Open! newsletter #54 Posted on 4 November 20202 December 2020 Symposium Who Speaks? Virtual Symposium, November 9, 2020 Who Speaks? is a project collaboration between the Non Linear Narrative Master’s programme of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, University College London and Camberwell College of Arts (CCW / University of the Arts London) with the Analysis and Research Department (DAO) of the Dutch Parliament. It manifests itself in the form of a one-day international symposium and a semester-long study programme that investigates how artificial intelligence influences democracy by means of language. During its course, Who Speaks? welcomes notable individuals from the digital rights movement, cyberlaw, political philosophy and investigative journalism in order to understand the decision-making processes behind artificial intelligence and machine learning. Touch The Zombie Public Eric Kluitenberg Essay – September 18, 2020 The media is flooded with projections of futures with or without ‘the virus’. In both dystopian and utopian accounts, as well as more level-headed attempts to extrapolate scenarios, finite terms drawn from uncertain predictions are often used, precluding clear judgement. Instead of writing these scenarios off as nonsensical, they should be understood as what they are: ideological projections that attempt to shape rather than predict possible futures. Who is ‘shaping’? Under what prerogative? In service of which ideological a-priori? Serving which material (political / economic) interests? Touch Touch & Feel in the Digital Age Jorinde Seijdel Post Editorial – July 20, 2020 Touch & Feel in the Digital Age is a substantive and interdisciplinary study into how we feel and touch in our technologically mediated, dematerialized digital cultures and how this is expressed in our social and artistic practices. The original idea was to investigate through a series of essays and artist contributions what kind of underlying structures, powers and forces are currently active, which regulate our experiences of feel and touch in the digital domain, in a technological, biopolitical and ontological sense. We were particularly concerned with the strategies, interests and monopoly positions of the major commercial media and technology companies and with the relationship and implications of touch media and technology to the body and physical space. How can ubiquitous haptic technology and media be critically questioned, tested and put into practice from experimental theory, art and design? Image: Mind Design Touch Licking the Sky, Embracing the Shadow of a Fish in a Glance Upon the Surface Jort van der Laan Artist Contribution – June 28, 2020 Jort van der Laan, Licking the Sky, Embracing the Shadow of a Fish in a Glance Upon the Surface, 2020, HD video loop, 1:59 min. Deprived of physical contact the world became more distant. While our bodies are kept safe from infective agents, adverse effects include lower levels of oxytocin – a complex neurochemical hormone and transmitter that helps to reduce anxiety and maintain adequate immune response. Shielding, I’ve been reworking previously recorded material from my archives, looking for glimpses and sparks that transcend remote methods of communication to auraticly bridge feel and touch – screen and skin. Pairing an Iroha poem reading (a perfect pangram, that contains each character of the Japanese syllabary exactly once) echoed with footage of a grey parrot (the talking kind) and more abstract imagery, Licking the Sky, Embracing the Shadow of a Fish in a Glance Upon the Surface forms a short handheld observation of intimacy and care. Touch Lorem Siri JODI Artist Contribution – June 3, 2020 Lorem Siri by artist duo JODI penetrates the interior of voice applications such as Siri and Alexa. These smart speakers are fast becoming increasingly common in daily life, and can be ‘touched’ by the human voice. Supposedly at our service, they are activated when addressed by name: ‘Hey Siri / Tell me / Do you know JODI? / Which do you mean? Jodi Dean or Jodi Dirk Paesmans and Joan Heemskerk? …’ Following a command or question, Siri and Alexa provide assistance in dealing with the ubiquity of information societies. Or is that we, as users and consumers, serve them and the powerful media companies from which they originate? What do they absorb from our private lives? What is going on inside Siri or Alexa? Find out by clicking on the link below. This contribution is part of Open!’s publication and research project on touch in the digital age. REMOVED FOOTER Copyright © 2020 Open!, All rights reserved. Unsubscribe Update subscription View this email in your browser
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