Art, AI and Everything Else
3 Dec 2020 (Thu) – 5 Dec 2020 (Sat)
Webinar (Online Conference)
For
over two decades, Art Center Nabi has been committed to exploring the role of
the arts and new technologies to gain new insight in human possibilities and
addressing social problems. Nabi has invited artists to develop projects that
use technology to overcome social divisions, counter to racial violence, debunk
stereotypes, as well as nurture emotional connectedness, cultural engagement,
political participation. In general, it has promoted the role of the arts in
enhancing social solidarity and operated on the assumption that it can improve
the quality of life.
In
celebration of two decades of practice Nabi will host a series of web-based
seminars.
3
web-based symposia spread over 3 days 3 - 5 December 2020
[Registration Link]
Registration period is closed. Zoom link for the webinar series has been sent to all applicants who have registered for the event.
Please contact us at the inquiry email address/number below if you have not received the link. Thank you.
[About the Event]
3 Dec 2020 (Thu) – 5 Dec 2020 (Sat) [3 days] – 90min/session
*The event will be held in English.
[About the Sessions & Speakers]
Session 1
Art, Technology and
the Cosmos
3 Dec 2020 (Thu) 18:00 ~ 19:30 (KST) / 10:00 ~ 11:30 (CET)
A
pan-demic is a good time to evoke the pan-demos. Mobility has become a central
feature of contemporary society. Art has been used as an advocate for flow, interaction
and exchange, as well as a way of opposing disruption, exploitation and
inequality. In this first seminar we throw open the scale of enquiry and
experimentation. Art is a technology, and Cosmos is the space-time of
everything. However, an ancient definition of cosmos refers to the activity of
making a space-time attractive for the Other. The recent developments in
contemporary art have been directed towards removing political boundaries and
enhancing sociality. When schedules, plans, and models for organizing our ‘liquid life’ are on pause, space-time becomes an object of anxiety. This first
session will be surveying the history of technology and how it brings us to the
point that we find ourselves. We will zoom out to the widest questions and zoom
in to specific examples from recent contemporary practices in art and
technology. We will explore the possibilities for critique, and the possibility
for art to stimulate sociality and solidarity in an era of masks and the fear
of contagion that too easily becomes fear of community. How will artists
conduct face-to-face encounters and operate skin-to-skin exchanges? Is a
virtual public sphere and life on Zoom enough?
Chair : Nikos Papastergiadis
Nikos
Papastergiadis is a (Greek / Australian) Director of the Research Unit in
Public Cultures and Professor at the School of Culture and Communication at the
University of Melbourne and Visiting Professor in the School of Art, Design and
Media, at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His current research
focuses on the investigation of the historical transformation of contemporary
art and cultural institutions by digital technology. His publications include Modernity
as Exile (1993), Dialogues in the Diaspora (1998), The Turbulence
of Migration (2000), Metaphor and Tension (2004) Spatial
Aesthetics: Art Place and the Everyday (2006), Cosmopolitanism and
Culture (2012), Ambient Perspectives (2014), On Art and Friendship (2020), Museums
of the Commons (2020).
Speaker : Maja Kuzmanovic
Maja
Kuzmanovic is a generalist—media artist, experience designer, writer, speaker
and process facilitator with a fondness for future-crafting. She is the
co-founder of FoAM, a pan-European network of transdisciplinary labs at the
intersection of art, science, nature and everyday life. Maja spends most of her
time in between fields and cultures, on the lookout for emergent patterns of
change. Her academic background is in design futures, interactive media and
transdisciplinary leadership. Her work has been recognised by the MIT's
Technology Review and the World Economic Forum, awarding her the titles of Top
100 Young Innovator and Young Global Leader.
Speaker : Sean Cubitt
Sean Cubitt
is Professor of Screen Studies at the University of Melbourne. His publications
include The Cinema Effect (MIT 2004), EcoMedia (Rodopi, 2005), The
Practice of Light (MIT 2014), Finite Media: Environmental Implications
of Digital Technologies (Duke, 2017) and Anecdotal Evidence: Ecocritique
from Hollywood to the Mass Image (OUP, 2020). Co-editor of The Ecocinema
Reader: Theory and Practice (AFI 2012) and Ecomedia: Key Issues
(Earthscan 2015) and series editor for Leonardo Books at MIT Press, his
research focuses on the history and philosophy of media, political aesthetics,
media art history, ecocritique, and practices of truth.
Respondent : Jennifer Gabrys
Jennifer Gabrys is Chair in Media, Culture and Environment in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge. She leads the Planetary Praxis research group, and is Principal Investigator on the ERC-funded project, Smart Forests: Transforming Environments into Social-Political Technologies. She also leads the Citizen Sense and AirKit projects, which investigate the use of environmental sensors for new modes of citizen involvement in environmental issues. Both of these projects have received funding from the European Research Council. Jennifer is the author of How to Do Things with Sensors (2019); Program Earth: Environmental Sensing Technology and the Making of a Computational Planet (2016); and Digital Rubbish: A Natural History of Electronics (2011).
Video Link: https://youtu.be/6MhkBOenSnQ
Session 2
The poverty of
philosophy after AI
4 Dec 2020 (Fri) 18:00 ~ 19:30 (KST) / 10:00 ~ 11:30 (CET)
In
2008 Chris Anderson declared that the data deluge had brought about the end of
theory. The speed of computation had not only marginalised but eliminated a
model of thinking that involved qualitative evaluation. How do we reimagine the
role of thinking in action? Is there action without thinking? Has thinking been
superseded by technologies of capture, storage and processing? AI and
algorithms have been internalised as a normal feature of everyday life. Their
banality eludes our attention while summoning deep anxieties. Do we have a
vocabulary and conceptual understanding that can keep pace with this change? In
this seminar we explore the disjunction between technological advances, modes
of thought and models of governance. We question the belatedness of philosophy’s grasp on
technology and the consequences of the differential speeds, places and
temporalities where technology, thought and politics operate.
Chair : Satinder Gill
Satinder
Gill is based with the Centre for Music and Science, Faculty of Music,
University of Cambridge. Following her PhD in Experimental Psychology (1995) at
the University of Cambridge, she has held a number of posts including: Research
Scientist with NTT's Basic Research Labs, Japan (1997-1999); Dialogue Team
Leader, CKIR, Finland and CSLI, Stanford University (2000-2003); and Senior
Research Fellow, Middlesex University, London (2004-2009). Her research
investigates the pragmatics of rhythm and sense-making in speech, gesture, and
music, as a critical lens on the changing nature of presence and tacit engagement
in face-to-face and technology-mediated communication; She is Managing Editor
of AI & Society: Knowledge, Culture and Communication, Editor of Cognition,
Communication, and Interaction: Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Interactive
Technology (2007), and author of Tacit Engagement: Beyond Interaction
(2015).
Speaker : Matteo Pasquinelli
Matteo
Pasquinelli (PhD) is Professor in Media Philosophy at the University of Arts
and Design, Karlsruhe, where he is coordinating the research group on
Artificial Intelligence and Media Philosophy KIM. He edited the anthology Alleys
of Your Mind: Augmented Intelligence and Its Traumas (Meson Press) and,
with Vladan Joler, the visual essay The Nooscope Manifested: AI as
Instrument of Knowledge Extractivism (nooscope.ai). His research focuses
the intersection of cognitive sciences, digital economy and machine
intelligence. For Verso Books he is preparing a monograph on the history of AI
provisionally titled The Eye of the Master.
Speaker : Sabine Himmelsbach
Since 2012,
Sabine Himmelsbach is the director of HeK(House of Electronic Arts Basel).
After studying art history in Munich, she worked for galleries in Munich and
Vienna from 1993–1996 and later became project manager for exhibitions and
conferences for the Steirischer Herbst Festival in Graz, Austria. In 1999 she
became exhibition director at the ZKM | Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe.
From 2005–2011 she was the artistic director of the Edith-Russ-House for Media
Art in Oldenburg, Germany. Her exhibitions at HeK in Basel include Ryoji
Ikeda (2014), Poetics and Politics of Data (2015), Rafael
Lozano-Hemmer: Preabsence (2016), Lynn Hershman Leeson: Anti-Bodies
(2018), Eco-Visionaries (2018), Entangled Realities (2019) and Real
Feelings, Emotions and Technology (2020). As a writer and lecturer, she is
dedicated to topics related to media art and digital culture.
Respondent : Sey Min
Sey Min is
a data visualization artist and designer, whose interest is in dealing with
live data sets in various media formats. She makes projects that reimagine how
humans relate to technologies, to societies and cities, and to environments.
Combining elements of environmentology, visual art, programming and data
storytelling, her projects range from building a real-time interactive
information graphics system for a music club (Gender Ratio, 2007) to
visualizing Seoul City expenditure data (City DATA: Seoul Daily Expenditure,
2014). Her works have been shown at Korea National Museum of Modern and
Contemporary art, TED 2011, TEDGlobal 2012, Art Center Nabi in Seoul, Lift
conference experience, and have featured on CNN Asia, Lift09, and aliceOn.net.
She was named a 2011 TED Fellow, and a 2012 TED Senior Fellow. She is the
founder of randomwalks, a data visualization studio in Korea.
Video Link: https://youtu.be/9GpWjvnfoO8
Session 3
Humanizing
the Machine/ Mechanizing the Human
5 Dec 2020 (Sat) 14:00 ~ 15:30 (KST) / 06:00 ~ 07:30 (CET)
Tools
have always been part of how we define human ‘nature’. Our
everyday use can make them feel like parts of our bodies. In habitual use there
is constant feedback between us and them. With time and use the border between
body and tool dissolves. Now tools also appear as models, but all models, for
good or ill, fail us. The dominant understanding of AI flips between two
models: either we maintain mastery over the tool, or the technology acquires
sufficient agency to consume its master. This seminar goes beyond this dominant
paradigm to consider a more fundamental question: what is the intelligence in
technology? How do we align our social values and human desires with the
dynamism of tools that also remake ‘us’ in the process of using them? If we go beyond the dichotomy between
AI as engine of utopia and AI as corporate and exploitative logic, can we also
imagine a form of AI that has no utility, one that is not designed according to
a service function? Would this perspective allow us to consider ecological
modes of intelligence not confined to the human mind, but distributed across
and constituted by urban, natural and technological environments?
Chair : Jonathan Parsons
Jonathan
has over twenty five years of experience working as an artistic director,
curator and creative producer in Australia and internationally. He is currently
Artistic Director of Experimenta, Australia’s preeminent media arts organisation based in Melbourne. He was the
Creative Director of Robotronica (2013-2019), a biennial festival of robotics
and interactive design at Queensland University of Technology (QUT). In 2013 he
was the Director of ISEA2013 in Sydney. He has artistically led and
collaborated on a broad range of cultural programs and events across all art
forms including for the State Library of Queensland, Queensland Art Gallery,
Queensland Performing Arts Centre, Riverfestival, Byron Bay Writers Festival,
Adelaide Festival of the Arts, London International Festival of Theatre,
Powerhouse Museum, Awesome Festival, Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Festival
and Pacific Wave Festival.
Speaker : Soh Yeong Roh
Self-taught
in art and technology, Soh Yeong Roh is said to have pioneered the new media
art scene in Korea by founding Art Center Nabi in 2000. Her experience in the
field goes back to 1991 when she served as head of Art and Technology
Exhibition at Daejeon Expo. Seeing the possibility of digital technology
transforming much of our lives, she began to explore how we could use the
technology to serve humanity, which has become her lifelong mission. Besides
running Art Center Nabi, a powerhouse of media art with its lab and education
programs, she serves as a board member at Advanced Institutes of Convergence
Technology, Creative Commons Korea, and P.A.T.I., an alternative design school.
She is also an adjunct professor at the Graduate School of Convergence Science
and Technology, Seoul National University, and a visiting professor at the
Department of Art and Technology, Sogang University.
Speaker : Scott McQuire
Scott
McQuire is Professor of Media and Communications in the Faculty of Arts at the
University of Melbourne. He is one of the founders of the interdisciplinary
Research Unit for Public Cultures where he researches the nexus of digital
media, contemporary art, urbanism, and social theory. His recent books include Geomedia:
Networked cities and the future of public space (2016), Chinese and
Russian translations (2019), and Art seen under digital light:
photography, the image and the aesthetics of data (2018). He is currently
co-editing Communicative Cities and Urban Space to be published by
Routledge in 2021.
Respondent : Thao Phan
Thao Phan
is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute for
Citizenship and Globalisation. She is a feminist STS researcher who analyses
the technologisation of gender and race in AI and algorithmic culture.
Video Link: https://youtu.be/Zc1yXMDPfZg
[Host / Organizer]
Art Center Nabi
[Co-organizer]
Research Unit for Public Cultures and the Communicative Cities Stream in the Center of Visual Arts, University of Melbourne
[Sponsors]
AI & Society: Knowledge, Culture and Communication
‘Re-‘ Interdisciplinary Research Network, CRASSH, University of Cambridge
[Inquiry]
+82 2-2121-0947
info@nabi.or.kr