Adnan Hadzi presented ‘Immersive Laboratory University of Malta: Artistic Doctorate Visual Pedagogies’ at the Eleventh International Conference on the Image.
As communicative landscapes are increasingly driven by the visual, there is a demand to put ‘the image’ at the center of research practices and educational methodologies. In turn, there is a call for a focus on new approaches to making sense of location, use, and analysis of the image in pedagogical contexts. The 2020 special focus attempts to provoke thinking through the image by: encounters – the personal, social and inter-connectedness of experience to the viewer; place – the where and how of transmission, situatedness and reception; ecologies – appearing within the image, systems, cultures, and context; design – the nature of action in experience and interpretation, from the historical, contemporary, to imaging future worlds. What creative ecologies can be re-imagined in the shared practices of image makers and educators that leads to the development of critical thinking to transform visual experience?
One of our themes for the now-postponed i-Docs conference back in March this year was ‘climate and ecological emergency’, and we had a number of excellent presentations lined up on this topic. To offer an alternate outlet for some of these presentations, we first hosted two climate conversations on Immerse – the first between Lizzie Warren and Michaela French which you can read here, and the second (to be published soon) between Bronwin Patrickson and Tom White. Now, we have invited three more i-Docs speakers for this online panel discussion about i-docs practice and climate crisis, each with an immersive media project to share – Elizabeth Miller, Lena Dobrowolska and Mitch Turnbull.
Elizabeth Miller, Professor of Communication Studies at Concordia University, will present her project Swampscapes: a VR and multi-platform exploration of Florida’s most endangered ecosystem, the Everglades. It aims to reconnect viewers to the beauty of swamps and the vital role they play in filtering water, fostering life, and buffering storms. Through passionate local guides, immersive landscapes, and an interactive Swamp Symphony, the documentary project leads users into the depths of Florida’s swamps and to the people who care about them.
Still image from Imperfect Meshes: Stories from the Hurricane
Artist Lena Dobrowolska will share her project Imperfect Meshes: Stories from the Hurricane, in which she explores the aftermath of Hurricane Michael – a climate intensified category 5 hurricane that made landfall on the Florida panhandle in October 2018. Through a combination of photogrammetry models, field recordings, oral testimonies and a hurricane simulation placed within a VR environment, Imperfect Meshes narrates complex, invisible and long-lasting climate trauma of the hurricane.
EarthSongs
Documentary filmmaker Mitch Turnbull will present her mixed reality experience EarthSongs. Delivered via the Magic Leap One headset, EarthSongs presents an immersive exploration of natural, wild soundscapes utilising spatial computing technology, object based audio and abstract 3D interactive digital imagery. EarthSongs offers an alternative route to understand and connect with nature by deconstructing wild soundscapes and delivering a playful and artistic immersive experience. It utilises the affordances of interactive mixed reality technology to deliver a personal and intimate encounter that taps into an intuitive link with the natural world.
More on our speakers:
Professor Liz Miller
Elizabeth (Liz) Miller is a documentary maker and professor who uses collaboration and interactivity as a way to connect personal stories to larger social concerns. Her films and interactive multi-platform projects on timely issues such as water privatization, refugee rights, gender issues and environmental justice have won awards and influenced decision makers. Her work has been broadcast on international television, streamed on Netflix and featured in galleries, climate conferences and at festivals including Hot Docs and SXSX.edu. Liz is a Full Professor in Communications Studies at Concordia University in Montreal and her book “Going Public: The Art of Participatory Practice (2017) has been integrated into educational curricula. She has partnered with organizations including UNESCO, International Association with Women and Radio and Television, Witness and Wapikoni on human rights, new media and advocacy training.
Lena Dobrowolska
Lena Dobrowolska is an artist working with a combination of documentary photography, artist film, installation, room size virtual reality experiences and research. Since 2012, she has been working in collaboration with Teo Ormond-Skeaping on projects relating to climate change and the Anthropocene or what she prefers to call the Capitalocene. Her works document vulnerability to, and responsibility for climate change as well as the resilience and adaptation efforts of marginalised communities in an attempt to imagine and make possible a climate just future. Her recent research has investigated the link between climate change and displacement, non-economic Loss & Damage and the moral and climate leadership of the Global South. Lena is the recipient of the 2019 Coalition for Art and Sustainable Development Prize (COAL) and the 2016 Culture and Climate Change: Future Scenarios Networked Residency prize. In 2019 she presented her work at UNFCCC COP25 in Madrid to climate negotiators and displacement experts.
Mitch TurnbullMitch Turnbull is a multi-nominated and award-winning natural history and conservation documentary filmmaker and XR creator with over twenty years experience in the UK & US. She has made films, live shows, media and XR content for a variety of broadcasters, studios and organisations including, BBC Studios, Oculus, Disneynature, Discovery, National Geographic, UN, RYOT and The Royal Foundation. Mitch has acted as a BAFTA VR Advisory Associate, contributed to UK Digital Catapult industry papers and is a South West Creative Technology Network Immersion Fellow with a research focus on how immersive technology can influence opinion and change behaviour.
Adnan presented Algorithms, Ethics & Justice at the MAD conference. In order to lay the foundations for a discussion around the argument that the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies benefits the powerful few, focussing on their own existential concerns, the paper will narrow down the analysis of the argument to social justice and jurisprudence (i.e. the philosophy of law), considering also the historical context. The paper explores the notion of humanised artificial intelligence in order to discuss potential challenges society might face in the future. The paper does not discuss current forms and applications of artificial intelligence, as, so far, there is no AI technology, which is self-conscious and self-aware, being able to deal with emotional and social intelligence. It is a discussion around AI as a speculative hypothetical entity. One could the ask, if such a speculative self-conscious hardware/software system were created at what point could one talk of personhood? And what criteria could there be in order to say an AI system was capable of committing AI crimes?The paper will discuss the construction of the legal system through the lens of political involvement of what one may want to consider to be powerful elites. Before discussing these aspects the paper will clarify the notion of “powerful elites”. In doing so the paper will be demonstrating that it is difficult to prove that the adoption of AI technologies is undertaken in a way which mainly serves a powerful class in society. Nevertheless, analysing the culture around AI technologies with regard to the nature of law with a philosophical and sociological focus enables one to demonstrate a utilitarian and authoritarian trend in the adoption of AI technologiesThe paper will then look, in a more detailed manner, into theories analysing the historical and social systematisation, or one may say disposition, of laws, and the impingement of neo-liberal tendencies upon the adoption of AI technologies. The regulatory, self-governing potential of AI algorithms and the justification by authority of the current adoption of AI technologies within civil society will be analysed next. The paper will propose an alternative, some might say practically unattainable, approach to the current legal system by looking into restorative justice for AI crimes, and how the ethics of care, through social contracts, could be applied to AI technologies. In conclusion the paper will discuss affect and humanised artificial intelligence with regards to the emotion of shame, when dealing with AI crimes.
The curators exhibition statement: If it were a sentence, this first online exhibition would have been conceived in future perfect tense, as an action started in the past and expected to be completed in the future. It is a caustic prelude, but it comes with hope. One of the most iconic and reproduced images of our time was taken on 7 December 1972 by the crew of Apollo 17 on their way to the Moon. It was the first photograph of the Earth as seen from 45,000 km away, a distance too far to distinguish human settlements or disruptive events, even though the Tamil Nadu cyclone is shown forming in the lower part of the image. In that same period, there was a significant surge in environmental activism in the U.S., and the image of our planet – one small, vulnerable entity floating in the giant Milky Way Galaxy – quickly became its symbol[1]. From up in space, the image also collectively inspired a mass sentiment to protect nature and humanity as a whole rather than focus on petty economic and political interests. Although this sentiment is often subjugated by systemic forces such as globalization and the belief in perpetual economic growth, many share it today and in particular now, as we contemplate the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak. NASA’s so-called Blue Marble photo shows us that everything is connected, yet we live in an imperfect world, which rewards competitive behavioral patterns and keeps us plugged in, diluting our survival instinct with solid fictional narratives. In fact, the presence of the Tamil Nadu cyclone has never prevented appreciation of the picture, despite the fact that it killed 80 people in South East Asia. Covid-19, by contrast, has affected everyone because of its highly infectious nature and global spread. In less than a few months, our routine has been collectively disrupted and the precarious architecture of our lives suddenly exposed, together with the imaginary structural strength we believed to be the base of our carefully calibrated plans and actions. Covid-19 does not make us equal – we can assume UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson accessed better health care than a random individual in a less wealthy country – but it rattles our desire for certainty and comfort more than anything in our lifetimes, more than a collision with an asteroid or the alarming signs of climate change. As we adjust to a state of emergency and contemplate the unknown that awaits us on the other side, switching on the life of yesterday at will seems deceptive. We should not be blind to the fact that things could be different. Myths as diverse as exponential growth, social equality and anthropocentrism have been exposed, and new narratives are emerging. In 1970, two years before the Blue Marble photo was taken, a founding myth of 20th century human society came into the spotlight – the escalating consumer society and the predatory behavior that it elicited. Two seminal books tackled this specific issue – Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle and Raoul Vaneigem’s The Revolution of Everyday Life. Besides being the intellectual pillars of the Situationist International (SI) – a revolutionary organization of the European avant-garde active between 1957 and 1972 and critical of capitalism – the books championed the end of market exploitation and consumerism in order to allow a genuine human society to emerge. Will their claims reverberate as an effect of the Covid-19 pandemic? Could this be the time to reveal the glitches in our social, economic and environmental systems, and take action? The six invited artists and collectives – David Claerbout, Jonathas De Andrade, Elena Mazzi / Sara Tirelli, Aernout Mik, Laure Prouvost and Pilvi Takala – have animated the gist of the recent debate on art and society, with their contribution offering significant insights in different aspects of life: the cultural shifts of the digital world, our relations with others, techno-capitalism, and ecology and catastrophes. Their practices have something in common; they produce a distancing effect that makes us question the things which society would have us believe are inevitable, and natural. It is this distancing effect – achieved with storytelling, irony and new media technology – that engages the viewers and inspire them to judge critically, and The Eye of the Storm seems to be an apt metaphor for these undertakings. In spoken language, it has come to epitomize the risks of finding yourself stuck at the center of a difficult situation. Yet in meteorology the eye of the storm is the calmest zone of a cyclone, where skies are clear and wind milder. It is deceptively calm, but possibly the best place to be for a short time while processing the state of things. As the Covid-19 pandemic challenges the conventions of time, the very existence of public space and the social canons that regulate living together, science alone cannot address the flaws and prospects of a new society. Art will stay at the center of the storm, expose the fractures of the world and push for change. The chance is there. As put by philosopher Timothy Morton, who studies the ecologies of the Anthropocene: “Things are open. Open also in the sense of potential […]. Something happening in one specific place (say a feather falling on pavement) would mean the whole universe changes everywhere. Things are connected but in a kinda sorta subjunctive way. There is room for stuff to happen. Or, as the anarchist composer John Cage put it, “The world is teeming. Anything could happen.[2]” – Sara Dolfi Agostini, curator
Joana Moll will host a critical exploration through the world of data marketplaces and the economic role of profile pics from dating websites. Participants will get a glimpse into the hidden mechanics of selling and buying private images and data without the users’ knowledge. They will further be drawn into the invisible circulation of images as currency and get rare insight into the role of data brokers and transactions.
Critical thinkers, artists, researchers, activists, and geeks in search of other economies and financial discourses for a fair society.
All along, these have been dark times for the economy, as offshore finance wreaks havoc in the very fabric of cities and communities, and crypto-companies navigate the world in search of their own tax havens. Information leaks from financial paradises have made it clear that the wealthy, influential, and well-connected will still escape taxation. These are the same people turning places like Malta and the Bahamas into luxury apartment zones. At the same time, well-documented Dutch fiscal loopholes cost the world approximately 22 billion euros in lost taxes each year. Corporations like Shell tempt governments with scraps of their ill-gained revenues in exchange for legal residence in anonymous letterboxes. Global business and crypto-speculation have debased national regulations to the competitive logics of an international tax marketplace, and local economies and communities struggle to hold up against privatisation and the mass transformation of jobs to a precarious freelance existence in the gig economy.
Weeks into the corona crisis, it is too early to say which aspects of the global financial system have been thrown into the dustbin of history. Pivotal nation-states are now exploring digital currencies as one tool for post-pandemic stimulus (or austerity). How do the earlier proposals for Universal Basic Income relate to the sudden appearance of helicopter money in some countries? Are the Keynesian money proposals to prop up the Western economies an indication of the end of the neoliberal hegemony? Is the ban on cash during the corona crisis an indication of the arrival of the cashless society?
It is a grim scenario, but perhaps not all is lost. The economy is not – and never was – merely in the hands of faceless corporations and cryptocurrency speculators. MoneyLab explores the imaginaries of artists, researchers, activists, and geeks in search of other possible economies and urgently interrogates a different financial discourse. It has always asked: can we use technology critically to support alternative values of cooperation and “commoning” in a world that is dominated by individualism and competition?
MoneyLab #8, the first-ever in a post-socialist country and the first-ever virtual edition, features examples far from the mainstream media spotlight. It zooms in on the effects of offshore finance and explores counter-experiments in the realms of housing, care work, and blockchain technology. In the fringes, something interesting is happening: blockchain is no longer just another tool for capitalist growth obsessions, and people are realising radical visions for fairly-waged care work, redistributed wealth, equitable social relations, and strong grassroots communities. In our world of vanishing cash, corner-cutting multinationals, and weakened social support structures, can community currencies or self-organised care networks strengthen neighbourhoods? What would fair and social housing look like if it was turned into the cornerstone of the economy? Who is building local systems that can stand up against the financialisation of housing in the global platform economy?
MoneyLab #8 sheds light on radical and alternative strategies for self-organisation and pushes on towards new and collective futures situated in resilient local communities.
The coronavirus pandemic has brought unprecedented challenges to the museum landscape. As expected, most institutions turned to social media but should museums think differently when trying to bridge a physical and virtual reality?
This webinar shall explore the ways and means how institutions can sustain relevance over time even when circumstances dictate closure. It shall also provide practical suggestions as to how museums can keep keep sight of their communities’ needs and ambitions as these evolve and change over time.
Sandro Debono (b. 1970) is a museum thinker and culture strategist. He is the brains behind MUŻA – The Malta National Community Art Museum which he spearheaded and for which he developed the origional guiding vision. He is culture advisor to the President of the Republic of Malta, the national representative at the European Museum Academy and sits on the advisory board of We Are Museums, the international platform of museum innovators and change-makers. He is also visiting lecturer at the Department of Arts, Open Communities and Adult Education (University of Malta), international fora and institutions.
Interactive map with museum re-opening plans
After getting an overview of the impact that COVID-19 has had on museums and how they are reacting to and coping with the pandemic, we are looking more closely at the re-opening of museums in Europe. With the help of our members, we hve created a map that gives a quick overview of European countries’ plans to re-open museums to the public. If managed well and if appropriate security and safety measures are adopted, there is no reason to keep museums closed.
Zoomed In is a new virtual festival celebrating photography and architecture.
The festival will take part from 21st-24th April 2020, and is one of the official partners of the Dezeen Virtual Design Festival.
Zoomed In is organised by London-based architectural photographer Luke O’Donovan, kindly supported by an incredibly generous network of guest curators and event participants. Please direct any enquiries to Luke at contact@lukeodonovan.co.uk
For updates on the festival, please check our Instagram, Twitter, and Youtube. You can also subscribe to Luke’s email newsletter below for updates on Zoomed In and other architectural photography projects.
On April 23 New York-based artist Ellen Pearlman will give a public artist talk about the practices of working with artificial intelligence and its use in contemporary art. The event is organized in frames of the American Arts Incubator program.
Is there a place in human consciousness where surveillance cannot go? Can artificial intelligence be fascist? These are just some of the complex questions raised by the work of Dr. Ellen Pearlman in her brainwave and AI operas Noor and AIBO. In this artists presentation Ellen will show excerpts from both operas and highlight their technological breakthroughs. She will also present her work as Director of ThoughtWorks Arts – a global research and innovation lab at the forefront of new developments in emerging technologies that embraces the unique perspective artists can help foster to understand the implications and impacts technological developments have on society.
Dr. Ellen Pearlman is a New York based new media artist, critic, curator and educator. As a Zero1 American Arts Incubator/U.S. State Department artist she will be leading workshops in the Ukraine on artificial intelligence and art. A Fulbright World Learning Specialist in Art, New Media and Technology, she is a Senior Research Assistant Professor at RISEBA University in Riga, Latvia, and on faculty at Parsons/New School University in New York. Ellen received her PhD at the School of Creative Media, Hong Kong City University where her PhD thesis was awarded highest global honors by Leonardo LABS Abstracts.
The talk will be held online on IZOLYATSIA facebook page and ZOOM in English with simultaneous translation to Ukrainian.
Alan Butler led a tour of the game environment of Grand Theft Auto V, focusing on topics of representation and simulation as well as the role of the in-game photographer. Viewers were able to follow the artist in his critical analysis of the game logics, and their social, political, and economic implications.
