NEoN Re@ct Symposium SPEAKERS

Bios and Abstracts

NAME BIO ABSTRACT

Janna Ahrndt Janna Ahrndt received her MFA in ‘P@tching In: Stitching Together Electronic and Time-Based Art from Tactical Media and Social Aesthetics Purdue University. She is part of a wave as a Political Art Practice’ of new media artists rejecting the notion that craft and technology are In the early 2000’s, the Maker directly opposed. Her work explores movement hoped to open up how deconstructing everyday technology to everyone in true DIY technologies, or even making them for fashion However, makerspaces yourself can be used to question larger continue to have a gender gap and oppressive systems and create a race issues that relate directly to the space for participatory political action. privilege of making and having the Her activist and social art practice blur resources - time – money - energy etc. the lines between the materiality of to experiment with new technologies. craft and the digital realm of new This leaves many women and media technologies to create socio- marginalised groups feeling that the political interventions. Janna has power structure in these supposedly presented her research on the use of structureless spaces is just a DIY electronics as a medium for continuation of the power structures participatory political art at ISEA 2019 of the tech industry. In this short paper in Gwangju South Korea and will be my focus is on finding ways to engage facilitating workshops for her P@tch communities in civic action while project in collaboration with the honouring the integrity at the heart of Science Gallery in Melbourne Australia DIY. By bringing together Maktivism in July 2019. and Craftivism in my work, I aim to forge an effective feminist political art medium that explores current exploitative economic systems controlling the production of textiles, and information and communication technologies. By allowing artists to subvert physical spaces and expand on them through digital content in order to engage activist communities, I believe new media artists can create something that is more like the hybrid digital-physical lives we lead. In combining Maktivism (Maker +Activism) and Craftivism (Craft + Activism), a more effective political art medium is created. This combination serves to critique not only targeted political issues, and I feel this combination also provides a medium to question current exploitative economic systems that control the production of textiles, as well as information and communication technology (ICT), and our societal values expressed through our technologies.

Andy Best Andy Best-Dunkley is a media artist, ‘T/Act - sound controllers for social sculptor and educator, specialising in empowerment’ playful and provocative interactions and installations. Andy’s work tackles This paper presents the T/Act sound social and political themes, and he controllers (Tactile – Action – Act – seeks collaboration in diverse spheres Actor) developed by the author such as data visualisation, live together with young people with performance, and physical interaction physical disabilities. The author seeks design. Between 2002 and 2013 Andy to show that interactive media was principal lecturer of Digital Arts at technologies can significantly Turku University of Applied Sciences. increase the level of social Since 2014 he has been lecturer in empowerment experienced by sculpture at Aalto University. He is a individuals taking part in public doctoral student at Aalto Media Lab, performance by magnifying the effect researching possibilities for social of their own actions and movement in empowerment through collaborative the space. Using custom designed interaction in media environments, wireless electronic controllers, the with emphasis on working with people performers “play” music and sound with disabilities. using the movements of their bodies and wheelchairs. For the disabled person, the ability to harness media technologies for artistic expression challenges their perceived public role as passive object. They become, through their own actions, active subjects causing affect to the whole audience experience.

Jon Blackwood Dr. Jon Blackwood is currently a ‘After the Captured State: Reader in Contemporary Art, and Contemporary Artists, Digital leads research, at Gray’s School of Art, Strategies and Political Action in North Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen. Macedonia, 2015-19’ He was formerly Head of History & Theory of Art at DJCAD, University of This paper will outline the ways in , from 2004-11. His research which critical artists responded in the focuses on cultural ecologies and political circumstances of managed radical politics in the former democracy and state capture in the Yugoslavia, with a particular focus on context of North Macedonia, for North Macedonia, Serbia, and Bosnia- nearly a decade. The dominance of Herzegovina. His major publications the Macedonian political landscape include Critical Art in Contemporary by Nikola Gruevski’s right-wing, Macedonia (Skopje: mala galerija populist, ultra-nationalist party VMRO- 2016) and Introduction to DPMNE had many consequences, but Contemporary Art in Bosnia- in the field of aesthetics, the Herzegovina (Sarajevo: duplex 100m2, megalomaniac Skopje 2014 project 2015). Jon has also curated major was the visual outworking of the ruling exhibitions of art from the region party’s ideology. Set against the including Captured State: New Art backdrop of ethno-nationalist kitsch, from Macedonia (Summerhall, what strategies did critical and , 2017) and Utopian Realism: independent artists adopt, and with Mladen Miljanović (Peacock Visual what results? Now that the Gruevski Arts, Aberdeen, 2019). Jon is currently government is a memory and many of working on a major show of its members subject to legal process, contemporary art from Bosnia- how have former activists adapted to Herzegovina entitled Suspended the discourse of mainstream politics Animation as part of the Edinburgh and how has the cultural ecology of Festival, at Summerhall, in the summer Macedonia mutated in response? of 2020. In answering these questions, we will develop two specific strands of inquiry into (digital) art and activism. Firstly, we will consider group work as a response to authoritarian politics; we will consider the use of humour and the crude aesthetics of advertising in the case of the artist duo OPA (Obsessive Possessive Aggression), and their nuanced digital response to the politics of the Macedonian space. Secondly, we will note the use of digital guerrilla tactics by groups such as Sviracinje and anonymous visual protestors who use the power of social media to multiply the impacts of their activism. Finally, in the political sphere, we will consider the relationship between contemporary art and activism in the Macedonian space from 2015-19, and note the tensions and dissonances that resulted. In adopting a case study approach it is hoped to open out the complexities of the Macedonian space but also to draw parallels between individual and group case studies, with cartographies of struggle elsewhere in the globe.

Giulia Casalini Giulia Casalini is an independent ‘Queer-feminist Ecologies of curator and producer based in Resistance in Digital (after)Lives’ . Her PhD ( University) look ats the methodologies From discrimination and hate crimes, of queer-feminist live art from a to environmental destruction and decolonial perspective. Since 2012 she colonial violence, queer-feminist artists is the co-director of the non-profit arts have found in digital technologies the organization Arts Feminism Queer creative tools to call attention to (CUNTemporary). Her curatorial injustices and inequalities. practice engages with artists and work Simultaneously, they have generated of a complex and challenging nature innovative ways of engaging bodies to create multidisciplinary exhibitions and their avatars in pressing political and events for institutions or alternative issues, whilst blurring the distinctions spaces, with a focus on live art and between the virtual and the real. In audience participation. this presentation we will examine these virtu(re)al creative manifestations specifically for how they negotiate grief, spirituality and death in order to engage with collective traumas.

Maria Chatzichristodoulou Maria Chatzichristodoulou (aka Maria ‘Performance and Citizen Media: X) is Reader in Performance and New Gesturing Dissent” Media at London South Bank University, UK, where she also acts as Head of Though the concept of citizen media

Division Creative Industries, Director of has achieved increasing visibility in its Enterprise for the School of Arts & many different forms throughout this Creative Industries and Director of the decade, its relationship to Centre for Research in Digital performance (studies and art) has Storymaking. Maria is also Editor-in- hardly been considered. The question Chief of the International Journal of of ‘how does performance relate to Performance Art & Digital Media citizen media’, therefore, is both a (Routledge). In the past Maria taught pertinent and a timely one. Some of at the University of Hull and the the most powerful interventions that University of London Colleges take place in the public sphere Goldsmiths, Queen Mary and Birkbeck, aspiring to generate social change, worked as a community participation are activist performance actions that officer (The Albany), performer and aim to raise awareness around issues curator (independently) and co- not through communicating factual founded/co-directed the international information, but through potent festival Medi@terra (Athens Greece, gestures that can generate affect. 1997-2002). Saward proposes the term ‘performative politics’ to describe the phenomenon within which political grammars are enacted and performed (2015:217). Protest actions use bodies rather than text as their primary means of communication. Following Agamben’s (2000) characterization of gesture as ‘pure means,’ Hughes and Parry (2016:80) use the term ‘protest gesture,’ ‘to focus on the relationship between bodies and politics’. Indeed, protest actions or protest gestures are characterized by the imaginative and disruptive-of-social-norms use of bodies in public space. This keynote presentation will discuss protest actions which, in the manner of citizen media, create what Rodriguez calls ‘communication spaces’ (2011:24). They use digital technologies to broadcast, propagate, and magnify their impact, empowering citizens to ‘name the world in

Mahwish Chishty Initially trained as a miniature painter I will be discussing my inspiration and from the National College of Arts, motivation behind the projects I have Lahore, Pakistan, Mahwish Chishty has been working on since 2011. I will aggressively combined new media share paintings, installations and and conceptual work with her collaborative projects as part of this traditional practice. Chishty has discussion. exhibited her work nationally and internationally at over 60 venues. By camouflaging modern war machines with folk imagery, Chishty is shedding light on the complexity of acculturation, politics and power. Ms. Chishty has been awarded several residencies including Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY; Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago, IL; and Vermont Studio Center, Vermont, NY. Chishty also has works in public and private collections including the Foreign office Islamabad, Pakistan, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Fukuoka Shi, Japan and , London. Chishty is also a recipient of the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship.

Virginia Crisp Virginia Crisp is Lecturer in the ‘Making a Difference?: Research as a Department of Culture, Media and Catalyst for Change’ Creative Industries at King’s College, London. She is the author of Film This paper examines the ways that Distribution in the Digital Age (2015, research(ers) can do much more than Palgrave) and co-editor (with Dr record, reflect, measure and interpret Gabriel Menotti Gonring) of Practices the social world and asks how we of Projection: Histories and might also prompt positive change in Technologies (Forthcoming, OUP) people’s working lives. Using my own and Besides the Screen: Moving research project into the experiences Images through Distribution, Marketing of women working in the Danish and Curation (2015, Palgrave). She has games industry as a case study, the published numerous book chapters paper considers how the findings from and journal articles on informal and this (and other) research might be formal distribution, media practically used to facilitate gatekeeping, media circulation, the improvements to games industry games industry and media piracy. She working cultures more generally. is the co-founder (with Dr Gabriel Contrary to common reports of Menotti Gonring) of the Besides the working life within the games industry Screen Network (exemplified by long hours and (BtSN, www.besidesthescreen.com), ‘crunch’), this research found women which seeks to reconfigure the field of describing working lives and screen studies by refocusing it on those experiences that were objects, processes and practices that overwhelmingly positive. This exist ‘besides’ the screen (e.g. prompted me to reflect upon what projection, archiving, curation, piracy lessons could be learnt from these etc.) more inclusive environments and, more specifically, how researchers might actively use their research findings as a starting point to make positive interventions in the social world.

Tony Dowmunt Tony Dowmunt is co-Director, LCVA ‘Introduction to LCVA: why now?’ and Emeritus Professor, Department of Media, Communications and Cultural I will outline the development and Studies, Goldsmiths, University of aims of the archive, and then focus on London. From 1995-2015 he was the the contemporary purposes to which Course Convenor for MA Screen the archived footage is being put. Documentary, and he is currently These include the use of anti-racist supervising in the AVPhD (film practice- material from the 1970s in current based doctoral) programme. From debates and filmmaking, the role of 2003-2006 he had an Arts and archive video playbacks in response Humanities Research Council to the current housing crisis, and within [AHRC] Fellowship in the Creative and the community contexts in which Performing Arts, which included the tapes were made, and the ‘re- production of an experimental video- making’ of videos in the present: • diary, A Whited Sepulchre. He was a August 13 was a tape made in 1977 founding member of the steering documenting the anti-racist march group of AVPhD, the AHRC funded against the National Front in training and support network for all . It has been shown in those doing, supervising and partnership with a contemporary film – examining audio-visual practice based The Battle of Lewisham – about the doctorates, 2005-2009. same events. • Squatting tapes and He worked in community video in the tapes by Tenants groups from housing 1970s and 80s in South East London estates are being used by current (including at Albany Video through the housing activists. • The playback of 1980s), then worked in television as a young women’s videos from the 1980s documentary Producer/Director, provokes discussion 30 years later in a specialising in political and creative local Arts centre. • Framed Youth (the documentary, as well as maintaining ground breaking 1983 tape by the an interest in community-based video Lesbian and Gay Youth Video Project) and social-action media. He has was ‘re-made’ by a group of LGTBQ written extensively in the latter area young people in 2013 – the first tape’s over the last 30 years, including writing 40th anniversary - as Re-framed Youth. articles and editing three books – The In each case we will explore some of Alternative Media Handbook the similarities and differences (Routledge 2007), Inclusion through between the social and political Media (Goldsmiths/Equal 2007) and struggles and aspirations of the groups Channels of Resistance: Global who made the tapes and their Television and Local Empowerment counterparts in the present. We ask: (BFI 1993) and authoring Video With what do these contemporary viewers Young People (Cassell 1987). get out of the experience of watching the archive tapes? What do the tapes say about our world now? What aspects of their aesthetics and production methods are still relevant?

Dennis Delgado My work makes visible the Eurocentric ‘Dark Databases: Facial Recognition and militarised gaze in contemporary and its 'Failure,' to Enroll’ visual culture. I use video, photography, sculpture, drawing and This paper/presentation will examine software to subvert the constructs of current facial recognition technology, the post-colonial gaze and its notions how its algorithms work to assemble of centrality, superiority and and analyse image data, and how entitlement. Most recently my work the technology’s development and explores technologies of vision. From flaws reflect a continuation of racism the colonial use of the zoo cage, to and of false discursive positioning. The the development of surveillance and presentation will also look at how facial recognition technology my work contemporary artists are working to examines how technologies of vision reveal the technology’s inevitable are employed to perpetuate racism bias, and in effect, it service to the and to meet the demands of 21st demands of 21st century capitalism. century capitalism. My work also works The paper will look at the work of to reactivate the colonial past of a Sterling Crispin, Joy Buolamwini, Paolo particular site, and reveals that past’s Cirio, Dries Depoorter, and my own presence in the current moment. To (Dennis Delgado’s) among others, to this end the work often focuses on demonstrate how artists are using and strategies of representation and turns responding to facial recognition’s current technologies on those controversial implementations. The representations, to reveal bias, control presentation will also place facial and misrepresentation. My work also recognition within the historical reflects my own life and social position, context of images and the policing of investigating how the history of bourgeois society; It will scrutinise the America, and the cultural exchanges technology’s omissions and position it enacted by Spanish, English and within the continued legacy of using African ancestries have shaped the mathematical data extracted from present moment. image, to create databases of faces that abstract and depoliticize, racism and re-enforce class hierarchies. Within the context of Re@ct, the paper aims to provoke discussion about how we as citizens, artists, and activists can work together to assist and transform the direction of facial recognition technologies to ensure they are used ethically.

Francesca Franco Francesca Franco is a Venetian-born ‘Art & Technology at the Venice art historian and curator based in the Biennale, 1968-1970’ UK. She is Senior Research Fellow at the University of Exeter, where she is The origins of the Venice Biennale’s investigating novel ways of curatorial model can be found in the documenting digital art and late nineteenth century. The first researching the history of computer Biennales were inspired by the giant art. She is also Visiting Lecturer nineteenth century exhibitions and at Danube University Krems, Austria. In celebrated the official academic 2017, she was Curator-in-Residence at style, or “Salon art”. The breaking of the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa the original Venice Biennale’s Venice, where she curated Algorithmic curatorial model happened owing to Signs, an exhibition that explored the political circumstances in 1968, the history of pioneering generative art. year of European radical revolts Her first solo-authored book, for social and economic change. Generative Systems Art, was published From a curatorial perspective, the by Routledge in 2018. Her second 1968 Venice Biennale represented an monograph, The Algorithmic “anomaly” compared to Dimension, will be published by its previous editions. Not only the Springer in 2019. She is currently political instances brought forward by working on her next curatorial project, the student revolt, but also the a large-scale exhibition of media art at introduction of new technologies in art the 2021 Venice Biennale. from the mid 1960s contributed in allowing the Venice Biennale to take distance from its original 19th century Salon art model. Owing to innovative and cross-disciplinary projects such as those presented by David Lamelas and Nicolas Schöffer at the 1968 Biennale, the institution started, slowly, to open up towards new media and to accept them as a new form of art. This, as I would like to argue, had a strong influence in the curatorial directions the Biennale took after 1968. My paper will consider the 1968 Biennale to discuss to what extent new media art influenced the Biennale’s original curatorial model. How did the new curatorial model evolve after 1968? I will look at the way technology brought to the Biennale a new wave of creativity, but at the same time an element of destabilisation to the traditional asset of the Biennale institution.

Johanna Hoffman Johanna Hoffman is a designer and ‘Making the Future Personal’ artist working at the juncture of design, fiction and futures. Johanna believes This presentation will explore the role that deeper understanding of climate of speculative futures and design in issues provides the spark we need to helping vulnerable communities plan act on climate change. To that end, for climate change. So often when we she creates interactive public art and learn about the effects of climate digital installations that translate hard change, we think “what can I really to grasp climate facts into personal, do?” or “where do I start?” Studies multi-sensory experiences. Her work show that translating climate data in sparks the imagination, motivates folks multi-sensory ways to engage people to adapt to climate change, and on personal levels is critical in connects people to the tools they addressing this issue. When people need to transform that motivation into see what change means for their lives, action. Johanna has nearly two families & communities, they’re more decades of experience in community & inspired motivated to act. Inviting design, civic art, planning, and climate people to inhabit a speculative future change adaptation. She has worked engages them in the potential with a range of motivated institutions ramifications of climate change on and organizations, from Louisiana State this highly personal level. The session University and UC Santa Cruz, to the will provide an overview of San Francisco United School District precedents for using digitally and University of Hawaii. She has translated speculative futures in lectured and exhibited her work at MIT, creative climate change planning, RISD, UC Berkeley, Yerba Buena Center and focus on one community-based for the Arts and more. planning project in particular -- Climate Stories, a multi-sensory, augmented-reality based installation of what the world could be like in 56 years. The presentation will begin with a brief description of speculative futures and design and a quick overview of organizations and projects using these tools for community-based social impact projects. I will then progress into a more detailed description of Climate Stories as a case study for using these tools in the community planning process. A multi-sensory exploration of what the world could be like in 2075, Climate Stories communicates climate change data through an interactive, inhabitable AR and physical experience, and connects participants with the information and frameworks they need to transform understanding into climate action.

Marisa Morán Jahn Of Chinese and Ecuadorian descent, ‘Copper in my Cooch and Other artist Marisa Morán Jahn has been Technologies’ described by ArtForum as “exemplifying the possibilities of art as When we think about technology, social practice.” A grantee of most conjure images of things Sundance, Creative Capital, and automated (eg, robots) and agents Tribeca Film Institute, her work has automating (eg, AIs). In this talk, artist been presented at Brooklyn Museum, Marisa Morán Jahn broadens how we Obama’s White House, worker centers, think about technology through the public spaces, and PBS. She is the example of copper, whose extraction, founder of Studio REV-, a non-profit refinement, and use is both ancient organization that codesigns public art and future-forward. Copper is a and creative media with low-wage pliable and naturally-occurring workers, immigrants, youth, and element found in our homes, women. Key works include CareForce, computers, cities, lightning rods, and NannyVan, Bibliobandido, Video Slink the IUD located in the uterus Uganda, and most recently, (“snatch”) of 170 million women Snatchural History of Copper. She across the world today. As the first teaches at The New School, Columbia, metal mined across the world, and MIT, her alma mater. copper’s wide usage in tools, anti- bacterials, jewelry that promotes blood circulation, household fixtures, digital networks, and reproductive technology point to its central role as a metal that lives with(in) us. Jahn will share examples from her current work, Snatchural History of Copper, a participatory art installation, book, and film that celebrates copper’s coterminous relationship with human civilization while questioning who has the right to exert control over bodies and land.

Tom Keene Tom Keene ‘Database (e)State: Resisting, thinking, (www.theanthillsocial.co.uk) is an artist, and acting with machines of urban activist, and researcher who regeneration.’ investigates the role of marginal and often obscure technological objects. Database (E)state is an artist and He makes things, programs computers, activist led PhD research project that writes and thinks with technologies to ex-plores the democratic, ethical, and explore how they do things in the material effects of databases used by world. His practice considers local government to manage council- technological histories, flows of power owned housing stock in the United and knowledge, and complex sets of Kingdom(UK). The project draws from human and technological relations. my five years of experience as a Through this practice, Tom considers housing activist and homeowner on how technical objects construct, Cressingham Gardens Estate in South transform and amplify the social West London where I have lived since relations of everyday life. These objects 2006. Council currently aims have consisted of municipal to demolish all 306 homes on databases, wireless protocol, Cressingham against the wishes of the algorithms, electrical components, vast majority of residents. In the UK mobile devices, cloud servers, affordability and access to housing is automated vacuum cleaners and a pressing social issue, and yet central biological sensors. government and local authority proposals to address these issues through urban regeneration schemes have proved highly controversial. Activist campaigns have long-fought the demolition of social housing estates such as the Heygate, Aylesbury, and Cressingham, council estates in London. These campaigns, along with the recent Grenfell tower tragedy, have brought the democratic and deliberative practices of central and local government into sharp focus. Central to these practices are database technologies used by local authorities in the management of their housing stock. Such databases, however, are unacknowledged, poorly understood, and mostly invisible and inaccessible to residents. In this paper, I present one artefact titled 31.Shadow Database from my Database (E)state project. This artefact is one of over thirty artist and activist led research strategies that work as modes of enquiry into government database technologies. 31.Shadow Database is a resident-led attempt to re-create an inaccessible multi-million-pound database system used by Lambeth Council. 31.Shadow Database has helped to slow processes of urban regeneration on Cressingham.

Steve Lambert Lambert is the co-founder and co- ‘Pro Bono Mercenary for Justice director of the Center for Artistic Recruitment Session’ Activism, a research and training institute helping activists be more Steve Lambert wants you to join him. creative and artists be more effective. With the Center for Artistic Activism, As an artist, Lambert’s work has been Lambert has worked alongside artists shown both nationally and and activists in 16 countries on 4 internationally, from art galleries to continents helping them to effect Times Square to protest marches, power. Using his training from art and featured in four documentary films, design, he uses signs, symbols, stories, and over two dozen books, and and spectacle to engage new collected by museums and The Library audiences on difficult topics through of Congress. Lambert has presented at psychology, social science, comedy, the United Nations several times. His games, theater, and democracy. He’ll research is included in a United Nations relay lessons learned in collaborating report on the impact of advertising on with larger advocacy organizations so cultural rights, as well as the basis for a you can better contribute to book on popular understandings of movements for justice, equality, public capitalism. Over the past five years health, and human rights. he’s focused on working with sex workers on campaigns for human rights, fighting for safe consumption spaces with people who use drugs like heroin and methamphetamine, and working with Treatment Action Group battling pharmaceutical companies over pricing for HEP-C treatments.

Ray LC Ray LC is an artist grounded with ‘A Case for Play: Immersive Storytelling knowledge of human thought. His of Rohingya Refugee Experience’ interdisciplinary artistic and design practice incorporates cutting edge The displacement of refugees from neuroscience research as a their natural homes have caused foundation for building experiences violence and estrangement all over that create empathic bonds between the world, as victims, perpetrators, humans and between humans and and hosts jostle for territorial and machines, to show how a resource control, to the detriment of technological future can embody victims who live in unbearable social good and social justice. He conditions outside their homelands. studied AI and neuroscience at Cal There’s often misunderstanding and UCLA, but turned to interactive art amongst hosts and Western media in Japan while publishing papers on that see refugees as parasites and PTSD and creativity. He's currently a destructive agents who hoard researcher at Parsons School of Design valuable resources. Educating both / Cornell Tech, and a visiting professor sides of the refugee-host divide have at Northeastern University College of involved programs like UNVR, which Art, Media, and Design. He works in created immersive films following the interdisciplinary teams of experts conventional 2D filmmaking including psychologists, software approach, portraying static scenes engineers, fashion designers, physical with narratively voiced pieces that therapists, and creative coders. Ray attempt to put us inside the refugee has been artist in residence at BankArt camps to elicit empathy. Instead of Yokohama, 1_Wall Tokyo, Brooklyn relying on storytelling through voice as Fashion BFDA, Process Space LMCC, in conventional documentaries, we New Hall of Science (NYSCI), Saari embarked on a visual-journey-based Residence. His work has been approach to show the daily lives of exhibited at Kiyoshi Saito Museum, Rohingya refugees in Balukhali, BankArt, Tokyo Golden Egg, Columbia Bangladesh using dynamic Macy Gallery, Java Studios, City movements in VR space, spatial audio University of Hong Kong, Elektra that surprise, and collaborative Montreal, NYSCI, Happieee Place filmmaking that involves the ArtLab Lahore. His award-winning work participants as they empower has been recognized by Japan themselves using the 360 camera as a Society for Promotion of Science, tool for exploration. Instead of National Science Foundation, investigating the hardships of refugees Microsoft Imagine Cup, Adobe Design from a Western perspective, we Achievement Award, A' Design Award. enabled a boy in the refugee camp and his friends to create a visual experience that represent their daily struggles the way they have become used to. The interactive VR film becomes an empowerment tool to enable self-expression in a corner of the world that have become used to being the observed as opposed to the observer, in turn taking advantage of VR as a medium for both immersion and capability to surprise in 4D.

Laura Leuzzi Dr. Laura Leuzzi is an art historian and ‘EWVA - Retracing European Early curator. She completed her PhD at Women's Video Art’ Sapienza University of Rome in 2011. Author of articles, essays and exhibition This paper will focus on the AHRC catalogues, her research and funded research project EWVA curatorial practice focuses on video European Women’s Video Art in the art, new media, art and feminism, time 70s and 80s (2015-2017, DJCAD, and the relationship between word University of Dundee) led by Prof. and image in visual art. She has Elaine Shemilt. Co-Investigator is Prof. curated exhibitions, screenings and Stephen Patridge; Researcher, Leuzzi events in Italy, UK and Switzerland. She and Archivist, Adam Lockhart. EWVA is co-editor with of aims to retrace and reassess the REWINDItalia | Early Video Art in Italy germinal early contribution of (2015) and with Elaine Shemilt and European women artists to video as Partridge of EWVA European Women's an artform. Despite the fact that Video Art (2019). She is currently several women artists had been Research Fellow and Co-Investigator experimenting with the medium in the on the AHRC-funded research project 70s and 80s, their fundamental Richard Demarco: the Italian experimentation is still marginalised Connection, at DJCAD University of and has partially fallen into oblivion. Dundee. EWVA aims to strength their profiles and identities within the art historical canon and support their recognition.

Adam Lockhart Adam Lockhart is Media Archivist & ‘Democracy vs Technocracy’ Researcher at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design (University of When new technology comes into the Dundee). He is a leading specialist in hands of artists, the first thing they the conservation, preservation and often do with it, are things that you restoration of artists’ video. Lockhart are not meant to do with it. This has worked on various research ranges from experimentation with the projects including REWIND| Artists’ technology itself to using it to highlight Video in the 1970s & 1980s, Narrative social and political issues. With the Exploration in Expanded Cinema with arrival of the Portapak video recorder Central St Martins College of Art & in the late 1960s, the democratisation Design, REWINDItalia, European of video meant it was now in the Women’s Video Art and Richard hands of the people and not just that Demarco: The Italian Connection. He of the mainstream media. London has acted as curator, co-curator and based counter-culturist and UFO club consultant for a number of screenings founder, John ‘Hoppy’ Hopkins was an and exhibitions at organisations such early adopter of this new technology, as Tate Modern, Tate Britain, BFI after being given one by John Southbank, Dundee Contemporary Lennon. He used it around London to Arts, Scottish National Galleries of record important happenings, protests Modern Art, Stills Edinburgh, Streetlevel and events. He was later joined by his Photoworks , DOCVA in Milan partner Sue Hall where they both and Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum. formed Fantasy Factory in the 1970s, a He recently worked with the London non-profit video centre providing Community Video Archive as a access to video facilities, bringing it consultant, digitising and preserving a within the reach of community number of video works on obsolete activists and independent directors. formats. This brokered the way for the next generation of artists in the 1980s, who embraced scratch video, which further pushed the limits of technology creating satirical socio-political artworks, raising the awareness of many important issues of the day and challenging many of the broadcast conventions of the time. This presentation will discuss how technology has given a voice to marginalised people and groups, allowing them to fight the established system.

Amanda McDonald Crowley Amanda McDonald Crowley is an ‘Artists and Food Systems: Towards independent cultural worker and Sustainable Futures’ curator who works at the intersection of art + technology with artists who My current research interests include have a research-based practice. the politics of food; the environment Amanda develops platforms to and sustainability; and urban culture. generate dialogue, bringing together This presentation will outline how these professionals and amateurs from overlapping interests have led to varied disciplines, and creating space curatorial work with artists who for audience engagement. Recent actively invite audiences to be projects include Tiny Scissors Tattoo participants in the generation of Parlor Detroit with Amy Khoshbin for content and ideas. I will discuss how Detroit Art Week and working on Mary workshops, meals, music, Mattingly’s Swale, a floating food performances, and actions that are forest in NYC as well as projects with radically collaborative and Kulturföreningen Triennal (Malmö), participatory invite audiences to Bronx Arts Alliance, YMPJ (Bronx), New rethink their relationships to public Media (Edinburgh), Pixelache space and to our food systems. How (Helsinki), PointB (Brooklyn), Bemis does that relate to digital art? Come Center (Omaha). Amanda has find out: the world is (inter)connected! advisory roles on Di Mainstone’s Human Harp (UK), Juanli Carrion’s OSS Project (NYC), Shu Lea Cheang’s CycleX (NY) and Vibha Galhotra’s S.O.U.L Foundation (Delhi). Amanda previously worked with Eyebeam art + technology center NY, Australian Network for Art and Technology, ISEA2004 in Finland, Adelaide Festival 2002 and has done curatorial residencies at Helsinki International Artists Program, Santa Fe Art Institute, Bogliasco Foundation, Sarai New Media Institute, and Banff Center for the Arts.

Conor McGarrigle Conor McGarrigle is an artist and ‘Handouts don’t exist hustle or you researcher working primarily with don’t eat (title is an AI generated digital media. his practice is tweet)’ characterised by urban interventions mediated through digital technologies It is well established that AI has a bias and data-driven explorations of problem, however, black boxed networked social practices. Projects machine-learning systems render it include durational walking difficult to even understand and performances, large scale outdoor visualise the nature and extent of the projections, AR apps, and generative problem, yet alone find solutions. This video installations. His research paper discusses an artistic research examines the implications of pervasive approach toward highlighting AI bias, networked devices and whilst exploring the aesthetic potential computational processes through the of machine learning, through a case lens of critical art practice. This work is study of an AI artwork by this author. rooted in a historical analysis of the #RiseandGrind is an art project that intersections of art and technology, trained a recurrent neural network, on demonstrating how contemporary and a large data-set extracted from historical practices develop new Twitter hashtags (#Riseandgrind and readings and critical understandings of #Hustle) chosen to represent a very networked technologies and specific filter bubble (embodied emergent user practices. A particular neoliberal precarity), to produce a focus is on evolving notions of space biased AI that generates tweets for a and place afforded by new spatial TwitterBot. The paper unpacks this practices enabled through ubiquitous artwork, demonstrating how it makes networked location-aware devices. visible the processes of machine- This work emphasises the materiality of learning in a playful and poetic way. digital cultures, attending to hardware Revealing how the original filter bias is and coded processes alongside user consolidated, amplified, shaped and practices to reveal and study the ultimately codified through this entanglements of the network in all machine learning process, producing aspects of the everyday. a cohesive world view reflecting the original data bias enhanced by the assumptions of the algorithmic platform, in turn introducing wider contagion effects in the hashtag bubble. The paper reflects on what philosopher Bernard Stiegler sees as the pharmacological nature of AI, and the role of artistic research and practice in revealing and critiquing these processes. The paper will discuss the findings of the art project over three iterations during 2018-19 in the Science Gallery Lab Detroit, Tulca Festival of Visual Art Galway, and the Green on Red Gallery Dublin.

Lulamile Mohapi Lulamile Mohapi is an emerging ‘Political Play in the “Winnie Mandela” researcher and lecturer at Wits video game: A Postmortem’ University’s Digital Arts Division. His Master’s Degree thesis focuses on Winnie is a 2D platformer/shooter Entrepreneurship and African Cultures based in a dystopian South Africa, in the Games Industry. He is also a during an unspecified period of strategist and a research consultant on political upheaval. As a player, you Intellectual Property as well as Cultural fight off the white apartheid special and Economic Policy for video games branch police aided by black corrupt and digital innovation. Lulamile is the politicians; and to ultimately deliver a founder and Managing Director at “signal” to the youth of South Africa. Fishknife Interactive - a game The Winnie Mandela video game was development startup based in developed under three thematic and Johannesburg. The studio is currently or ‘theoretical’ foundations. Firstly, it producing Africa’s first open world was developed as a tribute to the late franchise titled Jozi Violentine - a gritty liberation icon; thus placing focus on crime story set in urban Johannesburg. the concept of documentary Lulamile has developed Uyajola 9_9, a newsgames (Bogost; Ferrari; video game parody based on the Schweizer: 2010); where games South African version of the TV show engage ‘broader historical and Cheaters; as well as Winnie - a tribute current events in a manner similar to video game to the late freedom documentary photography; cinema; fighter - Mrs Winnie Madikizela and investigative reporting’(ibid). Mandela. He holds a Bachelor of Arts Secondly; the game adopts Ian Degree in Film Studies from AFDA; and Bogost’s theory of procedural rhetoric has worked for more than 16 years in through using computation (digital the film; television and commercials interactivity) and design (rule-based sector. His passion is firmly rooted in representations) in order to develop merging African cultures; interactive persuasive statements or arguments and immersive media; film and (Bogost: 2007). The rhetoricity in this television with gaming. work challenges a 2D animation tribute created by the Mail and Guardian newspaper, after the passing of Mrs Madikizela Mandela; which consists of a Super Mario-esque dungeon platformer simulation with similar game mechanics. Thirdly; Winnie embraces Miguel Sicart’s concept of political play, which he describes as ‘harnessing the expressive; creative; appropriative; and subversive capacities of play and using them for political expression’ (Sicart: 2015). Political play in the context of Winnie presents an ontological dimension wherein representation and critical play offer an imagined future discourse on the African ludological cultures.

BD Owens B. D. Owens is a multi-disciplinary artist ‘Watching Me, Watching You: based in Scotland. He has been Reflections Upon Surveillance, Gare involved in various kinds Loch Duality & the #undesiredline’ of activism in the arenas of Peace, Anti-Oppression, Environmentalism, In this paper, I will examine the surveillance and censorship. In 2017, unconscious stress perpetuated by he graduated (With Distinction) from surveillance and the notion of the the Art, Society & Publics MFA ever-present panopticon. I will reflect Programme at DJCAD, University of upon my experiences of a 224 mile Dundee. Previously, he studied at pilgrimage that I undertook last year Concordia University, in over a period of 50 days. Montreal, gaining a BFA in Sculpture. In It was a daily pilgrimage from the front 2017, he won the Fife Fine Arts Society door of my house to the front door of Prize which funded an artist residency the Faslane Nuclear Submarine Base. at betOnest (Stolpe, Germany). He has It was a walking performance, shown his sculpture, text-works, through which I drew an performance, video and sound work in Undesired Line on the grass verge in Montreal, Brooklyn, Dundee, Glasgow, parallel to an existing 'undesired line' - Stolpe, Edinburgh and online. His the perimeter fence of the Base. poetry has been published in We Were Throughout the time the performance Always Here: A Queer Words was in progress, I made an online text- Anthology, Talking About Lobsters: work using the Twitter hashtag New Writing Scotland Issue 34 and has #undesiredline. In addition to been shortlisted in the Jupiter Artland: appraising my own work, I will discuss Inspired to Write Poetry and Prose surveillance focused artworks by Competition. In February 2019, he took David Rokeby, Janet and The part in a poetry reading and panel Surveillance Camera Players. I will also discussion at GoMA Glasgow as part of consider the implications and the We Were Always Here: Queer limitations of ‘piggy-backing’ an Times event. And, in March 2019, artwork onto existing online platforms eco/art/scot/land commissioned him such as Twitter and Google Maps. to write a review/article about the film I recently reactivated the Water Makes Us Wet: An Ecosexual #undesiredline text-work, since I am Adventure by Beth Stephens and currently reflecting upon subsequent Annie Sprinkle. observations and collating the documentation from the 50-day durational performance/sculpture. I will use some of the material that I have gathered for this paper: Video, photos, drawings, daily journal writings, field recordings and the #undesiredline Tweets. My aim is to start a new project soon, Mapping The Undesired Line: Gare Loch Duality, (an online interactive map) as the legacy for The Undesired Line.

Alicja Pawluczuk Alicja is a Digital Media Practitioner ‘Storifying the digital divide: what can and Researcher with extensive the 1970's community video teach us experience of participatory media about the inequalities in the digital project design and facilitation both in age?’ Europe and South East Asia. Alicja’s interests in using participatory media Nowadays, participatory digital media for social change began in 2010 when provides disadvantaged communities she created her first short films at Pilton with a voice, and digital storytelling Video in Edinburgh. Since then, Alicja tools, live-streaming, social media and has developed her media activism vlogs are being regularly used by and teaching practice by working grassroots activists (e.g. alongside organisations such as Media #BlackLivesMatter or #MeToo) - re- Education Edinburgh, the Institute of defining our perspectives of collective Local Television, Screen Education action and often also leading to real Edinburgh, Alchemy Film Festival, Fife life changes. It can be argued that in Cultural Trust, Maverick Television and the hyper-connected digital era, most the United Nations. In 2014, Alicja of us have become media co- curated a Video Activism Night in creators. However, digital Edinburgh, with an aim to showcase technologies have also unleashed and celebrate the work of community- new inequalities of power and wealth, led film, where organisations such as reinforcing divisions between the the Red Start Cinema, Pilton Video, information rich and poor, the activists WITNESS, Engage Media showcased and disengaged. The utopian idea of their work. In 2015, Alicja set up a participatory media and digital digital storytelling collective, called culture has been questioned in recent Digital Beez - a not-for-profit enterprise debates on disinformation, deep focusing on participatory digital fakes, algorithmic oppression, and storytelling and young people’s social media echo-chambers. While digital literacy and digital inclusion. digital technologies have Alicja has a track record of democratised our access to the publications focusing on young media making process, they have not people's pro-active participation in entirely helped when fighting with the digital culture. Both her community problems initially covered by the media practice and research community video movements in the are socially and action driven, and 1960s (e.g. poverty, gender, and emphasise the importance of racial discrimination). How does the meaningful community participation. work of these movements fit into current participatory digital storytelling practice and media literacy debates? What does it mean to be a radical media maker in the digital era? And finally, what can young digital media designers and producers take from the work ethos of the early community media activists? In my presentation, I will be reflecting on my experience of using Scottish community video archives while teaching digital storytelling to young people. The talk will explore young people’s interactions with archive material, and its possible use in the educational media setting (both formal and informal learning).

Pip Thorton Pip Thornton is a post-doctoral ‘Linguistic Capitalism: Critique & research associate in Creative Resistance in the Age of Algorithmic Informatics at Edinburgh University, Reproduction’ having recently gained her PhD in Geopolitics and Cybersecurity from In an age of digital technology, Royal Holloway, University of London. language has become far more than Her thesis, Language in the Age of a means of human communication, Algorithmic Reproduction: A Critique creativity or expression. Increasingly of Linguistic Capitalism, put forward a written for - and ‘read’ by – theoretical, political and artistic algorithms, when words become critique of Google’s search and data, they carry more than linguistic advertising platforms. Her academic meaning, and as such are valuable publications include A Critique of commodities in the advertising Linguistic Capitalism: marketplace. Nobody knows this Provocation/Intervention better than Google, which made its (GeoHumanities 2018), and fortune from the auctioning of words Geographies of (con)text: Language through AdWords; a form of ‘linguistic and Structure in a Digital Age capitalism’ (Kaplan, 2014) in which the (Computational Culture 2017) and she aesthetic value of language is has presented in a variety of venues negated at the expense of its including the Science Museum, the exchange value. But what are the Alan Turing Institute and at the residual cultural or political effects of transmediale festival of art and digital this algorithmic exploitation of culture in Berlin. Her work has featured language? What is gained and what in WIRED UK and New Scientist, and a is lost when words become data? This collection from her artistic intervention paper argues that the liquidation of {poem}.py is currently on display at the language into data, and the speed in Open Data Institute in London. A new which it can be processed, exhibition will be/was shown at the reproduced, interpreted and Glucksman Gallery in Cork, Ireland as capitalised, has consequences that part the 2019 Electronic Literature are both linguistic and political. In Organization Conference & Media Arts addition to the critique, I would also Festival. like to offer a means of resistance against the algorithmic acceleration of linguistic discourse in the form of an artistic intervention. In order to make visible - and interrupt - the workings of linguistic capitalism I have developed a research/art project called {poem}.py which uses poetry, the Google AdWords keyword planner and a second hand receipt printer in an attempt to rescue language from the algorithmic marketplace; re- politicise it (Benjamin, 1936), and reclaim it for art. This paper explains the genesis of the project, including demonstrations of the different modes of intervention and resistance I am currently exploring.

Fruzsina Pittner Fruzsina Pittner is a Hungarian ‘Juju, Deep Space and the Colonial’ computer game artist and digital illustrator currently working as a In an interview shortly after the release postgraduate researcher at Dundee of her 2009 short film Pumzi, Wanuri University. She is a member of BIOME Kahiu Kenyan filmmaker speaks about Collective, a multicultural co-working the picture literature, film, and games and game development group, as paint of Africans as either people of well as the Scottish Centre for Global violence, or victims of conflicts outside History. Her PhD project combines all of of their control. Within postcolonial her interests: art, digital comics and literature and game studies there is a computer games; alongside visual, phenomenon that regularly surfaces in textual and interactive storytelling. Her the discussion: studying the image of research project titled Transmedia the other. The image of Africa. The Afterlives of African Adventure image of women and other ‘queer Narratives covers topics from novel folk’. Narratives about other places adaptations, film and interactive and people are often set in opposition media, to the image of Africa through to what is understood as the western the narratives that exist about it and literary canon, contributing to a the many different ways we tell stories picture of the world that is based for and about each other. upon a long history of colonialism and other Euro- and America-centric economic, religious, and military pursuits. In the genre most commonly defined as afrofuturism, authors, artists and filmmakers use a unique voice not only to describe African folklore, but to digest, process and dissect colonialism and its effects on the continent and its various people and cultures. They do not only imagine alternative presents and possible futures; these stories also endeavour to deal with the past and attempt to reach closure, write as a form of activism, and disrupt common views of Africa. This paper will examine what happens when African and African diaspora authors take charge of their own narrative: it will observe the role and use of oral tradition in African speculative literature, themes of survival in Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis series (1987–1989) and The Fifth Season (2015) by N. K. Jemisin; and will explore elements of folklore and technology intertwining in Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death (2010) and the Marvel film Black Panther (2018). It will reflect upon how authors choose to define and re- define genre and how that affects representation in media, the practice of many artists, filmmakers and writers who strive for creating diverse and accurately researched narratives.

Fernando Martín Velazco Fernando Martín Velazco is a writer, ‘The Ghost Newspaper: Fake theorist and multidisciplinary Journalism in the Mexican Drug War’ researcher. Since 2015 he is the captain and founder of the Stultifera The Mexican border state of Navis Institutom, an organization Tamaulipas had been one of the dedicated to the artistic, scientific and critical points of violence humanistic research through an concentration on the last decade in expeditionary method. He was formed Latin America. On 2010 the Inter- as communicologist and pedagogue American Commission on Human by the National Autonomous University Rights called it a “silenced zone” after of Mexico, where he has taught. His the murder of some journalists and the mayor experience as a science and artistic divulger was for El Colegio closure of different Media after Nacional, the most prestigious arts, menaces by the mafia groups and humanity and science institute of some governmental authorities. In Mexico, where he became the 2016, during an international theatre youngest manager ever (2014-2018). festival in the port of Tampico, the Stultifera Navis Institutom occupied a As captain of the Stultifera Navis, he 33 years abandoned building in the has collaborated with the End of the downtown that used to belong to an World Theater Festival in the cycle important journal. For three days, they “Hauntologies” in Mexico and represented the resurgence of the Uruguay. Also, he has developed newspaper improving an editorial multidisciplinary projects in Mexico, the office on its building, adapting a US, and the former Yugoslavia printing press on it and distributing the countries. On 2017 he started the cycle publication along the city. All the of annual expeditions "The Leviathan previous with local fakes: fake news, Games" (2017-2019) carrying out fake advices; a fake city to report. The cultural and symbolic research with grey whales, project later supported effect of fiction was immediate: by the program of grants Art, Science people congregated around the & Technology 2018 from the the building and public dialogues had to National Autonomous University of be organized. This paper recovers the Mexico and the National Fund for experience of this multidisciplinary site- Culture and Arts. In 2018 he developed specific intervention giving details of the project “Ohtlatocaliztli”, a 10,000 the theoretical background of it kilometers pilgrimage throughout the based on the Hauntology concept of indigenous towns of Mexico and the Jacques Derrida, and reflects about US, that did realize 20 monumental the theatrical character of historical landscape interventions in both resurgences and their social countries and an art codex that consequences. Also, makes an register it. In 2019 started “Navis Aeria”, a fictional aero-photographic studio appointment about the lack of local along the Californias, and established perspective in the times of global a program of art residences at media and the validity of extreme peripherical contexts. deontological debates. Finally, the text stops in the dramaturgic evolution Recently he was selected to be part of of the editorial front pages of the the 2020 Djerassi Resident Artists ghost newspaper and its use of fiction Program in SanFrancisco, California. as an act of discursive rebellion and empowerment of memory.

Mercedes Vicente Dr. Mercedes Vicente is a curator, ‘Darcy Lange’s Maori Land Project: writer and researcher. Her AHRC- Early Video, Indigenous Rights and funded PhD at the Royal College of Artistic Interventions’ Art, completed in 2017, examined the work of video pioneer Darcy Lange The paper draws some reflections on (New Zealand, 1946–2005). Her the early use of video by New Zealand ongoing curatorial, archival and artist Darcy Lange and his Maori Land research efforts since 2005 to advance Project (1977–80). Collaborating the legacy of Lange has entailed the closely with Māori activist and preservation of his videos, the creation photographer John Miller, Lange of the artist archive, curating numerous joined the efforts of fellow activists to exhibitions on Lange at institutions such raise awareness and mobilize support as Tate Modern, NTU CCA Singapore, for land rights by Māori during the rise Ikon Gallery, Camera Austria, Cabinet of political struggles of the 1970s and Yale University. Her extensive known as the ‘Māori Renaissance’. writing and editorial credits include The movement sought indigenous self- books, exhibition catalogues and art determination, standing against journals. She is the editor of Darcy colonialism and its enclosures of Māori Lange: Study of an Artist at Work land. This paper explores the politics of (Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, NZ and representation surrounding his work as Ikon Gallery, UK, 2008; Spanish edition an example of a Pākehā (New EACC, Spain, 2012). Vicente has held Zealander of European descent) institutional positions as interim Director documenting Māori struggles from a of Education and Public Programmes critical historical stand. It reflects on at Whitechapel Gallery in London, the evolution of Māori cultural Curator of Contemporary Art at debates as well as on some of the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in New ethical concerns and collaborative Zealand and Research Curatorial working processes, drawing from Assistant at the Whitney Museum of notions such as ‘the camera as a American Art in New York, among listener’ introduced by Maori others. filmmaker Barry Barclay and the coloniser–indigene coupling or ‘hyphen’ as explored by Alison Jones and Kuni Jenkins, and examples of both Māori and Pākehā contemporary video artists in Aotearoa New Zealand (Joyce Campbell, Nova Paul, Natalie Robertson) embracing kaupapa Māori, so working through and from the position of Māori customary practices, principles and ideologies.

Violeta Vojvodic Balaz Violeta Vojvodic Balaz studied at the ‘Social Engine Communication University of Belgrade at the Faculty of Experiment’ Fine Art for her PhD with an art doctoral thesis The Case Of Art- Social Engine - art database, site- Adventurers Operating Into Global specific action, workshop and Margin: Art, Money, and Value in The participative didactic application - Age of Artificial Intelligence. Early was made by the art group Urtica works of Violeta included art objects (Serbia) as an attempt to investigate and installations that revolved about how information circulates within the language identification patterns society and in which way the and visualisation of linguistic dominant socio-cultural patterns expressions, such as neologisms and shape the social system as altruistic, onomatopoeia. Her interest in symbolic self-oriented, tolerant or oppressive. communication and new media drove After Yugoslav civil war in the 1990s, her toward experiments that combine the transition of the Serbian political ICT and fine art. She co-founded Urtica system from autocracy to democracy art and media research group in 1999, started in 2001 and brought ideas where she has been working as media related to social and cultural change. artist. She exhibited at Ars Electronica, This process was suppressed in 2003, Viper, FILE, Ogaki Biennial, Museum of when the leader of the reformatory Contemporary Art Belgrade, and movement, the Serbian Prime Minister received UNESCO Digital Arts Award Zoran Đinđić, was assassinated. Those 2003 at IAMAS, Japan. Within the events triggered the first version of framework of Urtica's projects Social Social Engine (2004) which questioned Engine and HoopUp, she held how socio-cultural patterns direct workshops with students and artists at society towards democracy or the universities at Saint-Etienne, autocracy, and produce functional or Luneburg, Belgrade, Novi Sad, and art dysfunctional decision-making due to organisations in Innsbruck, Ulm, and the impact of (post)mass media Montreal. She was also the co-founder propaganda, populism and the fear and project manager (2001-02) at New of ostracism. The Social Engine Media Center kuda.org (Novi Sad). database was created of well-known Currently, she is PhD candidate in socio-cultural patterns, embodied in Transdisciplinary Studies of Modern Arts textual and visual symbols; the main And Media at the Faculty for Media selection criterion being that they had and Communication in Belgrade. been evolving and circulating for a long time. Since 2004 Social Engine had five editions. Today it functions in the form of the HoopUp didactic application, communication workshop and the showcase on the repercussion of Information Revolution, e.g., What went wrong with the libertarian online society based on the belief in the non- hierarchical structures, merit-based assessment and personal freedom?

Joanna Walsh Joanna Walsh is the author of seven ‘A Woman Sitting In Front of a Screen’ books including the digital work, seed- story.com. Her latest book, Break.up, “Where is the face in interface? was published by Semiotext(e) and Where is the soft in ware? Tuskar Rock in 2018. Her writing has What is soft and where?” been widely published in anthologies, My performative lecture starts from newspapers and journals including The the precarious position of the woman Dalkey Archive's Best European Fiction, sitting in front of the screen, working Granta Magazine, gorse, The Stinging onscreen while working on her self in Fly, The Guardian, The New Statesman, order to put that self to work and The Los Angeles Review of Books. onscreen. She considers affective, She is a UK Arts Foundation fellow, and domestic and gendered labour, and the founder of #readwomen, activism on and offline. Working described by the New York Times as "a onscreen, as we all do now, how can rallying cry for equal treatment for screens work for her? Is it possible to women writers". consider our selves as wetware in the range of affordances offered by the screen, whose etymology has shifted from a protective or filtering barrier to a permissive interface analogous to our own skin? This poetics of the screen self involve a re-materialisation or a paying attention to materiality and its attendant processes on and offscreen, along with a paying attention to the affordances of the screen as a virtual space, and the tension created between them. Versions of this lecture have been given at the AUTO conference at the in May 2019, at Out of The Air: Women, Creativity and Intelligence Work at Bletchley Park in March 2019, and at The Revolution of Digital Languages or When Cyber Turns into Sound of Poetry—A Symposium on Post-Cyber-Feminisms at the Migros Museum, Zurich in April 2019.

Martin Zeilinger Dr. Martin Zeilinger is an Austrian, ‘AI Between Copyright Enforcement Scotland-based researcher and and Copyright Activism in Digital Art’ curator focusing on computational art in relation to critical and activist This presentation explores the impact practices. Martin has just joined of emerging AI tools on the Abertay University's Games and Art contemporary cultural landscape, Division. He is co-curator of Vector with a focus on commercially Festival (Toronto/CAN) and a member developed image recognition tools. In of the NEoN Festival curatorial particular, I discuss the role such collective. His work on subjects technologies may play in digital art including financial activism, intellectual projects that highlight and critique the property, and environmental issues in problematic impact of AI. relation to digital art have been Contextualising my presentation with published in journals including a very brief introduction to the Philosophy & Technology and books commercial use of image-recognition including the MoneyLab Reader. He is AI (e.g., for the automatic flagging of currently working on finishing a ‘pirated’ online media content), I will monograph entitled Digital Art and the focus on discussing Canadian Ends of Appropriation. artist Adam Basanta’s ongoing art project All We’d Ever Need is One Another (2018-). This project appropriates image recognition AI to powerfully problematise concepts such as ‘original,’ ‘copy,’ ‘ownership’ and ‘creativity,’ the meanings of which are today more and more often determined by unthinking, non- human AI agents. Adapting the Critical Engineering Manifesto (Oliver et al., 2011) for AI contexts, I propose that artificial intelligence technology can be a useful tool for criticism and activism regarding current intellectual property regimes, following appropriative uses that give wide exposure to the issues at hand.