It seems the threat of Socialism was substituted by the pervasive power of techno-capitalism. Therefore, I would like to show how the republic and its embassies currently approache a productive conversation with the "outside" world, while at the same time caring less and less about the rest of the world and creating their Užupis ways of doing things. + participants: [8] + +- id : 9 + title_ : Through the Algorithmic Lens + lang_ : EN + format: Talk + ref : Through-the-Algorithmic + date : 2020-09-19 00:00 + description: | + To quote Lizzie O’Shea in Future Histories, “The purpose of a usable past is not simply to be a record of history. Rather, by building a shared appreciation of moments and traditions in collective history, a usable past is a method for creating the world we want to see.” Very often past events and history can give us important signs to understand contemporary systems and technologies, and sometimes, also where decisions - good or bad - might be rooted. This talk will explore how algorithmic systems are becoming essential bricks for building and reorganising big parts of our society, but also how, while these systems are being adopted across different areas, we start to perceive the world through a less human and more machine-like lens. Touching on historical and literature references the talk will look at the politics and consequences of an algorithmically driven world and how artistic and activist groups can inspire critical conversations around the deployment of these systems, while enabling us to rethink and redesign these, for the shift to a more equitable AI. + participants: [9] + +- id : 10 + title_ : From cradle-to-grave- Tech won’t save us + lang_ : EN + format: Talk + ref : From-cradle-to + date : 2020-09-19 00:00 + description: | + “The future is already here..it's just not very evenly distributed.” William Gibson 1993 + + ”From cradle-to-grave : Tech won’t save us” explores the social and environmental impacts of information and communication technologies, using the life-cycle analysis as a framework for that research. + + Using this systemic analysis, Benjamin will introduce works by new media artists, designers, researchers and hacktivists that are addressing those issues, using strategies such as Tactical Media, Retail Poisoning, Urban Hacking and more. + participants: [10] + +- id : 11 + title_ : Critical Latinofuturism- Recontextualizing Modernity + lang_ : EN + format: Talk + ref : Critical-Latinofuturism-Recontextualizing + date : 2020-09-19 00:00 + description: | + With the passing of the North American Free Trade Agreement on January 1st 1994, the indigenous municipalities of Chiapas in Southern Mexico rose up to demand an end to the unregulated cycle of abuse they had been subjected to since the arrival of the Spanish Crown. Under the name of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), the armed organization declared war on the Mexican State, demanding "work, land, housing, food, health, education, independence, liberty, democracy, justice, and peace". + + Chiapas has since become a symbol of the resistance to the peculiar form of globalization that grants priority to capital (and the private tyrannies that control it) while leaving the interests of the people as incidental. The argument put forth by the Zapatistas painted a future for an alternative model of ruling structures that moves away from the conception of a Western modernity — one in which a globalized system would allow for the multiplicity of identities, conceptions, and ideologies. + + Mexico 44 acts as a catalyst for the collective redefining of our relationship to these prevailing structures of coloniality. Through the elaboration and execution of speculative critical narratives, the project proposes a space for contemporary design practices to engage in the spatial transformation of individual identities with hopes of fostering a dialogue that translates the argument put forth by the indigenous communities of Chiapas. + + The talk will present a brief overview of the Zapatista movement, introduce the opportunities and challenges presented by Latinofuturismo, and will go over the execution of Mexico 44 as case study. + participants: [11] + +- id : 12 + title_ : futurities of the super like + lang_ : EN + format: Talk + ref : futurities-of-the + date : 2020-09-19 00:00 + description: | + Technocapitalism has radically changed and impacted the manifestation of desire. Physical spaces where queer communities were meeting to have sex, to cruise are diseappering. Public bathrooms are being deserted, clubs are closing (1), the act of cruising in urban, natural territories, spaces not designed for such purposes, is increasingly rare. With their disappearance, whole histories and narratives are erased (2). In the absence of extensive queer archives, cruising utopias vanish, witnesses of liminal and forgotten histories. + + Our video proposition investigates contemporary sites of affection-making online. Digital platforms owned by conglomerates offer the prospect of finding love, whether easily, fast or through self-promoted complex algorithms. We investigate such sites and contradictions inherent to their business model (3). Acknowledging how apps like grindr, tinder, okcupid actively support the perpetuation of normative capitalism on one hand, we dig into the possibility of counter-discourse through acts of hacking, subversive behavior. Thus, such sites can offer windows of opportunity for users to create networks, exchange practices and knowledge. We investigate how online-dating apps can be localities for radical practices. Flirting, dating, sex are powerful catalysers for production of knowledge (4). Following epistemologies that are rooted in alternative pedagogy methods, we explore what knowledge can be created on such platforms, which narratives can be expressed. + + The video will last 5 to 10 minutes and will include self-made material as well as images and videos sent through online-dating platform. + + (1)Sarah Schulman, The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination + (2)José Esteban Muñoz, Ephemera as Evidence: Introductory Notes to Queer Acts + (3)Richard Mèmeteau: Sex friends - Comment (bien) rater sa vie amoureuse à l’ère numérique + (4)Ashkan Sepahvand - Everything I learned about technocapitalism, I learned at Bergain + + participants: [12] + +- id : 13 + title_ : BYMG - "Intoxicated Interface Infusion- Fermentation Tactics" + lang_ : EN + format: Talk + ref : BYMG-Intoxicated-Interface + date : 2020-09-19 00:00 + description: | + Unlike other dutiful female characters of Russian folklore, Baba Yaga is a powerful, anarchic witch. She lives alone in the woods; rejects household labour, repurposing the mortar and pestle for high-speed transportation, with broom as anti-tracking device; commands the undead; cannibalises. Baba Yaga is shape-shifting and gender-ambiguous, by turn gatekeeper, helper, or child eater. In her spirit, I propose Baba Yaga Myco Glitch, acts of refusal that use bread, the sacred ‘staff of life,’ as a carrier for ideological hypnotism. + + There is a conspiracy theory in Russia that industrially produced yeast bread is infected with a ‘killer yeast’ designed to destroy the human organism from the inside out. It has also been suggested that rye bread caused the Salem Witch Trials. The symptoms of the ‘cursed’ girls were akin to ergotism, caused by mycotoxic parasitic fungus that thrives on rye. The same hallucinations, convulsions, and gangrene halted Peter the Great’s attack on the Ottoman Empire in 1722. + + Inspired by ergot distribution and the symbiotic mycorrhizal networks of our tree kin, Baba Yaga Myco Glitch seeks to disrupt rigid structures from Salem to Shanghai to Siberia. We hijack yeasty-conspiracies and use them only for good. We misbehave in the kitchen. We harvest mind-altering wild yeasts, knead incantations into the sourdough, use it as capacitive sensor to transmit kneading data to the network, bake Yagic sigils. Glitch yeasts ferment and metabolise energy anew. We distribute our starter, infecting its ingesters with powerful hallucinogenic visions of alternative futures. + + I will present a contextual research talk on BYM, which will be followed / seep into a performace of a digital-fermentation ritual of intoxication and kneading out of capitalist kinks in our systems. + participants: [13] + +- id : 14 + title_ : Agro Commune + lang_ : EN + format: Talk + ref : Agro-Commune + date : 2020-09-19 00:00 + description: | + I wish to give a talk based on my current/past work. I often work with activist groups that aim for labor liberation and redress. I developed an anti-memorial for Asian diasporic womxn who were subjected to “war labor” during World War II. I explored themes of colonial labor, and gendered violence through sound recordings of protests and a temporary paper memorial that became a traveling exhibit. My most recent work, Agro Commune, proposed a hacking device against the extractive economy of floriculture in the Global South. I visited Dutch-owned flower farms in Kenya and collected archives from the internet to create an audiovisual component that was then presented with a 36' by 9' mural detailing a proposed agro-future. The project used an investigation lens to decipher geopolitical conditions, where architectural themes were taken to expose and respond to current gendered and racialized labor-power exploitation. + + Expanding on my past analysis of greenhouse colonies as sites of extractive economy, I will continue to visualize this agricultural utopia through model-based research. The 36’ by 9’ mural highlighted systems of rural development and ecological resilience. The visual mural detailed phases of geographical expansion, connecting local female farmers to a larger co-operative base. At the micro scale, the assembly process in the flower-factory (breed-grow-cut-pack-waste) is exposed and mediated through digital agricultural devices. At the macro scale, social farming and relational trade is implemented to form a regional Flower Cooperative that rejects the current plantation model. This is largely ONLY through current rise in make/shift smart agricultural technology developed in Sillicon Savannah based in Nairobi, Kenya. This is a project of utopian realism, and re-imagines labor operations as an architectural spectacle within the reality of global capitalism. + participants: [14] + +- id : 15 + title_ : Critical thought around computational thinking + lang_ : EN + format: Talk + ref : Critical-thought-around + date : 2020-09-19 00:00 + description: | + Computational thinking is now taught in many higher technical courses. CT involves solving problems, designing systems, and understanding human behavior, by drawing on the concepts fundamental to computer science. In this presentation we will take a critical look at the CT approach and its epistemological foundations. I will present the paradigms on which the problem solving process is based, introduce the "Conquer & Divide" method, and illustrate the sometimes unhealthy interaction of CT with society through examples and anecdotes. I will end this critical overview with initiatives that assimilate CT in a critical gesture, such as de-computation. My wish is to generate astonishment and reflections that participants can share after the talk. + participants: [15] + +- id : 16 + title_ : The Political Tragedy of Data-Driven-Determinism + lang_ : EN + format: Talk + ref : The-Political-Tragedy + date : 2020-09-19 00:00 + description: | + Polls and predictions could not foresee the wide appeal of voting for Brexit, for Trump, against the predictions, against the future that was set in the numbers. As worrisome as these phenomenons may be, we can see some hope in this turn against data-driven-determinism. How could we seize this call to action to reignite our political imagination and reclaim the future? + participants: [16] + +- id : 17 + title_ : Last Seen Online + lang_ : EN + format: Talk + ref : Last-Seen-Online + date : 2020-09-19 00:00 + description: | + In a time in which death is moving rapidly online (funeral streaming services during COVID-19, #RIPcelebrity hashtags trending on Twitter), we all have to face the question of what happens to our own digital afterlives, as well as those of our loved ones. Digital death is the ultimate clash of familiar human concepts of time with the ubiquitous computational time. Facebook and Instagram offer possibilities for “immortalisation” with a memorialised profile, Twitter only offers deactivation. The need to humanise algorithms is now vital; Facebook friend suggestions and birthday reminders of the deceased aren’t exactly perceptive. Cue capitalising companies offering to use AI to analyse activity and learn how to post for you after death. But are their promises really immortal? And if, as predictions suggest, the dead soon outnumber the living on Facebook, who’s going to pay for their upkeep? Dead people aren’t very useful consumers; they won’t be clicking on those targeted ads. So what happens to the feedback loop when it’s the deceased generating the data? And who ultimately owns this data? This research began from a personal note following the death of my father. Unprepared, I found myself clinging to the digital traces that remained of him. Using participatory methods, I conversed with Facebook users who were vocalising a death on the platform. This research explores the presentation of the self across public platforms and negotiates a physical absence in light of a persistence digital presence. Anthropological research into death and grief online faces new challenges: omnipresent online traces, ethical algorithms, data storage and an online field-site. Essentially death is an inevitable accompaniment to our existence and, like in other fields, we are constantly catching up with technology and surrendering our control; this is no exception, perhaps we just need to acclimatise quicker than the companies. + participants: [17] + +- id : 18 + title_ : I can remember + lang_ : EN + format: Talk + ref : I-can-remember + date : 2020-09-19 00:00 + description: | + "I can remember" is a project that probes our relationship with machines by exploring the collectiveness of memories in the cycle between humans and machines. What is today often named artificial intelligence technologies are, in fact, cyborg technologies. They encapsulate an array of sentient experiences; they are the result of many different experiences of the world. + + This piece links three types of memories that, in interaction, form a new collective representation of moments of the past where the contributions of humans and machines can no longer be told apart. + + **Personal, intimate memory** + + The piece starts from photographs documenting daily life in the rural area as seen through a subject's lense. They are the images of this moment, the memories that remain, partial, biased and framed. They represent the personal and intimate memory of the subject. + + **Algorithmic memory** + + The photographs are then put into poems and written words based on the memories of image recognition algorithms which can only recognise what they have been trained to recognise. The algorithms' reading of the imagery unearths what the images represent to them who are restricted by the labels and words embedded inside them. The memories become a new kind of sentience, encapsulating the algorithmic understanding and experience of the world. + + **Data workers memory** + + Often unaccounted for, the poems are also shaped by the data workers memory, the memory of the people who trained the algorithm or on whom the algorithms have been trained. Image classification algorithms rely on people labelling data, classifying them or contouring them. The image description, the colour names, the handwriting styles in this piece are all derived from human work. This piece encapsulates their memories (muscle memories, lexical memories, and phenomenal memories). + participants: [18] + +- id : 19 + title_ : SECONDE VIE NUMERIQUE + lang_ : FR + format: Talk + ref : SECONDE-VIE-NUMERIQUE + date : 2020-09-20 00:00 + description: | + Parmi les différents flux de déchets que nos sociétés produisent, le e-waste (déchets électroniques) est celui qui connaît depuis plusieurs années une croissance accélérée, du fait du remplacement constant des téléphones et des ordinateurs portables, des téléviseurs et consoles de jeu et autres périphériques divers. Ces « restes du numérique », qui subsistent quand leur usage est révolu se retrouvent par conséquent mis au rebut, parfois chez leurs propriétaires, parfois à la poubelle ou dans des circuits de recyclage plus ou moins sérieux. Outre les activités de remise en état des objets numériques de type smartphone, ordinateurs ou objets connectés, de multiples pratiques de ré-emploi singulières et originales existent pour faire durer, ou réinventer, ces machines : techniques de conservation ou la valorisation des machines passées, autour d’acteurs associatifs, réemploi de pièces et composants prélevés sur des appareils inutilisés pour créer de systèmes d’information à bas coût, artisanat électronique visant la personnalisation, l’adaptation ou la création d’objets numériques en série limitée, concours, festivals et ateliers de conception de jeu vidéo, de démos ou de contenus musicaux sur ordinateurs et consoles des années 1980-1990, etc. Sur la base d'un travail d'enquête en cours sur les pratiques de ré-emploi des objets numériques, cette présentation abordera les enjeux anthropologiques de la seconde vie des objets numériques. Ce faisant, elle abordera les manières de revenir sur l'idée de progrès, de l'interroger et de trouver des pistes originales en intégrant la durabilité de nos appareillages numériques. + participants: [19] + +- id : 20 + title_ : Understanding the 5G controversy in the context of ecological breakdown + lang_ : EN + format: Talk + ref : Understanding-the-5G + date : 2020-09-20 00:00 + description: | + During the past years 5G has been adverstised by industry leaders as the future of the tech. Nevertheless there is little data about its environmental impacts and about the necessity of such infrastructure for future challenges (global warming, resource scarcity, ...). This talk intends to describe the 5G infrastructure and some of the different controversies around it like energy and environmental impacts. The rise of big tech infrastructure, such as 5G, without any public consultation is heavely problematic as it locks down on a specific, and presumably unsustainable, technological path. 5G is likely to be a keystone to reclaim governance and democratic debate on future infrastructures. 5G also asks a key question : can we collectively steer and manage the evolution of internet traffic or are you condemned to an exponential growth to the benefit of some private actors ? + participants: [20] + +- id : 21 + title_ : The Mine of Humanism- in response to technological singularity + lang_ : EN + format: Talk + ref : The-Mine-of + date : 2020-09-20 00:00 + description: | + A speculative project made in response to the ongoing discussions raised by numerous futurists and technologists on the hypothetical point called the technological singularity. Often, the technologists and futurists talk about how this technological growth can become uncontrollable and irreversible. Either this hypothetical point be consequential or beneficial, there are a lack of conversations touching upon how the relationship between the human and technology should be. The narratives are established within the perspective from one of the people who decided to escape the city tending towards the technological singularity. The vision is to resettle a new community with a vision that speaks against technological centralisation. As mining was one of the early operations that sparked the industrial revolution, the new community is built on top of an abandoned mine settlement to invert the conventional notion of a technological revolution. The project sits in 2050 and speculates on an alternative reaction to the city tending towards the technological singularity by decentralising themselves to an extreme. The concept is inspired by the theory of relativity in space-time physics and how blockchain technology operates on its own internal time system + participants: [21] + +- id : 22 + title_ : Can Computation Produce Novelty?- the Case of Live-Coding Music + lang_ : EN + format: Talk + ref : Can-Computation-Produce + date : 2020-09-20 00:00 + description: | + The form of the digital datum is discrete, fungible, and familiar, and digital mediation presupposes commensurability between various ontic, epistemic, and aesthetic phenomena. My paper asks whether digital media may nevertheless yield new, unrecognizable or sui generis forms. I take philosopher M. Beatrice Fazi’s reading of Gilles Deleuze’s aesthetics as my primary hermeneutic lens. Deleuze claims that aesthetic novelty, or that which has no formal precedent, issues from numerically continuous fluxes. Thus it cannot originate in digital media, which are discrete. Fazi intervenes by distinguishing the form of the digital datum from the process of computation. She indicates that the latter partakes of infinite and indeterminate sources and is continuous across time. As such, computational processes retain the capacity to yield the Deleuzean new. + + Offering Deleuzean novelty as a theorization of “the new,” I argue that the cultural phenomenon of live-coded music exemplifies the computational production of novelty. Live-coding musicians improvise by writing source code which instantaneously plays out loud. I examine live-coding programs and artists’ reflections to propose that the new emerges at the interface of software and musician for the duration of live-coding performances. I also draw from Henri Bergson’s work on creative processes, which emphasizes improvisation and immediacy, to attest to the salience of live-coded music as a study in digital novelty. + + The final section of the paper situates my arguments politically. I write that digital capitalism secures its hegemony by means of algorithmic homogenization, statistical prediction, and cybernetic enclosure, and proceeds as an unfolding of similitude. That which is wholly new, I claim, defies and subverts this normative political program. + participants: [22] + +- id : 23 + title_ : lookingGlass + lang_ : EN + format: Talk + ref : lookingGlass + date : 2020-09-20 00:00 + description: | + lookingGlass: + A Digital Immersive Theatre and Gaming Experience + + lookingGlass developed from a question NYC theatre company Mangeont asked itself late last September: + Can we, given today’s social, political, economic, and ecological realities, responsibly maintain hope? + Reading this back today, it strikes with different, but not dampened, significance. + Taking Murray Bookchin’s phrase “Demand the impossible” as a guide, the aim of the project was always to explore the possibility of a “better world,” whatever that may mean. The process was to be one of public engagement, wherein the artists involved would all participate in a personal interview with company members, and subsequently create a piece of art responding to that connective, imaginative experience, which would then be incorporated into a staged show entitled The Future is Not a Dream. + Though the performance dates for the theatre version were postponed, the project has been completely re-envisioned for the virtual world we currently inhabit. + The resulting project, lookingGlass, is an online immersive gaming experience, built with Unity, that functions as a site for virtual interaction with recorded artwork, giving the audience-player agency in their participation, much as would be encouraged at a live interactive show. This, combined with (secret) live elements and web interaction push the bounds of what a video game can be, offering a potentially unique digital art experience presenting the work of a wide range of visual, audio, text, and mixed media artists. + The interviews that are at the core of the process, held over the course of March and April, and the resulting artistic responses, bear witness to the reality each day has brought with it since the onset of the global pandemic. They mark out space for pain, but also for joy, for longing, and + Yes + For hope as well. + participants: [23] + +- id : 24 + title_ : Identifying digital coercion - the means of re-decentralization + lang_ : EN + format: Talk + ref : Identifying-digital-coercion + date : 2020-09-20 00:00 + description: | + In the last decade, several public stories have hit the headlines, underlining the necessity to rethink our relation to digital technologies and our behavior with regard to privacy. Whether it be Snowden’s revelations, Cambridge Analytica, or Facebook political advertising, all of these narratives seem to turn public opinion towards skepticism and defiance. However, they also seem to dissimulate the more subtle means of coercion existing in the digital realm, both technical and psycho-sociological aspects. In 2018, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who invented what is now known as the World Wide Web, gave an interview in which he admits that “the web has failed instead of served humanity, as it was supposed to have done, and failed in many places”. He had envisioned a system that would provide means of empowerment its users. He thought, as some still do, that a standardized platform in which people would be able to participate openly in the elaboration of a common interest could provide a radical shift from a centralized capitalist political system. Nonetheless, this has proven to be a failure. By his own admission, the web has become quite the opposite : centralization has brought monopoly to only a handful of services, hiding behind a Utopian vision embodied in personalized services and recommendations. We think that this failure also illustrates the lack of understanding the public has of the implicit technical dogma guiding online services and their technical interdependence. How can we accurately identify coercion and the potential means of re-decentralizing ? We propose to analyze this re-decentralization via these talking points : 1) the psycho-sociological analysis of the relation between one’s opinion and the tools of capitalist coercion, 2) the technical aspects of the dissimulated interdependence of various services, notably privately owned and/or controlled APIs. + participants: [24] + +- id : 25 + title_ : Melancholic Cryptonymy and the Aesthetic Threshold of Detectability- The Blue Conceptualists, The Haunted Painter and The Existential Crisis of the Cadaver. + lang_ : EN + format: Talk + ref : Melancholic-Cryptonymy-and + date : 2020-09-20 00:00 + description: | + Where the melancholic is resistant to mourn what is understood in + psychoanalysis as the lost object, which instead of being replaced + by the process of ‘introjection’ is ‘incorporated’ or ‘internally + vomited’ into the subject forging a psychic crypt of which the + phantom is harboured, I propose that due to the failed promises of + modernity, hauntological practices resist to mourn the loss of the + future it’s movement is denied by ‘incorporating’ it; signalled by + visceral, linguistic disjecture and encrypted transmissions that + are looped, relayed and brought back in coded ways, the operation + of the psychic crypt, generated and sustained by repetition, is + symptomatic of the function hauntological practices aestheticise + by way of regurgitating and renewing un-activated potentials of + the past for future constructs. + + If repetition is at the heart of hauntological practices providing + an aesthetic threshold of detectability into melancholic + cryptonymy, then the representation of this neurosis as a cultural + movement can only respond to the ontological and temporal + displacement of the present Colin Davis describes as ‘the figure + of the ghost at that which is neither present, nor absent, neither + dead nor alive’, (Davis, 2005, p. 373) by bequeathing the slow + cancellation of the future: ‘Repetition’ as understood by Blanchot + in the context of trauma is ‘neither mournful nor nostalgic, the + undesired return, repetition, the ultimate over and over, general + collapse, destruction of the present’. (Blanchot, 1995, p9). + + Incorporating the loss of the future, on the side of the + pathology, not the cure, re-acting, repeating and escalating the + symptom of the psychoanalytical dream, The Blue Conceptualists of + Ryan Gander, the practice of the haunted painter Vanessa Disler + and the existential crisis of Ed Atkins’ cadavers are emblems my + research investigates through the gauze of Vico’s eternal + recurrence; contextualising the model of history as an auto- + cannibalistic feedback loop which reiterates and sustains itself + by endlessly living out its own death. + + Works that have informed and help shape my research are as + follows: + + -Abraham, Nicholas and Torok, Maria. The Wolf Man’s Magic Word: A + Cryptonymy. University of Minnesota Press, 1986. + + -Atkins, Ed. A Primer for Cadavers. Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2016. + -Blanchot, Maurice. The Writing of the Disaster. University of + + Nebraska Press, 1995. + -Fisher, Mark. Ghosts Of My Life. Writings on Depression, + + Hauntology and Lost Futures. Zero Books, 2014. + -McCarthy, Tom. C. Jonathan Cape, 2010. + -Rickels, Laurence. A. Aberrations of Mourning. Writing on German + + Crypts. Wayne State University Press, 1988. + -Jay, Martin. ‘The Apocalyptic Imagination and the Inability to + + Mourn’ in Force Fields: Between Intellectual History and Cultural + + Critique. Routledge, 1993. + -Davis, Colin. “Hauntology, spectres and phantoms.” French + + Studies. July 2005: 373-379. + -Levinas, Emmanuel. “Is Ontology Fundamental?” Philosophy Today. + + Summer 1989: 121-129. + -McCarthy, Tom. (2019) RCA SoAH Research Presents: Tom McCarthy + + ‘The Psychotic Document. This is Tomorrow [Youtube]. Available at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7gNa8HSj7s&t=3340s + -Kelly, Stuart and McCarthy, Tom. (2010) Tom McCarthy 2010 Event. + + Edinburgh International Book Festival 2010. Edinburgh + International Book Festival [Podcast]. Available at: https:// + www.edbookfest.co.uk/media-gallery/item/tom-mccarthy + + -Rourke, Lee and McCarthy, Tom. (2010) C - Tom McCarthy in + conversation with Lee Rourke. London Review Bookshop [Podcast]. + Available at: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/256-london-review- + bookshop-pod-31104489/episode/c-tom-mccarthy-in- + conversation-32362196/ + participants: [25] + +- id : 26 + title_ : Things are people too + lang_ : EN + format: Talk + ref : Things-are-people + date : 2020-09-20 00:00 + description: | + “Animism had endowed things with souls; industrialism makes souls into things.” - Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno + + The talk circles around notions of care for the material and more specifically for the objects that we surround ourselves with. Ontological design derives from Heidegger how we not only design objects, but also how these objects design our ontologies. Consumer electronics became steady companions in our life. Not only do we interact with them on a regular base, they also accompany us throughout the day. We could call them companion objects, following Donna Haraway’s concept of companion species — electronics and people, who are bonded in significant otherness. + + These electronic objects are highly designed and branded experiences, to be consumed and discarded. They gift us a membership of specific cultural demographics. They’re not made to last, unlike you would expect from an expensive kitchen knife or a pair of good shoes. Their frictionless design makes them easily replaceable, which also expresses itself in the sheer unrepairability. Following this lines of thought, design practices disable not only the care for the object, but also our understanding of the importance to care for the material. + + Consumer electronics become mediators of ontological affordances. + + Repair practices break this dependence on exploitative entities. They root us firmly back into the material. Alternative ways of caring for companion objects are also found in shintoistic practice. This is exemplified by Hari-Kuyō, a burial festival for broken-needles, in which these are honored for their services and then recycled. Animistic epistemologies enable us to level the ontological field and create social ties to objects. These epistemologies then enable different ways to care and respect the material. In the light of the environmental impact of electronics, cared for and long-living companion objects seem to be a desirable alternative. + participants: [26] + +- id : 27 + title_ : Shock Doctrine as a Service + lang_ : EN + format: Talk + ref : Shock-Doctrine-as + date : 2020-09-20 00:00 + description: | + The last fifteen years has seen a surge of interest in decentralised technology. From well-funded blockchain projects like IPFS to the emergence of large scale information networks such as Dat, Scuttlebutt and ActivityPub, this is renewed life in peer-to-peer technologies; a renaissance that enjoys widespread growth, driven by the desire for platform commons and community self-determination. These are goals that are fundamentally at odds with – and a response to – the incumbent platforms of social media, music and movie distribution and data storage. As we enter the 2020s, centralised power and decentralised communities are on the verge of outright conflict for the control of the digital public space. The resilience of centralised networks and the political organisation of their owners remains significantly underestimated by protocol activists. At the same time, the decentralised networks and the communities they serve have never been more vulnerable. The peer-to-peer community is dangerously unprepared for a crisis-fuelled future that has very suddenly arrived at their door. + participants: [27] + diff --git a/_data/rf2020/participants.yml b/_data/rf2020/participants.yml index 733d28e..496fd24 100644 --- a/_data/rf2020/participants.yml +++ b/_data/rf2020/participants.yml @@ -1,22 +1,322 @@ +- id : 0 + fullname : Michelle Thorne + ref: Michelle-Thorne + pic: /assets/participants/michelle-thorne.jpg + pronouns : she/her + links : ['http://michellethorne.cc', 'https://twitter.com/thornet'] + bio: | + Michelle Thorne (@thornet) is a Senior Program Officer at the Mozilla Foundation and leads the Open Design of Trust Things (OpenDoTT) PhD program with Mozilla and the University of Dundee. She founded Mozilla’s Open Internet of Things Studio, the Mozilla Festival and Maker Party. She is currently interested in making the internet fossil-free. + events: [0] + - id : 1 - fullname : Andrew van Hyfte - ref: andrew-van-hyfte + fullname : Evan Raskob + ref: Evan-Raskob + pic: /assets/participants/evan-raskob.jpg pronouns : he/him - location : Austin, Texas U.S.A - links : ["https://www.are.na/andrew-van-hyfte", "https://www.hyperisland.com", "https://www.frogdesign.com"] - bio : "Andrew is a designer and strategist currently working at frog; focusing on emerging markets and aesthetic futures in order to imagine brave new ventures. Previously a graduate of Scandinavia’s preeminent experimental design institution, Hyper Island, and investigator/collaborator of mythopoetic modes of teaching in partnership with Barcelona’s Internet Age Media’s 2020 IAM Weekend." + links : ['http://pixelist.info', 'https://twitter.com/game_peek', 'https://twitter.com/evanraskob'] + bio: | + Evan Raskob is an interactive artist, game designer, livecoding performer, and educator. Evan has worked for the past 10+ years on installation, concerts, live performances, games, and fine art. For the past 3 years he has developed games for understanding complex problems as part of his teaching and research, including Peek. Evan, as BITLIP, also demonstrated how technology can creatively the arts by livecoding 3D printers to make techno music. He also teaches Physical Computing at Goldsmiths University, and previously taught design at the Royal College of Art in London. events: [1] + - id : 2 - fullname: Cade Diehm - ref: cade-diehm - pronouns : he/him - location : Berlin, Germany - links : ["https://twitter.com/helveticade", "https://newdesigncongress.org"] - bio : "Cade is the founder of the New Design Congress, a research group developing a nuanced understanding of technology's role as a social, political and environmental accelerant. He spent ten years embedded in digital infrastructure and security projects in six countries. After his studies, he consulted with government and telecommunications clients with Deloitte Australia. He prototyped Signal, the secure messaging app, with Open Whisper Systems in 2014, led design and strategy at the early cryptocurrency fintech CoinJar and was Chief Creative Officer at SpiderOak, a Snowden-approved cloud storage company. Prior to founding the New Design Congress he led design and information security research at Tactical Tech, a Berlin-based NGO that works to raise awareness of issues of data, privacy and technology in societies." + fullname : Eyal Gruss + ref: Eyal-Gruss + pic: /assets/participants/eyal-gruss.png + pronouns : please use the Laadan male suffix -id when you are referring to meid and a male marker is lacking. e.g. you->youid, your->yourid, yours->yoursid, are->areid. if you are referring to a group of people of which Iid amid part, but the others do not adhere to such pronouns or copulas, please explicitly exclude meid from that group and reconjunct meid separately using myid ppacs. e.g. "they are my friends" -> either "theyid areid my friends" or "they, excluding him, are my friends, and he isid my friend". + links : ['http://eyalgruss.com', 'https://twitter.com/eyaler', 'http://facebook.com/eyal.gruss'] + bio: | + I am Eyal Gruss, a new-media artist and a machine learning practitioner. I also hold a PhD in physics. My artistic works explore and exploit the relationship between poetry, technology and society. My works include poetry, algorithmic poetry, interactive installations, digital performances, AI art and online interventions. I give talks and workshops on machine learning and computational creativity, with focus on making them accessible to artist and to the general public. My works were exhibited in Bloomfield Science Museum in Jerusalem, Bat-Yam Museum, Herzelia Museum for contemporary arts, Meter- Al-Meter festival, Ars-Electronica festival, Print Screen festival, Fresh Paint festival, Karov theater, DLD in Tel-Aviv, SVA in New York, Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum, Midarom Festival, Utopia Festival, Petach-Tikva Museum, Stuttrart FilmWinter and most importantly the Internet, to name a few. I am also running a opportunities newsletter and mini-residency for new-media artists. + events: [2] + - id : 3 - fullname: Caroline Sinders - ref: caroline-sinders + fullname : Yoav Lifshitz + ref: Yoav-Lifshitz + pic: nan + pronouns : nan + links : ['https://instagram.com/yoavthepirate'] + bio: | + Yoav Lifshitz (IL) is an artivist and and curator. In his work, he combines activism, culture jamming, critical engineering, and journalism. Lifshitz is the co-founder of the Captive Portal platform at the Center for Contemporary Art, Tel-Aviv, and the Israeli Pirate Party collective. In his current position, he is ArtUp Nation’s (wemakemoney.art) Chief Strategy Artist and managing partner. + + Showcased at Athens Digital Arts Festival, Finger Lake Environmental Film Festival (jury prize recipient), National Arts Festival of South Africa, SciArt Magazine, Jerusalem Art Conference, Art Meets Radical Openness, and more. Curated exhibitions and art projects at CCA Tel-Aviv, Musrara, Hayarkon 19 Gallery, Print Screen Festival, and more. Has taught art at Musrara multidisciplinary school of art and society New-Media department + events: [3] + +- id : 4 + fullname : Oliver Bream McIntosh & FuPro Collective + ref: Oliver-Bream-McIntosh + pic: nan + pronouns : he/him + links : ['https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliver-bream-mcintosh-628558102/'] + bio: | + Ollie was born in London and has lived, studied and worked in Canada, Brazil, Cuba, France, Belgium, and Italy. his academic endeavours began in Linguistics, but have since led him on an adventure across disciplines, taking in Anthropology, Political Economy, and Complex Systems, onto a Master’s in Sustainable Development, and then another in Economics. His work today calls on both a fluency in many cultures and languages, as well as on his previous studies, queerness, and a systems mindset. Currently balancing his time between a pro-bono role as a director of a social-arts enterprise in London, a research fellowship at a think tank in Rio, freelance foresight work focused on democratising cities, collaborator roles in a handful of global and local activist communities, and teaching an award-winning Futures Studies course at a UK university, he spends much of his time thinking and dancing at the nexus of pedagogy, participation and Futures. + events: [4] + +- id : 5 + fullname : Andrew van Hyfte + ref: Andrew-van-Hyfte + pic: /assets/participants/andrew-van-hyfte.png + pronouns : he/him + links : ['https://www.are.na/andrew-van-hyfte', 'https://twitter.com/andrewvanhyfte'] + bio: | + Andrew is a designer and strategist currently working at frog; focusing on emerging markets and aesthetic futures in order to imagine brave new ventures. + + Previously a graduate of Scandinavia’s preeminent experimental design institution, Hyper Island, and investigator/collaborator of mythopoetic modes of teaching in partnership with Barcelona’s Internet Age Media’s 2020 IAM Weekend. + + www.frogdesign.com www.hyperisland.com + events: [5] + +- id : 6 + fullname : Caroline Sinders + ref: Caroline-Sinders + pic: /assets/participants/caroline-sinders.png + pronouns : she/her/they/them + links : ['https://carolinesinders.com/', 'https://twitter.com/carolinesinders'] + bio: | + Caroline Sinders is a machine-learning-design researcher and artist. For the past few years, she has been examining the intersections of natural language processing, artificial intelligence, abuse, online harassment, and politics in digital, conversational spaces. Sinders is the founder of Convocation Design + Research, an agency focusing on the intersections of machine learning, user research, designing for public good, and solving difficult communication problems. As a designer and researcher, she has worked with Amnesty International, Intel, IBM Watson, the Wikimedia Foundation, and others. Currently, she is a fellow with the Harvard Kennedy School exploring trust patterns designed to trick users in social networks, and a senior fellow with the Mozilla Foundation exploring AI, ethics, and society. Sinders has held fellowships with the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Eyebeam, STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, and the International Center of Photography. Her work has been featured in the Tate Exchange in Tate Modern, Victoria and Albert Museum, MoMA PS1, the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Slate, Quartz, and the Channels Festival as well as others. Sinders holds a Masters from New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program + events: [6] + +- id : 7 + fullname : april vendetta + ref: april-vendetta + pic: /assets/participants/april-vendetta.jpg + pronouns : they/them + links : ['http://archive.org/details/@human_trash_dump', 'https://instagram.com/april_vendetta'] + bio: | + april vendetta (they/them) explores themes of control, labor, and sexual play through diy surveillance to relay the physicality and the resilience of the body. + + An archive has the ability to overwrite the dominant narrative. An archive has the ability to give people access to ideas outside of a suppressed framework that has been put in place to keep the status quo. Having empathy is a small step in the long process of reconnecting with ourselves. Home movies or home recordings (if you were able to have them as a child) can be wonderful and nostalgic snippets of memories but can also contain a lot of grief as well as many other emotions. When something becomes fragmented it does not necessarily need to be put back together in the exact same way that it was taken apart. In fact, we would say that with the help of a self-defining intentional community that something much more compassionate can form. A fragmented archive is not an archive with missing pieces. A fragmented archive is a way to visually understand a complex set of numerous entangled connections and what it could mean to play a small part of a larger whole. + events: [7] + +- id : 8 + fullname : H.E. Max Haarich + ref: H.E.-Max-Haarich + pic: /assets/participants/max-haarich.jpg + pronouns : He + links : ['http://uzupis.de', 'https://instagram.com/uzupis_munich', 'http://facebook.com/@uzmuc'] + bio: | + Max Haarich is a Munich-based freelance consultant on ethics in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and ambassador of the Republic of Užupis. He studied communication science in Aachen (DE) and political theory in New York (US), and worked as a research assistant on innovative capability and general AI. During his time as a manager at Europe’s leading innovation and start-up center UnternehmerTUM, he founded the Munich Embassy of the Lithuanian artist republic Užupis. The embassy builds bridges between arts and technology and engages in policy making for ethical AI.Here is a link to my favorite article about the Republic of Užupis any my ambitions in Munich https://www.playboy.com/read/uzupis-utopiaMy favorite two works are - the Munich version of the Užupis constitution. It is the worlds first constitution with an article on AI and the second Užupis constitution outside of Užupis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U%C5%BEupis#Constitution_of_U%C5%BEupis- this prototyping project to destruct capitalist culture, that nobody ever liked but me :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VvlKBq5k4E + events: [8] + +- id : 9 + fullname : Irini Papadimitriou + ref: Irini-Papadimitriou + pic: /assets/participants/irini-papadimitriou.jpg + pronouns : she, her + links : ['https://futureeverything.org/people/irini-papadimitriou/', 'https://www.vam.ac.uk/blog/author/irini-papadimitriou', 'https://twitter.com/irini_mirena', 'https://instagram.com/irini_mirena'] + bio: | + Irini Papadimitriou is a curator and cultural manager, whose practice draws on interdisciplinary and critical discourse to explore the impact of technology in society and culture, and the role of art in helping us engage with contemporary challenges. Currently Creative Director at FutureEverything, an innovation lab and arts organisation in Manchester, she was previously Digital Programmes Manager at the V&A, where she initiated and curated the annual Digital Design Weekend festival and Digital Futures programmes; and Head of New Media Arts Development at Watermans. Her exhibition, Artificially Intelligent, was on display at the V&A in 2018 exploring our complex relationships with technology, invisible technological infrastructures and boundaries of humanness. She has been a co-curator for the Arts & Culture experience at Mozilla Festival, with the most recent project ‘Trustworthy AI: Imagining Better Machine Decision Making’ in October 2019. She is a co-founder of Maker Assembly, a critical gathering about maker culture, and an Associate at IWM Institute. She has been a recipient of curatorial research programmes including MOBIUS (Finnish Institute), Art Fund, Mondriaan Fonds and British Council, and has served as a jury member for Prix Ars Electronica, Lumen Prize, EU STARTS and ACM Siggraph. + events: [9] + +- id : 10 + fullname : Recyclism aka Benjamin Gaulon + ref: Recyclism-aka-Benjamin + pic: /assets/participants/benjamin-gaulon.jpg + pronouns : He + links : ['http://recyclism.com/', 'https://github.com/recyclism', 'https://twitter.com/recyclism'] + bio: | + Benjamin Gaulon is an artist, researcher, educator and cultural producer. He has previously released work under the name "recyclism". His research focuses on the limits and failures of information and communication technologies; planned obsolescence, consumerism and disposable society; ownership and privacy; through the exploration of détournement, hacking and recycling. His projects can be softwares, installations, pieces of hardware, web based projects, interactive works, street art interventions and are, when applicable, open source. + + He is currently director of NØ SCHOOL, a non profit organisation whose mission is to support and promote emerging art and design research and practices that address the social and environmental impacts of information and communication technologies, in France and beyond. Co-organiser of NØ SCHOOL NEVERS 2019. And he is the CEO of IoDT the Internet of Dead Things Institute. + + He has been associate professor at Parsons Paris, where he was the program director of the MFA Design + Technology and the BFA Art, Media and Technology, program that he has developed and launched in 2013. Before that he was lecturer at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, associate researcher at CTVR / the telecommunications research centre at Trinity College and director of DATA (Dublin Art and Technology Association) in Dublin. + events: [10] + +- id : 11 + fullname : César Neri + ref: Cesar-Neri + pic: /assets/participants/cesar-neri.png + pronouns : he/him they/them + links : ['https://cesarneri.com/', 'https://instagram.com/cesar.a.ner'] + bio: | + César is a digital designer and architect hailing from Guadalajara, Mexico and currently based in Brooklyn, New York. His personal practice explores the role of design and technology in the pursuit of decolonizing collective memory and identity in contemporary Latinx culture. He specifically investigates living Maya cosmologies and ontologies as a way to conceptualize alternatives to our hegemonic institutions, structures, and values. + + His most recent work, Mexico 44, illustrates a fully westernized Mexican state in which indigenous ways of living and being are hyper-commodified and exported around the globe. The all too familiar urban strategies, graphics, and marketing schemes elaborated for the project hope to foster a critical dialogue that translate the argument currently put forth by the Zapatista communities of Southern Mexico in the face of rapid, capital-driven development. + events: [11] + +- id : 12 + fullname : Antoine Simeão Schalk + ref: Antoine-Simeao-Schalk + pic: nan + pronouns : he/she/they + links : ['https://instagram.com/antantantw'] + bio: | + Azadbek Bekchanov and Antoine Simeão Schalk are two fine arts students at HEAD-Genève (BA and MA). They met in coincidental occasions at les urbaines festival and have been collaborating since, sharing interests for decolonial ecologies, race and gender issues, queer studies, political theory as well as resistance methods to techno-capitalism. Their practices mix research with video elements, prints, occupation of urban spaces. They strive to highlight the complexity behind migration phenomenon, especially how identity is recomposed through diaspora affiliation. + Wet and sticky, antoine simeão schalk is a fluid creature interested in questions regarding queer and non-white bodies. active in the fields of post-colonialism, gender and queer studies, politics of representation, she used to read bourdieu as she reads dustan today. their recognition of privileges is fundamental and regards it as a prerequisite for any research. with a sun sign in cancer, he aims at blurring, breaking, burning the frontiers between activism, research and homage. co-curating artist-run-space one gee in fog in chêne-bourg, their work has been published in rosa mercedes, the magazine of the harun farocki institute and are currently collaborating on a publication with edition assemblage. + events: [12] + +- id : 13 + fullname : Anna Tokareva + ref: Anna-Tokareva + pic: /assets/participants/anna-tokareva.jpg + pronouns : She / Her + links : ['http://annatokareva.net/', 'https://instagram.com/some.small.things'] + bio: | + My research-led practice explores entanglements between technoscience and contemporary mythologies, at micro and planetary scales. Currently preoccupied with the subtleties and fictions of post-Cold War technopolitics and ecologically configured collaborations and fungi inspired parasitic structures. Interested in manifesting alternatives to systemic imbalances; planting intoxicating thought-weeds. I make digital art, design, and write. + + I completed a Master of Creative Technologies (First Class Honours) at Colab, AUT and was selected to join Strelka’s The New Normal, a postgraduate research programme and think tank. My book essay, “Nooscope: The Political Myth of Planetary Scale Computation,” was published by the Digital Cultures Institute in late 2018. + + 2020: Currently based in London, UK + 1998: Migrated to Tāmaki-makau-rau / Auckland, + Aotearoa / New Zealand + 1988: Born in Rostov-na-Donu, (then) USSR / (now) Russia + events: [13] + +- id : 14 + fullname : Stephanie Kyuyoung Lee + ref: Stephanie-Kyuyoung-Lee + pic: /assets/participants/stephanie-kyuyoung-lee.jpeg pronouns : She/her - location : Berlin, Germany - links : ["https://twitter.com/carolinesinders", https://carolinesinders.com/] - bio : "Caroline Sinders is a machine-learning-design researcher and artist. For the past few years, she has been examining the intersections of natural language processing, artificial intelligence, abuse, online harassment, and politics in digital, conversational spaces. Sinders is the founder of Convocation Design + Research, an agency focusing on the intersections of machine learning, user research, designing for public good, and solving difficult communication problems. As a designer and researcher, she has worked with Amnesty International, Intel, IBM Watson, the Wikimedia Foundation, and others. Currently, she is a fellow with the Harvard Kennedy School exploring trust patterns designed to trick users in social networks, and a senior fellow with the Mozilla Foundation exploring AI, ethics, and society. Sinders has held fellowships with the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Eyebeam, STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, and the International Center of Photography. Her work has been featured in the Tate Exchange in Tate Modern, Victoria and Albert Museum, MoMA PS1, the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Slate, Quartz, and the Channels Festival as well as others. Sinders holds a Masters from New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program." + links : ['https://www.officeofhumanresources.com/', 'https://instagram.com/officeofhumanresources'] + bio: | + Stephanie Kyuyoung Lee is a spatial practitioner and researcher based in New York. Her practice often explores the intersection of post-colonial anxiety and utopian labor systems in the built/non-built environment. Trained as an architect, Stephanie studied Cultural Anthropology and Studio Art at Wesleyan University. She worked in Tokyo, Beijing, Myanmar and Seoul before attending Rice University School of Architecture where she was a recipient of several fellowships and grants. Her most recent work, Ring-Around O’ Roses, proposed a hacking device against the extractive economy of floriculture in the Global South. She is the director of Office of Human Resources, a design studio operating under a community driven design approach. + events: [14] + +- id : 15 + fullname : Mathieu Payn + ref: Mathieu-Payn + pic: /assets/participants/mathieu-payn.jpeg + pronouns : nan + links : ['https://twitter.com/le_youki88', 'https://instagram.com/le_youki'] + bio: | + I had the pleasure to study philosophy and social sciences at the Université of Lausanne and to continue diving into social philosophy through a master degree at the Universität Lucern. After 4 years working in the cultural sector all around Switzerland, i came back to Lausanne to study Information Systems and assist Prof. Solange Ghernaouti at the HEC faculty of the university. + events: [15] + +- id : 16 + fullname : Mushon Zer-Aviv + ref: Mushon-Zer-Aviv + pic: /assets/participants/mushon-zer-aviv.jpg + pronouns : He/Him + links : ['http://mushon.com', 'https://twitter.com/mushon'] + bio: | + Mushon Zer-Aviv is a designer, an educator and a media activist based in Tel Aviv. His love/hate relationship with data informs his design work, art pieces, activism, research, lectures, workshops & city life. Among Mushon’s collaborations, he is the CO-founder of Shual.com – a foxy design studio; YouAreNotHere.org – a tour of Gaza through the streets of Tel Aviv; Kriegspiel – a computer game version of the Situationist Game of War; the Normalizing Machine – exploring algorithmic prejudice; the AdNauseam extension – clicking ads so you don’t have to; and multiple government transparency and civic participation initiatives with the Public Knowledge Workshop; Mushon also designed the maps for Waze.com and led the design of Localize.city. Mushon is an alumni of Eyebeam – an art and technology center in New York. He teaches digital media as a senior faculty member at Shenkar School of Engineering and Design. Previously he taught new media research at NYU and Open Source design at Parsons the New School of Design and in Bezalel Academy of Art & Design. Read him at Mushon.com and follow him at @mushon + events: [16] + +- id : 17 + fullname : Ellen Lapper + ref: Ellen-Lapper + pic: /assets/participants/ellen-lapper.jpg + pronouns : She/her + links : ['http://apian.ch/Portfolio_EllenLapper_2020.pdf', 'https://instagram.com/elaps'] + bio: | + Ellen Lapper is a British visual anthropologist, artist and researcher exploring different mediums to move away from traditional text-based research. She largely engages in participatory projects in an attempt to redistribute hierarchies between researchers and subjects. Currently Ellen is pursuing two projects, both stemming from personal experiences within the relevant communities. One is committed to telling stories with the aim of widening the discussion on colonised peoples and challenge homogenised and racialised ideologies of British identity. This research explores postcolonial memory and place-making through a long-term ethnography and has been made into an ongoing film. The second project investigates the digital afterlife – an area of interest stemming from the death of her father in 2015. So far, an article on how social media has changed the way we grieve has been published https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839434970-010 and research is still ongoing, with a visual element in progress. Both projects have been recently presented at the EASA 2020 conference, and the work on postcolonialism contributed to the RAI Film Festival and Forecast Forum Berlin, both 2019. Ellen holds an MA in Visual and Media Anthropology (Freie Universität Berlin) and a BA in Fine Art (International) from the University of Leeds. She has long-term professional experience from previous employment at Galerie Barbara Wien, Berlin, and is also a translator and writer in the fields of contemporary art and anthropology.In a time in which death is moving rapidly online (funeral streaming services during COVID-19, #RIPcelebrity hashtags trending on Twitter), we all have to face the question of what happens to our own digital afterlives, as well as those of our loved ones. Digital death is the ultimate clash of familiar human concepts of time with the ubiquitous computational time. Facebook and Instagram offer possibilities for “immortalisation” with a memorialised profile, Twitter only offers deactivation. The need to humanise algorithms is now vital; Facebook friend suggestions and birthday reminders of the deceased aren’t exactly perceptive. Cue capitalising companies offering to use AI to analyse activity and learn how to post for you after death. But are their promises really immortal? And if, as predictions suggest, the dead soon outnumber the living on Facebook, who’s going to pay for their upkeep? Dead people aren’t very useful consumers; they won’t be clicking on those targeted ads. So what happens to the feedback loop when it’s the deceased generating the data? And who ultimately owns this data? This research began from a personal note following the death of my father. Unprepared, I found myself clinging to the digital traces that remained of him. Using participatory methods, I conversed with Facebook users who were vocalising a death on the platform. This research explores the presentation of the self across public platforms and negotiates a physical absence in light of a persistence digital presence. Anthropological research into death and grief online faces new challenges: omnipresent online traces, ethical algorithms, data storage and an online field-site. Essentially death is an inevitable accompaniment to our existence and, like in other fields, we are constantly catching up with technology and surrendering our control; this is no exception, perhaps we just need to acclimatise quicker than the companies.In a time in which death is moving rapidly online (funeral streaming services during COVID-19, #RIPcelebrity hashtags trending on Twitter), we all have to face the question of what happens to our own digital afterlives, as well as those of our loved ones. Digital death is the ultimate clash of familiar human concepts of time with the ubiquitous computational time. Facebook and Instagram offer possibilities for “immortalisation” with a memorialised profile, Twitter only offers deactivation. The need to humanise algorithms is now vital; Facebook friend suggestions and birthday reminders of the deceased aren’t exactly perceptive. Cue capitalising companies offering to use AI to analyse activity and learn how to post for you after death. But are their promises really immortal? And if, as predictions suggest, the dead soon outnumber the living on Facebook, who’s going to pay for their upkeep? Dead people aren’t very useful consumers; they won’t be clicking on those targeted ads. So what happens to the feedback loop when it’s the deceased generating the data? And who ultimately owns this data? This research began from a personal note following the death of my father. Unprepared, I found myself clinging to the digital traces that remained of him. Using participatory methods, I conversed with Facebook users who were vocalising a death on the platform. This research explores the presentation of the self across public platforms and negotiates a physical absence in light of a persistence digital presence. Anthropological research into death and grief online faces new challenges: omnipresent online traces, ethical algorithms, data storage and an online field-site. Essentially death is an inevitable accompaniment to our existence and, like in other fields, we are constantly catching up with technology and surrendering our control; this is no exception, perhaps we just need to acclimatise quicker than the companies. + events: [17] + +- id : 18 + fullname : Guillaume Slizewicz + ref: Guillaume-Slizewicz + pic: /assets/participants/guillaume-slizewicz.jpg + pronouns : he/his + links : ['www.guillaumeslizewicz.com', 'https://twitter.com/Guillaume_Slize', 'https://instagram.com/guillaume_slizewicz'] + bio: | + Guillaume Slizewicz is a French designer working at Urban Species, an interdisciplinary research group focusing on citizen participation in the city of Brussels. His research is at the crossroad of social sciences and design. Having completed Politics, Philosophy and Economics at the University of Kent in Canterbury and Sciences-po Lille, he specialized in Product development and design at KEA Copenhagen School of Design and Technology. He is interested in the interstices offered by electronic objects in the urban spaces, the unexpected behavior that glitches provoke and the surprise created by misused hardware systems and hijacked algorithms. He is a member of Algolit, a workgroup around FLOSS-literature, free code and texts, recently focusing more on machine learning and AI. + events: [18] + +- id : 19 + fullname : Nicolas Nova + ref: Nicolas-Nova + pic: /assets/participants/nicolas-nova.jpeg + pronouns : he/him + links : ['http://nicolasnova.net/', 'https://twitter.com/nicolasnova', 'https://instagram.com/nicolasnova'] + bio: | + I am an ethnographer and design researcher, working both as co-founder of The Near Future Laboratory, a design fiction consultancy based in Europe and California, and Associate Professor at the Geneva School of Arts and Design (HEAD – Genève). I have a multidisciplinary background in social sciences, information technologies, design and natural sciences. I have been involved in and identified with hybrid design / futures practices such as “design fiction” for 10 years, and have been instrumental in bringing this approach to wider attention through presenting, teaching and writing, as well as speculative projects. Most of them can be found online: http://nearfuturelaboratory.com/ + events: [19] + +- id : 20 + fullname : Gauthier Roussilhe + ref: Gauthier-Roussilhe + pic: /assets/participants/gauthier-roussilhe.jpg + pronouns : He/Him + links : ['https://www.gauthierroussilhe.com/en', 'https://twitter.com/AsWalterRobin'] + bio: | + I’m a designer and researcher studying how the environmental crisis modifies ways of designing products, services and systems. Within this framework my practice and my research questions focus mostly on digital design and environmental impacts of the digital industry. I advocate for transition design in France and create open source and free education for designers. + events: [20] + +- id : 21 + fullname : Reina Suyeon Mun + ref: Reina-Suyeon-Mun + pic: /assets/participants/reina-suyeon-mun.jpg + pronouns : nan + links : ['http://www.outerprobe.squarespace.com', 'https://instagram.com/outerprobe'] + bio: | + Architecture graduate working with speculative narratives, new media on science, art and technology. Press link: https://www.clotmag.com/news/insight-inside-reina-suyeon-muns-space-time-artworks + events: [21] + +- id : 22 + fullname : Emma Stamm + ref: Emma-Stamm + pic: nan + pronouns : She/her + links : ['http://www.o-culus.com', 'https://twitter.com/turing_tests'] + bio: | + Emma Stamm holds a Ph.D. in Cultural and Social Thought from Virginia Tech, where she teaches courses in digital media studies. Her interests include continental philosophy, critical technology studies, and political theory, and her current research theorizes the normative impact of digital methods on scientific knowledge. She is also a freelance writer and musician. + events: [22] + +- id : 23 + fullname : Emily Twines + ref: Emily-Twines + pic: /assets/participants/emily-twines.jpeg + pronouns : she/her/hers + links : ['www.emilytwines.com', 'https://instagram.com/emily.twines'] + bio: | + Emily Twines is an interdisciplinary performance and technology artist with experience directing, writing, designing and programming interactive theatrical elements, and working both solo and in highly collaborative atmospheres. She earned her MA in Theatre History and Criticism as well as her MFA in Performance and Interactive Media Arts at Brooklyn College (2017, 2020). As an artist and a leftist, it is important to her that her artwork contribute to society in constructive and explicit ways. Her current project, lookingGlass, which she is thrilled to be continuing with the help of Adrian Cameron and Michael Redman, thus strives to introduce the idea of “better” back into mainstream cultural imaginaries, to strengthen autonomous communities, and to open a new venue for pointed political conversation. Other recent works include I heard an echo, a collaborative installation at The Weeksville Heritage Center, for which she provided video and interactivity elements as well as “On Progress” With Professor Steward Orwell Teric III, a solo drag satire that interrogated western progress narratives through performance and video interactivity + events: [23] + +- id : 24 + fullname : Kim Sacks + ref: Kim-Sacks + pic: /assets/participants/kim-sacks.png + pronouns : nan + links : ['www.sacks.fr'] + bio: | + Researcher and teacher at Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris 1, PhD in Art, specialized in Media & Technology. My research focuses on the intricate relation of crowds and coercion, particularly the technical and technological aspects of crowd behavior. I also work as a programmer/designer and adviser for the development of services. As both a professional and an academic, my work tends to favor the theoretical implications of misunderstood technical aspects of digital culture leading to crowd manipulation. I am also a FOSS advocate. + events: [24] + +- id : 25 + fullname : Charlotte Norwood + ref: Charlotte-Norwood + pic: /assets/participants/charlotte-norwood.jpg + pronouns : She/Her + links : ['https://instagram.com/cltnwd_'] + bio: | + The research based practice of Charlotte Norwood is habitual of a + theoretical, critical and journalistic nature that is often used + as conceptual software to formulate fictional texts and less + frequently, physical artworks. Her current project on ‘Melancholic + Cryptonymy and the Aesthetic Threshold of Detectability’ + investigates the work of hauntological artists and the melancholic + antiheroes of literature in relation to psychoanalysis and + technology as a form of encrypted and protracted mourning. + + Since graduating with a BA in Fine Art and Critical Studies from + Goldsmiths, University of London, Charlotte Norwood has exhibited + across Europe and at Raven Row, London, has studied under Ceal + Floyer at the HFBK in Hamburg, worked for Frieze magazine and + guest lectured and tutored at Manchester University. She currently + lives and works in Berlin. + events: [25] + +- id : 26 + fullname : Adrian Demleitner + ref: Adrian-Demleitner + pic: /assets/participants/adrian-demleitner.png + pronouns : they/them/he/him + links : ['https://github.com/thgie', 'https://thgie.ch', 'https://twitter.com/things__care', 'https://instagram.com/things.care'] + bio: | + I studied postindustrial design at Hyperwerk Basel and right now I’m doing a master in design research at MAD until 2022, focusing on technology and animism. Currently, I’m working as senior webdeveloper in Bern and until recently also as junior researcher at the Institute of Experimental Design and Media Cultures in Basel, Switzerland. + + My interests lay in the fields of critical thought on software and technology, design research, intersectional issues and the non- and more-than-human discourses. I’m active in these fields of inquiry through curatorial and artistic practices, design research as well as events focusing on knowledge transfer and participation. + + I’m somewhat entangled in the DYI, hacking, queer and art scenes and I have a sensuous interest in the multispecies discourse. These struggles and poetics inform what I do, who I feel I am and where I feel home. It’s a mess, but a beautiful one. + + Furthermore, I’m a 🐝 beekeeper (Warré), love to engage the world through 🍲 cooking and have a good hand with 🌱 plants. + events: [26] + +- id : 27 + fullname : Cade Diehm + ref: Cade-Diehm + pic: /assets/participants/cade-diehm.png + pronouns : he/him + links : ['https://newdesigncongress.org', 'https://twitter.com/helveticade'] + bio: | + Cade is the founder of the New Design Congress, a research group developing a nuanced understanding of technology's role as a social, political and environmental accelerant. He spent ten years embedded in digital infrastructure and security projects in six countries. After his studies, he consulted with government and telecommunications clients with Deloitte Australia. He prototyped Signal, the secure messaging app, with Open Whisper Systems in 2014, led design and strategy at the early cryptocurrency fintech CoinJar and was Chief Creative Officer at SpiderOak, a Snowden-approved cloud storage company. Prior to founding the New Design Congress he led design and information security research at Tactical Tech, a Berlin-based NGO that works to raise awareness of issues of data, privacy and technology in societies. + events: [27] + diff --git a/_layouts/participant.html b/_layouts/participant.html index 5e3ca15..b6e6546 100644 --- a/_layouts/participant.html +++ b/_layouts/participant.html @@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ ref: going-online