More-than-human humanities research group!

Category: Art + Science = Wonder

SEMINAR TOMORROW (Feb 2) on intersections of Art and AI, including Synthetic Data, Deep Fakes

(Text provided by the organizers)

The Creative-Ai (AI and the Artistic Imaginary – WASP-HS) and MUSAiC project teams at KTH kindly welcome you to the third seminar in our series “dialogues: probing the future of creative technology” on Thursday 2 February, 15:00-16:00 (CEST).

This seminar (held on zoom, https://kth-se.zoom.us/j/67706212115), we talk about “Artistic and legal-philosophical perspectives on deep fakes”. We start with two presentations from our invited guests (see below), followed by a discussion between each other and then with the audience.

Our guests are Ania Catherine and Dejha Ti and Katja de Vries:

Ania Catherine and Dejha Ti are an award-winning experiential artist duo who founded their collaborative art practice, known as Operator, in 2016. Referred to as “the two critical contemporary voices on digital art’s international stages” (Clot Magazine), their expertises collide in large scale conceptual works recognizable for their poetic approach to technology. Ti’s background as an immersive artist and HCI technologist, and Catherine’s as a choreographer, performance artist and gender scholar make for a uniquely medium-fluent output–bringing together environments, technology and the body.

Operator has been awarded a Lumen Prize (Immersive Environments), ADC Award (Gold Cube), S+T+ARTS Prize (Honorary Mention), and MediaFutures (a European Commission funded programme). They’ve been speakers at Christie’s Art+Tech Summit, Art Basel, MIT Open Doc Lab, BBC Click, Bloomberg ART+TECHNOLOGY, Ars Electronica, Contemporary Istanbul, and CADAF. Ti and Catherine are originally from Los Angeles and currently based in Berlin.

Title: Soft Evidence–Synthetic cinema as contemporary art

Abstract:
Art has always explored notions of truth and fiction, and the relationship between image and reality. Synthetic media’s capability to depict events that never happened makes that relationship more complex than ever. How can artists use synthetic media/deepfakes creatively, and start conversations about ethics and the social implications of unreliable realities? In this presentation, artist duo Ania Catherine and Dejha Ti of Operator discuss their work Soft Evidence–a slow synthetic cinema series created as part of MediaFutures in 2021. They will detail how research and interviews with experts on media manipulation in law, education, and activism informed their creative and technical processes. As experiential artists, Ti and Catherine plan to exhibit Soft Evidence as an installation, a site for the public to learn and process a rapidly changing media landscape through immersion and feeling states.

(For Katja:)
Katja de Vries is an assistant professor in public law at Uppsala 
University. Her work operates at the intersection of IT law and 
philosophy of technology. Her current research focuses on the challenges 
that AI-generated content (‘deepfakes’ or ‘synthetic data’) poses to 
data protection, intellectual property and other fields of law.

Title: How can law deal with the counterfactual metaphysics of synthetic 
media?

Abstract:
How can law deal with deep fakes and synthetic media? Law is influenced 
by the politics, norms and ontologies of the society in which it 
operates but is never exhausted by it. Law always first and foremost 
obeys to an already existing system of parameters, rules concepts and 
ontologies, to which new elements can only be incrementally added. This 
contributes to legal certainty and foreseeability, as well as law’s 
slowness to adapt.
The EU legislator is trying to adapt to new digital challenges and 
opportunities by creating a true avalanche of legislation. In the case 
of deep fakes and other synthetic media the question, however, is if 
operative concepts such as transparency and informed consent and 
dichotomies such as fact v. fiction, human v. machine, etc. work well 
with the counterfactual metaphysics of synthetic media, namely the 
articulation of what is possible into digital mathematical spaces of 
seemingly endless alternative realities, and extensions in time and 
space. More concretely: is it important to simply flag that we are 
interacting with a synthetic work? Can we consent to live-on forever in 
disseminating digital alter-egos?

Human-Yeast Interrelations: Publication & Exhibit

by Olga Timurgalieva, Patrícia Moreira, and Eva Direito

The art book, Yeasts as We Do Not Know Them, chronicles the roles of single-celled fungal microbes, mainly yeasts, in human lives. The art project, co-produced by designer Eva Direito, biotechnologist Patricia Moreira, and art researcher Olga Timurgalieva, traces the ways these single-celled fungal microbes are involved in producing food and beverage, medicine, animal feed, textile detergents, pigments, biofuels, and other products. 

Pages 20 and 21 of the book, Yeasts As We Do Not Know Them, related to yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, used to produce sugar substitute xylitol, 2022. ©Eva Direito, Patricia Moreira, Olga Timurgalieva.

Nowadays, in the abundance of industrially manufactured products, we are often unaware of how and from which materials some specific things are made. However, in light of climate change and increasing pollution in the atmosphere, we are called upon to learn about “the substances that surround us, those for which we may be somewhat responsible, those that may harm us, those that may harm others, and those that we suspect we do not know enough about” (Alaimo, 2010, p. 18). The art book, Yeasts as We Do Not Know Them, therefore, maps some of the human-yeast interrelations and invites the audiences to learn about the materials produced with the application of yeasts.  

Pages 38 and 39 of the book, Yeasts As We Do Not Know Them, related to Saccharomyces cerevisiae used in bioethanol production, 2022. ©Eva Direito, Patricia Moreira, Olga Timurgalieva.
Pages 10 and 11 of the book, Yeasts As We Do Not Know Them, related to yeast, Pichia pastoris, studied to develop vaccines against Human papillomavirus infection, 2022. ©Eva Direito, Patricia Moreira, Olga Timurgalieva.

The book’s concept emerged under the influence of the 2021-22 PhD course “Gender and Sustainability – Introducing Feminist Environmental Humanities” (FAD3115) collaboratively delivered by the School of Architecture and the Built Environment of KTH Royal Institute of Technology and the Posthumanities Hub. The course focused on post-disciplinary approaches to sustainability and incorporated diverse critical and creative perspectives from environmental humanities. 

Inspired by the practices at the intersection of feminist theories and sustainability presented during the course, we conceived the book as practice-oriented research. The cross-disciplinary collective work has allowed us to dive into the diversity of human-yeast interspecies relations and to convert our leanings into the tangible form of the book. 

We were lucky to have exhibited the prototype of the book in Hong Kong and Portugal. In Hong Kong, the book was featured as a part of the exhibition, Nexus between Art, Practice & Researchat the gallery Floating Projects at Jockey Club Creative Art Centre. Later, on 17 September 2022, we presented the project on the campus of the Catholic University of Portugal in Porto as part of the celebration of International Microorganism Day. The celebration event was co-organized with the Federation of European Microbiology Societies (FEMS). The event gathered more than 500 students and highlighted numerous crucial roles that microbes play in nature and their relation to human society.

Yeasts As We Do Not Know Them at the exhibition, Nexus between Art, Practice & Research, Floating Projects, Jockey Club Creative Art Centre, Hong Kong, 14-31 July 2022. Exhibition view. Photo Credit: Kay Mei Ling Beadman.

The art book, Yeasts as We Do Not Know Them, has been produced with financial support by Portuguese National Funds from FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology through the Strategic Projects CITAR (Research Centre in Science and Technology of the Arts) [grant number UID/EAT/0622/2016].

Featured Image: Pages 12 and 13 of the book, Yeasts As We Do Not Know Them, include images, Bear in mind that bread made from Magic Yeast will cure indigestion: get the entire menagerie. Presumably, 1880-1890. Wellcome Collection. Public Domain Mark Link: https://wellcomecollection.org/works/mu8gcrx7

References:

Alaimo, S. (2010). Bodily natures: Science, environment, and the material self. Indiana University Press.

Eva Direito holds a degree in Art Conservation and is currently doing her master’s degree in Conservation of New Media Art at the School of Arts (UCP, Portugal). Having received an artistic education, Eva works with digital and analog photography and graphic design. During the past few years, she’s been working as Art Director in short movies for the School of Arts, some of which had been nominated for prizes (“Our House in Flames” by Miguel Mesquita, at Curtas Festival of Vila do Conde, Portugal) and others had won awards, such as “Hysteria” by Luísa Campino, at Sophia Awards, Portugal. 

Patrícia Moreira holds a PhD in Biotechnology with a specialization in Biochemical Engineering from the Universidade Católica Portuguesa (UCP, Portugal). She is an Assistant Professor at the School of Arts (UCP). She is an integrated member of the Center for Research in Science and Technology of the Arts (CITAR), coordinator of the Area-Focus Heritage, Conservation, and Restoration of CITAR, and collaborator of the Center for Biotechnology and Fine Chemistry (UCP). Her main research area is innovation in Biotechnology for Cultural Heritage, with emphasis on biodeterioration, sustainability, citizen science Green Conservation, and bio-art practices. 

Olga Timurgalieva is a PhD candidate at City University of Hong Kong and a former visiting researcher at King’s College London. Awarded by the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme, her research investigates the intersections of contemporary art, microbiology, and ecocriticism, with a particular focus on fungal microbes and their interspecies relations. Olga has worked in art institutions, including V-A-C Foundation (Moscow) and the ZKM | Center for Art and Media (Karlsruhe), and co-curated the exhibition, “Here and Elsewhere,” at the Kobro Gallery, The Strzemiński Academy of Art (Lodz) and the festival, “Seasons of Media Arts 2019,” at the ZKM. 

Multi-sensorial Attunement between Human and Horse in Mongolia (with Natasha Fijn) 6 Oct, 13.30 – online seminar at Université de Liège

Herder and horse. Photo from: https://www.fass.uliege.be/cms/c_9224594/fr/multi-sensorial-attunement-between-human-and-horse-in-mongolia-natasha-fijn

INVITATION

Le LASC (Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Sociale et Culturelle) et le MEAM (Multispecies Ethnography and Artistic Methods) invitentNatasha Fijn, Director of the Mongolia Institute and ARC Future Fellow (The Australian National University) pour une présentation intitulée “Multi-sensorial Attunement between Human and Horse in Mongolia”.

Humans and horses are increasingly living settled and enclosed existences, while being used less in working roles. In the Land of the Horse, Mongolia, horses still function as a core part of the mobile pastoral herding existence. The focus here is on the use of ‘architectures of domestication’ (Anderson et al., 2017), specifically herding tools and implements as extensions of the body. The GoPro camera is employed as a research tool to explore multi-sensorial attunement. Bloodletting tools are passed on over the generations and are used to jab key points of the horse, as an important means of building immunity and preventing illness. There has been little documentation of the practice of bloodletting on horses, so within the upcoming presentation this ancient healing tradition will be described through a multi-sensory ethnographic approach. Tools used by herders could be construed as a means of control or coercion, yet in the case of the lasso pole is used with the intention of directing and guiding individual animals, or in the instance of the bloodletting knife, to assist in a horse’s overall health and wellbeing.  

Quand : Le 6 octobre 2022 de 13h30 à 15h.

Lieu : local A2 dans le bâtiment B7a (Grands Amphis)

Le séminaire est également accessible à distance via le lien suivant : https://uu-se.zoom.us/j/61853590545

Entrée libre

Personne de contact : Andrea Petitt –   andrea.petitt@gender.uu.se

Announcement for Karen Barad upcoming virtual talk (28 Sep) On Touching the Stranger Within

Professor Karen Barad gives a virtual talk and presention Wednesday, September 28, 2022, titled On Touching the Stranger Within—Material Wonderings/Wanderings. The talk is free to attend, and it is part of a touring art exhibition called DRIFT: art and dark matter, which is currently showing at the Justina M. Barnicke gallery at the University of Toronto.

Part of what makes this event so exciting is its cross-disciplinary nature, combining work in particle physics, philosophy, and art. Karen Barad is a professor of feminist studies, philosophy, and history of consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Their work is highly interdisciplinary — prior to this appointment, they held a faculty position in particle physics. DRIFT itself is a cross-disciplinary exhibit. From the gallery website: “four artists of national and international stature were invited to make new work while engaging with physicists, chemists, and engineers contributing to the search for dark matter at SNOLAB’s facility in Sudbury, two kilometers below the surface of the Earth.” 

More information about the event and a registration link are available on the gallery website:https://artmuseum.utoronto.ca/program/keynote-karen-barad/ 

Best wishes, 

Sarah  

Sarah Dawson (she/they)

Event Coordinator & Interim Communications Officer

Arthur B. McDonald Canadian Astroparticle Physics Research Institute

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén