EVA Copenhagen 2018 - Politics of the Machines - Art and After - Index

Abstract

EVA Copenhagen is a conference focusing on digital arts and culture, which is part of the international ‘Electronic Visualisation & the Arts’ (EVA) network. The conference will bring together artists and academics working in a broad range of fields related to digital arts. Organised in partnership between Aalborg University (Aalborg, Copenhagen) and Dias: Digital Interactive Art Space (Copenhagen), the conference will host an exhibition of digital artworks, while also presenting a programme of academic papers. In doing so, we aim to bring together practitioners and academics working in digital arts, providing valuable opportunities for the exchange of knowledge, networking, and showcasing of innovative work at the frontiers of digital culture.

The POM - Politics of Machines conference series was co-founded by Laura Beloff and Morten Søndergaard. The first edition, Politics of Machines: Art and After was hosted by Aalborg University Copenhagen 15-17 May, 2018, and organized in collaboration with the IT-University of Copenhagen. Furthermore, the POM2018 was realized in collaboration with the EVA-London conference series and the British Computer Society under the name EVA-Copenhagen, or EVA/POM2018.

With more than 100 speakers selected from nearly 220 submissions, the conference consisted of 10 thematic tracks, an exhibition of art projects, performances and student work by Erasmus Master in Media Arts Cultures’ students. It also hosted a Ph.D. workshop organised in collaboration with POM, IT-University and CATCH - Centre for Art and Technology.

One of the aims of the conference, worth of mentioning, was to foster also a dialogue between academic and non-academic researchers. This was achieved by providing a quota of free-registrations for people without academic affiliation and funding.

Introduction to the POM conference-theme and-series:

The question of how the machine impacts and contextualizes artistic production and perception is the general umbrella topic for the conference/-series. Recent research on the impact of machines and technology on art has located the machine to a central position, which is visible e.g. in the work of scholars such as Matthew Fuller (on ‘ecologies’), Jussi Parikka (on ‘archaeologies’), Katja Kwastek (on ‘aesthetics of interaction’) and Andreas Brockmann (on ‘techno-ontology’). The growing interest in describing the phenomenon of the computer as the electronic machine has risked to keep both the computer and technology more broadly trapped within a logic, in which technology appears as our transcendence from which we cannot escape. Whereas the matter of technology should always be approached critically; the common focus on considering machines as digital and electronic hides the alternative, experimental and different ontologies and materialities of the machinic culture and also correspondingly different epistemologies they may operate in. Throughout his scholarly work, Bruno Latour, has developed a thinking based on the notion of the politics of things, which gives humans’ relation to machines a less immaterial and semiological bias. How are the relationality and operationality of machines being negotiated into cultural and social ontologies? With this conference we want to address the politics of machines and the inescapable technological structures, as well as the critical infrastructures of artistic production in-between human and non-human agency. Where do experimental and artistic practices work beyond the human:machine and human:non-human dualisms towards biological, hybrid, cybernetic, vibrant, uncanny, overly material, darkly ecological and critical machines?

The presenters at this conference take a fresh approach to the politics of the machine, and exemplify, analyse and contextualize alternative and experimental ontologies and epistemologies of artistic practices beyond dualisms.

The papers in the proceedings include long academic papers as well as short artistic papers from the POM2018 reflecting on the general conference-theme. The papers are addressing the topics of the 9 tracks that were part of the original call for participation, and which were defined together with the thematic chairs (names listed below). Short summaries of the track themes:

Emotional Machines

In the future, emotional machines can implement emotion recognition and processing in interfaces that are designed, modelled and customized with personalities supporting the user emotionally. These machines, counting social robotics, smart assistants and tracking technologies, are getting to know our feelings and emotional responses through tracking, analysing, and categorizing e.g. our facial expressions, vocal intonations, and skin conductance. Machine learning, human-computer interaction, affective computing, and artificial intelligence are already revolutionizing the ways emotions are detected and developed. Today we are confronted with an era where emotions are standardized, controlled, and designed in the quest for creating relatable machines that are dynamically adaptive to the user. What are the politics and aesthetics of emotional machines?

Cyborgs/Hybrids

Cyborgs have been made to represent fantasies of immortality and superiority as well as anxieties deeply rooted in the modern terrors of technological power and the Frankenstein monsters, Replicants or Terminators of our time. A cybernetic organism, might be understood as connected to organic life through mechanisms of feedback, or in other ways exists in a hybrid stage connecting the technological and the biological. And further it might be understood more broadly as a both political real and mythical, discursive subject, making it possible to understand and question the fusion with the machine in broader terms. Today, cyborgs and hybrids are found within medicine, the military, in sports, in the arts, in body modification, in popular culture, in space, and in cognitive science. The cyborg and the hybrid, both as beings and as temporary assemblages, cross the very boundaries that we often draw when trying to define what is biology and what is technology; what is body and what is machine?

Religion, Technology, and Art

How technologies, particularly technologies that impact us through the arts, affect religious beliefs and activities. This includes ways in which technologies can enhance religious experiences and ways in which technologies produce experiences that intervene in and even compete with religious beliefs and practices, fulfilling the same needs as, up until now, religions have fulfilled exclusively. As an example, we have typically understood religion to be anchored in metaphysics and technology in physics. But in tribal cultures, there are no absolute boundaries between actions resulting from technology and religious magic. Also the Great Awakenings of 19th-century America promoted the idea that technologies such as the telegraph could connect humans not only to one another but also to the divine. Religion’s characteristic effects include moving people outside of their everyday concerns; mediated experiences seem increasingly capable of doing this without adhering to a specific religious tradition-or any religious tradition at all. How do different communities understand the boundaries between manifestation, enhancement and deceptive illusion? Might technologically mediated experiences replace religion altogether?

Algorithms and Intelligence in Art After Aesthetics

We are still in the early stages of the journey set by Duchamp of augmenting intelligence through and within Art. His interest in the Science of his time and in particular that of the 4th dimension of space-time, led him to re-establish art as an intellectual practice and moved art from its focus on visual aesthetics, beyond the retinal, and onto the ‘idea’, the concept of the work. Today we continue to create, build mimetic machines, systems and processes to emulate our thinking towards autopoiesis and a higher AI. However, there are limits to state-of-the- art AI that separates it from human-like intelligence. Humans can learn, remember and develop a new skill, but current AI algorithms are poor at retaining previous knowledge for re-use and self-improvement. Through the Arts and creative practice put together with the factual findings of the sciences and advances within Artificial General Intelligence, we can consider a future life to counter any dystopian view that has arisen from our Lacanian death-drive towards cosmic stupidity. C.P Snow’s Two Cultures are perhaps synthesized via Science-Fictions where what we can think up eventually occurs and the hopeful search for extra-terrestrial communication continues. But to what extent can art practice and appreciation bring us out of any downward curve and halt its seemingly collective self-destructive tendency of our species?

Machines of Atmospheres

Air surrounds and permeates our bodies, buildings, and cities; its flow is regulated by a patchwork of technologies and natural processes: wind, breath, windows, pumps, vents, pneumatics, air locks, etc. Across these spaces air carries particles, bacteria, heat, smells and information; on the wings of gases travel messages, memories, and miasmas. Air is essentially an aggregate and a carrier. The partitioning of air is therefore a constant matter of concern, its governance at once impossible and paramount.

Atmospheric phenomena, its qualities and compositions, are to a large extent made perceptually available through scientific instruments, imaging technologies and information systems. Scientific assessments have been crucial in demonstrating the that pollution and CO2 emissions are causes of climate change. To an increasing degree machines and technology now structure our perception and understanding of atmospheres.

This sub-theme solicits epistemic, technological, and artistic approaches that critically interrogate machines of air and atmospheres. Its aim is to investigate and reflect upon how air is measured, mediated, produced, manipulated, resourced, partitioned, experienced, and governed. From observations of the earth through satellites to production of sensory and aesthetic atmospheres through artistic and scientific instruments, this sub-theme will consider how atmospheres - pockets of air that are saturated with matter and meaning - operate as spaces of inclusion and exclusion of ways of being and knowing, of people and of life.

Wet Machines

The category of machines has been widened in recent years to include wet machines that are constructed from living matter with biotechnological methods or which host and support biological and biotechnological processes. These machines often include various combinations of hardware, living organisms and computation (hardware, software and wetware).

The historical basis for today’s developments can be seen e.g. in the development of genetics. For decades, genetics has been using the metaphor of “genes as code”. In molecular biology, scientists and engineers have developed a perception on biological organisms as machinery. Today this is visible for example in the development of synthetic biology and of course in the very idea that life can be engineered. We are confronted with an era where living organisms are designed, standardized, controlled, and prevented from unwanted mutations. Both synthetic and systems biology can increasingly be done on a computer, which adds complexity to the discourse of wet machines. Evolution can take place in computational as well as biological media. Wet machines is an emerging area that is investigated by various actors and fields - including artists, scientists, designers, philosophers, societal actors and DIY activists. Some are experimenting with the offered possibilities, whereas others seek to critique the inadequacy of the biological machine discourse and argue that life will ultimately resist our efforts to control it.

Robots in art

This track focused on robots in art in general, with three main areas of interest:

• Robotic and non-human performers through the lens of performance and performativity (Mackenzie; Barad; Fischer-Lichte) with special focus on features of robot and non-human theatrical performances including embodiment, materiality, programming, and dramaturgy.

• Neo-Cybernetics. Embedded into contemporary questions of non-human agency, object orientation and new materialisms seems to be a revival of cybernetic thought. This may be explicit, as in Pickering’s work on “New Ontologies,” or in the cognitive science debate of enactivism. Often this is implicit, as the circular entanglement of people, objects and actions (or: subjects and objects) is discussed within a variety of frameworks. We are looking for proposals that re-consider the central cybernetic tenet of feedback and circular causality as a model to understand non-human agency and new materialisms in the light of the technological shifts taking place since the early 20th century, suggesting a non-binary alternative to outdated dualisms, such as man/machine or technology/society.

• Parliament of Robots. We look for proposals addressing speculative scenarios in robotics and politics from various theoretical and practice perspectives.

Returns of the machine, including Sonic Machines

There are not only different conceptions of machines as e.g. mechanical, mathematical or symbolical apparatuses, but such conceptions have also changed over time. In this section, we want to investigate the genealogies and cultural diversity of “machines”, and the ways in which they have been articulated and reflected by theorists and artists. We are particularly interested in contributions that look at artistic critiques of existing technologies, historical or current, or at speculative artistic practices which seek to reconsider technological paradigms altogether.

Institutional Presentations

Institutional Presentations looked at communities working on matters related to POM Conference themes seen from the perspective of institutions such as galleries, museums, NGOs, networks, schools, and companies to introduce themselves and relevant initiatives to the community, as well as discuss e.g. organizational, financial, and curatorial matters.

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Conference Chairs

General Chairs:

Morten Søndergaard (AAU) & Laura Beloff (ITU)

Chairs:

Jacob Wamberg (Aarhus AU)

Gunhild Borggren (Copenhagen KU)

Rasmus Vestergaard (DIAS)

Majken Overgaard (CATCH)

Eva-Chair / International Correspondent: Jon Weinel (AAU)

PhD Chairs:

David Kadish (ITU)

Jonas Jørgensen (ITU)

Rosemary Lee (ITU)

Thematic Chairs:

Cathrine Hedager

Ostenfeld Kamper

Camilla Jaller

Dehlia Hannah

Dew Harrison

Hanna Husberg

Ken Rinaldo

Lasse Scherffig

Nora S. Vaage

Sarah Iles Johnston

Stina Hasse Jørgensen

Luz María Sánchez Cardona

André Mintz

Exhibition Chairs:

Sebastian Bülow (AAU) with Laura Beloff and Morten Søndergaard

Papers:

Jeneen Naji The Posthuman Poetics of Instagram Poetry http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.1

Michael Rottmann Checking Creativity: Machines, Media and Mathematics in Early Computer, Serial and Conceptual Art http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.2

Alexander Hogan, Kevin Hogan & Christian Tilt On the Cruelty of Computational Reasoning http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.3

Desiree Förster Atmospheric Media: How they Enable a Pre-reflective and Embodied Mode of Perception http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.4

Miguel Sicart & Martin Pichlmair Playing Ourselves into Feudalism: The Politics and Ethics of Playful Automation http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.5

Ian Haig Body Horror 2.0 http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.6

Yanai Toister Photography: Artist Penny and Machine http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.7

Tincuta Heinzel Patented Patterns: On the art and science of patterns. A critical inquiry http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.8

Stefan Palitov Towards a Technogenic Affordance http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.9

Jessica Broscheit, Susanne Draheim & Kai von Luck How Will We Breathe Tomorrow? http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.10

Hassan Choubassi The Burst of the Latent: Politics of mobile connectivity http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.11

Barbara Rauch & Michelle Gay A Hundred Thousand Lousy Cats (exploring drawing, AI and creativity) http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.12

Kasperi Mäki-Reinikka Cave Paintings for the AI: Art in the Age of Singularity http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.13

Artyom Kolganov The Figure of Cyborg as 'Political Hauntology' http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.14

James W. Besse & Rosangela Barcaro Ph.D The Ethical Value of LAI in Social Robotics http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.15

Morten Søndergaard Black Box Feed-back: The Politics of Machines in Early Nordic Media Art http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.16

Anna Nacher The Techno–Ecological Practice as the Politics of Ontological Coalitions http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.17

Claudia Livia & Katrin Wolf Emotional Resonance: An Interactive Installation Controlled by Biometric Data http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.18

Konrad Wojnowski The Dawn of the Dead: (Improbable) Art After AI-Zombie Apocalypse http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.19

Camilla Jaller Cyborgism: Artistic Hybridizations of Human Perception http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.20

Nathan Jones Temporal Irritations of Code in Ben Lerner’s Mean Free Path poems http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.21

Thomas Grill, Till Bovermann & Almut Schilling Embracing the Temporal Deterioration of Digital Audio: A Manifesto http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.22

Jonas Jørgensen Enacting the Soft Automaton: Empirical Ontologies of Two Soft Robots from Technical Research and Media Art http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.23

Stavros Didakis Micro, Meso, and Macro Data Collection and Analysis, as a Method for Speculative and Artistic Exploration http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.24

Sara R. Yazdani Photography, Fungi and Social Ontologies: Wolfgang Tilmans’s Neue Welt http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.25

Lina Nasr El Hag Ali & A. T. Kingsmith Cosmic Slop: Possibilities of Alien Futures (From the Past) http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.26

Nolan Lem BDSMR: Velcro as a Sensory Material and Erotic Interface http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.27

Ana María Guzmán Olmos Technical Sensibility: On sexual and technical performance http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.28

Rune Saugmann The Art of Questioning Lethal Vision: Mosse’s Infra and Militarized Machine Vision http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.29

Agnieszka Jelewska & Michal Krawczak The Spectrality of Nuclear Catastrophe: The Case of Chernobyl http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.30

Augusto Zubiaga & Lourdes Cilleruelo See and be seen - Objects and subjects http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.31

Ivan Yamshchikov & Alexey Tikhonov I Feel You: What makes algorithmic experience personal? http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.32

John Richards Speculative Sound Circuits http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.33

Aleksandra Kaminska On the concept of recognition in Media Art: Emotional reactions, empathetic interactions http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.34

Andrei Budescu, Diana Drăgan-Chirilă & Oana Gui Inserting new concepts into a traditional arts school: The University of Art and Design Cluj-Napoca, Romania http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.35

Katsiaryna Suryna & Rodrigo Guzman Serrano Delete ‘Persons’, Insert ‘Information Processing Systems’: Art and the machinistic discourse of computationalism http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.36

Paola Barreto Leblanc Transplanting Subjectivities http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.37

Catherine Bernard Flesh Machine - Vision Machine - War Machine http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.38

Saskia Isabella & Maria Korsten Partaker Agency: Entanglement of agencies in artworks by Bekirovic and Abramović http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.39

Elizabeth Jochum, Louis-Philippe Demers, Bill Vorn, Evgenios Vlachos, Paul McIlvenny & Pirkko Raudaskoski Becoming Cyborg: Interdisciplinary Approaches for Exoskeleton Research http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.40

Stina Hasse Jørgensen, Alice Emily Baird, Frederik Tollund Juutilainen, Mads Pelt & Nina Cecilie Højholdt [multi’vocal]: Reflections on Engaging Everyday People in the Development of a Collective Non-Binary Synthesized Voice http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.41

Ori Elisar The Living Language Project http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.42

Daniel Cermak-Sassenrath Gaming the System: Practices against the algorithmic makeover of everyday life http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.43

Rosemary Lee The Limits of Algorithmic Perception: technological Umwelt http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.44

Vanessa Carpenter, Sarah Homewood, Majken Overgaard & Stefanie Wuschitz From Sex Toys to Pleasure Objects http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.45

Dave Evans The Captive Portal as Artistic Opportunity and Ascetic Project http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.46

Andrey Bundin & Natalia Fedorova Ether Island: Investigating sound movement correlations in a generative interactive installation http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.47

Bojana Romic Robotic Art and Cultural Imagination http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.48

Andreas Broeckmann The Machine as Myth http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.49

Juan Carlos Duarte Regino Aeolian Artefacts http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC2018.50