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Posthumanities Hub Seminar on ‘AI and the Posthumanities’, 22 April 2021 at 10:00-12:00!

Welcome to the Posthumanities Hub Seminar on ‘AI and the Posthumanities’ with an exciting list of speakers!

This event, engaging AI and non-AI researchers alike, aims to open up a space for the lively conversations on AI as a societal challenge for citizenship, the artistic imaginary, education, democracy, human and the more-than human, while mobilising various approaches, ranging from feminist and decolonial perspectives to sustainability and technology in society.

The seminar takes shape of a researchers’ ‘speed dating’ event, focused on exciting new perspectives on AI, where short (5 minute) presentations by each of the invited speakers will be followed by the joint discussion.

The session will be chaired by Lina Rahm, Adam Wickberg and Cecilia Åsberg, all from The Posthumanities Hub.

When: April 22, 2021, from 10:00-12:00 CEST. 

Where: On zoom. In order to take part in the seminar, please register by sending an email to the.posthumanities.hub@gmail.com by 20th April 2021 at noon (CEST) the latest.

Please see more info below.

Image of dog created using Artificial Intelligence (Mark Breadon, CC0)

Invited speakers:

Johannes Bruder is a researcher at the Institute of Experimental Design and Media Cultures and the Critical Media Lab Basel. Johannes’s research targets infrastructures, technologies, and media that support epistemologies & empiricisms in art, design, science and their (sub)cultural distortions. His current research interests include interactions between psychological research and computing / AI, narratives and dispositifs of creative practice, and media studies of psychic life.

Teresa Ceratto-Pargman is associate professor (docent) of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) at Stockholm university. Her research is situated at the intersection of Educational Technology and HCI. It seeks to contribute to the study of the increasing digitalisation of everyday practices and mainly to reflect on the opportunities and challenges that this process brings to epistemic and social practices in education. She is the PI of the WASP-HS research project “Ethical and Legal Challenges in Relationship to AI-driven Practices in Higher Education”.

Katherine Harrison is senior lecturer at the Department of Thematic Studies (Gender Studies) at Linköping university. Her research explores how material technical constraints and social norms intersect in the design and development of digital media technologies. She is currently engaged in two large research projects: “Robotic care practices: Creating trust, empathy and accountability in human-robot encounters” and “Sustainability means inclusivity: engaging citizens in early stage smart city development”

André Holzapfel is associate professor at the Media Technology and Interaction Design Department at KTH. His research is within the area of Sound and Music Computing, broadly focusing on analysis of audio and symbolic data as well as the analysis of motion capture signals. He is currently the PI of the WASP-HS-funded project “AI and the Artistic Imaginary: Socio-cultural consequences and challenges of creative-AI technology”. 

Åsa Johansson Palmkvist is a PhD student in Gender, Organisation and Technology in the Department of Industrial Economics and Management, KTH. Drawing on feminist theory, STS and organization studies, her PhD project aims at exploring how AI research links to the inclusion and exclusion of different people and enables and restricts specific ways of existing in this world.

Anne Kaun is professor in media and communication studies. Her research interests include media theory, mediated temporalities, algorithmic culture, automation and artificial intelligence from a humanistic social science perspective. She is currently leading the Swedish Network for Automated Decision-Making in the Public Sector, funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. This network investigates the extensive implementation of automated decision-making in the welfare sector in Sweden to meet contemporary challenges including increasing costs and decreasing resources.

Cecilia Magnusson Sjöberg is Professor and Subject Director of Law and Information Technology at the Swedish Law & Informatics Research Institute, Stockholm University. In 1992 she was awarded a LL.D. degree, with a doctoral thesis addressing legal automation with special focus on digitalisation in public administration. She has many years of experience of legal system design and management, giving rise to issues around cyber security. As such, legal implications of e-government remain as one of her major fields of interest.

Simone Natale, is an Associate Professor at the University of Turin, Italy, and Assistant Editor of Media, Culture & Society. Natale’s research focuses broadly on media history, media theory and digital media. Simone is the author of the two monographs Deceitful Media: Artificial Intelligence and Social Life after the Turing Test (Oxford University Press, 2021) and Supernatural Entertainments: Victorian Spiritualism and the Rise of Modern Media Culture (Penn State University Press, 2016)

Jesper Olsson, is a Professor at Linköping University; his research explores the relationship between literature, art, and media – from phonographs to digital networks – and approaches media as ecologies and infrastructures in culture, society, and everyday life. Olsson is leading a number of research projects including the Linköping University-based research group Literature, Media Histories, and Information Cultures, covering questions of archives and databases, distribution and transmission, noise and meaning, inter- and trans-medial art, media technologies and cultural memory, media technologies and the history of the senses, bio-media, appropriation and remediation, trans- and post-literacy. Olsson is also the program director of the interdisciplinary research program The Seed Box.

Hannah Pelikan is a PhD Candidate at Linköping University. She won the graduation award of the faculty for electrical engineering, mathematics and computer science for her master thesis on the impact of robots on teamwork in the surgical operating room. Pelikan’s current projects involve Cozmo robots in family homes and autonomous buses in regular traffic. Hannah has previously published on the DaVinci surgical system and on the Nao robot. Her work contributes to the design of human-friendly robots that respect human interaction practices and thereby are more intuitive to interact with.

Bojana Romic, is an artist and media theorist. Romic is currently Marie Skłodowska Curie Seal of Excellence researcher and senior lecturer at Malmö University, working on a project The Robot as a Technocultural Icon. Her research is situated in the crossroads between audience studies, aesthetics of technology and image politics. 

Jenny Sundén is Professor at Karlstad University. Sundén’s work is situated in the intersection of digital media studies, cultural studies, science and technology studies (STS), feminist and queer theory, and affect theory. She currently works on questions of technological brokenness, disruption, and delay as a contribution to queer theory and queer lives, as well as on feminist uses of humour as forms of resistance in social media, focusing on how humour and laughter may rewire shame and acts of shaming. 

The Posthumanities Hub Seminar “Sonic Visions of the Arctic” with Åsa Stjerna (online)

When: 25 March, 13:15-15:00 (Swedish time/CET)

Where: Online. In order to take part in the seminar, please register by sending an email to the.posthumanities.hub@gmail.com by 23rd March 2021 at noon (CET) the latest.

Photo: Åsa Stjerna. Sulitjelma glacier 2020.

How can sound mediate information of global relevance about the Arctic? How can this information be transformed to an embodied sonic experience in public space?

We are so happy to introduce to you Åsa Stjerna and her work Sonic Visions of the Arctic!

Sonic Visions of the Arctic is a transdisciplinary study that investigates the “agency of the sonic” and its potential of establishing alternative perceptions of the Arctic as a site and public space of great global significance. By investigating  the  current and  potential  role of the acoustic underwater technologies currently used in scientific research on the Arctic in Sweden and Svalbard, as well as by exploring the complex artistic processes of transformation that take place when the scientific data extracted by these technologies is transformed in an artistic context, this project intends to both map existing sonic worlds and to develop new sonic experiences, elucidating the complex transversal processes involved in taking sound’s unused potential into consideration. 
The project is funded by Vetenskapsrådet (VR) and conducted by Åsa Stjerna, postdoc at Faculty of Fine, Applied and Performing Arts, University of Gothenburg, 2021-2023.

Åsa Stjerna is an artist and researcher, using sound and listening as her artistic modes of exploration. Through her site-specific installations, she explores sound’s potential, making the embedded conditions and underlying narratives connected to a situation perceivable. In her artistic research, she has been specifically interested in exploring the contemporary conditions of sonic situated practice and its ability of being transformative, i.e. what it actually means “to make a difference” in the era of Anthropocene and advanced capitalism. Guided by methodologies of feminism, ecosophy, and posthumanism she proposes an understanding of site-specificity as an aesthetic–ethical practice  and engagement. Stjerna represents the professorship Sound Art at Hochschule für bildende Künste in Braunschweig, Germany, 2020-2021.

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The Posthumanities Hub Seminar “Re:Sound – Sound as Evidential Medium in an Age of Crisis”, ONLINE 28th January at 13:15 (CET)

The Stars Beneath Our Feet (2015), video still. (© Louise Mackenzie)

Welcome to the first session in The Posthumanities Hub Seminar Series 2021!

When: 28 Jan 2021, 13:15-15:00 (CET)
Where: Zoom (link will be sent out after registration). Please, have your name visible upon entering.
Registration: In order to take part in the seminar, please register by sending an email to the.posthumanities.hub[at]gmail.com by 26th January 2021 at noon (CET) the latest.
Recording: The session will be recorded, and possibly also made available online at a later stage. By attending the seminar, you accept these conditions (and can of course choose to keep your camera switched off).

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ABSTRACT
This session, moderated by Morten Søndergaard and Janna Holmstedt, will focus on sound as evidence and sonic explorations in the hybrid field between scientific and artistic practices. It seeks to look beyond the visual, attend to sonically mediated phenomena, and explore how sound and listening might offer ways to navigate fields and areas on the borders of uncertainty and imagination in an age of crisis.

The seminar gathers the contributors to the recently released Special Section (ed. Morten Søndergaard) of Leonardo Music Journal (LMJ) Vol. 30, December 2020 (all the articles are available online). The artist-researchers who have contributed to this Special Section, follow a line of inquiry into the construction of evidence and its ethical implications. Søndergaard suggests that geopolitical situations of crisis force us to look at the politics of evidence – and how it is being practiced. In doing so, it operates between scientific and aesthetic modes of approximation. It is this intricate relation between world, data, sound, representation and causality the Special Section is investigating. The main claim running through all the articles is that this relation is as intricate as it is challenging, and that we need to reimagine what evidence is, reclaim its politics, through sound.

Here, listening emerges as a shared orientation and critical mode of inquiry in technological layered and mediated environs, a strategy even, for moving the taken for granted – the unnoticed or oppressed background – to the affective foreground, as well as a form of activism and resistance. In different ways, the artist-researchers explore the potential of a sonic sensibility that can reorient the politics of visibility.

In the LMJ Special Section, Tullis Rennie investigates sociosonic interventions in the context of social engaged art, and the role of disruption and distributed authorship. Laura Beloff, in her contribution on human-plant relations, asks: What does it mean to hear through technological mediation? Louise Mackenzie further investigates technologically embodied and layered forms of looking and listening to nonhuman entities such as microorganisms, while Marie Højlund and Morten Riis invite us to consider processes of transduction and atmospheres as relational attunements in their sonic interventions with wind mills. Janna Holmstedt suggests that “the transformative role of sound and listening troubles Western knowledge systems in fruitful ways”, and Stephanie Loveless proposes the flaneuserie sonore, feminist soundwalking, as a way to recontextualize the practice of walking in literature and art, arguing for listening as a feminist and ecologically oriented mode of engaging with the world. Freya Zinovieff and Gabriela Aceves Sepúlveda further demonstrate that “to listen attentively to the sonic is to situate oneself at the intersection of geopolitics and sensory perception” in what they, with Pratt and Haraway, term Anthropocene Contact Zones.

BIOGRAPHIES
Laura Beloff is an active artist and accidental academic working in the intersection of art, science and technology. She currently works at Aalto University, Finland.
Marie Højlund is a sound artist, composer and assistant professor in sound studies at Aarhus University, Denmark. She received her PhD in 2017 with her thesis on sound, noise and atmospheres in Danish hospitals: “Overhearing—An Attuning Approach to Noise in Danish Hospitals.”
Morten Riis is a sound artist and composer and holds a PhD degree in electronic music from Aarhus University. He has written articles and books on artistic research and music technology, conducted workshops over most of Europe and has received commissions from leading festivals and ensembles in Denmark, Germany and Poland.
Janna Holmstedt is an artist and researcher investigating listening as a situated practice, composition in the expanded field and the cultivation of care and environmental attention. She is part of the research group The Posthumanities Hub, and received her PhD in 2017 with her thesis “Are You Ready for a Wet Live-In? Explorations into Listening”. She currently works at KTH Royal Institute of Technology and National Historical Museums, Sweden.
Stephanie Loveless is a sound artist and a lecturer at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where she directs and the Center for Deep Listening at Rensselaer. She holds MFAs from Bard College and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Louise Mackenzie is an artist and researcher based in the U.K., affiliated with the Cultural Negotiation of Science research group, Northumbria University.
Tullis Rennie is a composer, improvising trombonist, electronic musician and field recordist. He is cofounder of Walls on Walls and senior lecturer in music at City, University of London.
Freya Zinovieff is a sound artist and theorist who uses emerging technologies to research the geopolitics of sound in borderlands. 
Gabriela Aceves Sepúlveda researches the histories of media arts from a feminist perspective and produces interactive installations. She has degrees in graphic design, visual arts and cultural history.
Morten Søndergaard is an active curator, exhibition designer and academic working in the intersection of art, science and technology. He is currently working at Aalborg University, Denmark.

The Posthumanities Hub Seminar “Ingesting the Hydrocene” with Bronwyn Bailey-Charteris

When: 9 December, 13:15-15:00 (Swedish time)

Where: Online. In order to take part in the seminar, please register by sending an email to the.posthumanities.hub@gmail.com by 7th Dec 2020 at the latest.

Bronwyn Bailey-Charteris, Penelope and Lucinda, film still, 2016

Bronwyn Bailey-Charteris. Photo: Emmeli Person

Meet Australian/Swedish curator, writer and lecturer Bronwyn Bailey-Charteris! Bronwyn is based in Stockholm, a current PhD student at UNSW Art & Design researching water and art in her thesis entitled ‘Ingesting the Hydrocene: Watery thinking for artistic response-ability in the climate crisis’. She is employed at Stockholm University, based at Accelerator and leading the Art+Research program, as well as a Lecturer in Department of Culture and Aesthetics for the Masters of Art Curating. Bronwyn was previously Curator at Index – The Swedish Contemporary Arts Foundation. Research interests are focused upon processes of ecology in contemporary art, water as social metaphor and feminist methodologies. Working with practical learning platforms, artistic research, publications, and exhibitions, she works internationally as a curator and lecturer.
https://bronwynbc.com/
https://su-se.academia.edu/BronwynBaileyCharteris

Ingesting the Hydrocene

The Hydrocene is a curatorial theory and practice Bronwyn has created to amplify the pioneering ways some artists and curators are collaborating with water. The Hydrocene argues for artistic methods of thinking with water in the age of accelerating climate crises. The Hydrocene is embodied and relational. It amplifies unexamined perspectives on the interrelation of art, climate, water and intersectional feminisms. By arguing for water-centered artistic practices, the Hydrocene offers up a model for engaging with embodiment, hydrofeminism, transcorporeality and response-ability in the interconnected zone of natureculture. The presentation will offer a short introduction to the Hydrocene and then expand upon artist Latai Taumoepeau – specifically her work with ice, water torture and the climate crisis.

“A Sea Change in the Humanities”: joint KTH and The Posthumanities Hub Seminar with Prof. Cecilia Åsberg

Welcome to the joint event hosted by KTH Higher Seminars and The Posthumanities Hub Seminar series:

the seminar with Prof. Cecilia Åsberg (KTH/Linköping University) on:

A Sea Change in the Humanities

The seminar takes place on 28th September 2020 at 13:15 – 15:00.

For more how to access the online event, see: https://www.kth.se/en/abe/inst/philhist/historia/2.78498/hogreseminarium

Photo: Marietta Radomska

Abstract:

All through the extended history of Earth, the coast line has been a zone of unrest where waves and tides have forged life and land on this planet. Despite sudden changes to our oceanic environments, the wrack zone by the edge of the sea with its kelp forests, mussel beds, flotsam and jetsam, remains a strange and beautiful place (as noted by Rachel Carson). This is one of the starting points for the research in the oceanic (environmental) humanities project, Sea Change. Another starting point is the possibilities for cooking, curing and curating with kelp explored at Lofoten International Arts Festival in 2019, the artistic duo Cooking Sections (and their exhibition 2021 at Bonniers Kunsthall), and that we are now entering the declared UN Decade of the Oceans (2021-2030). Sea Change  is a knowledge- and capacity-building project for feminist posthumanities, aiming to connect science with art, humanities and local people so to catalyze societal transformation on low trophic ways of eating, socializing and thinking, together. 

Bio:

Cecilia Åsberg, PhD, Guest Professor of STS, Gender and Environment at KTH Royal Institute of Technology Stockholm; Professor of Gender, Nature, Culture at Linköping University, and since 2008 founding director of the Posthumanities Hub. In 2005 she was the first to defend a PhD in Gender Studies in Sweden (a feminist science study on the popular imaginary of the new genetics), and in 2013 she inaugurated environmental humanities in The Seed Box (Mistra-Formas) research programme as Founding Director. Åsberg has attracted over €6 million in grants for her team; supervised 14 PhD students; published extensively (in Swedish, Dutch, English); given talks and taught gender studies, EH, STS, and posthumanities to BA-MA and PhD students in various positions at a range of international universities, incl Lancaster U, Utrecht Utrecht, NL, and as Fellow of Rachel Carson Centre, LMU, Germany. 

Recent publications (in 2020) include: 

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