Daniëlle Arets is associate Reader of the readership Journalism & Responsible Innovation at Fontys school of journalism & readership Strategic Creativity at Design Academy Eindhoven. Daniëlle is shaping the future of journalism through design research, investigating technology trends and prototype future concepts for content delivery. Her work is informed by a passion for cultural and technological trends, employing human-dignified means for innovation. 

In Possible Bodies, Jara Rocha and Femke Snelting research the space for other bodies in the context of volumetric technologies. Bio-medical imagery and 3D-modelling promise infinite possibilities but usually stay with predictable results. This can be connected with its self-evident use for efficiency, optimization and upscaling. In this vision, diversity is a that can be preprogrammed as a variation within fixed parameters. If we want to change something about this, we likely have to make some improbable decisions.

Bio: Femke Snelting works as an artists and designer, and develops projects on the cutting-edge of design, feminism and free software. In various constellations she researches how digital tools and practices co-construct each other. For Constant, the association for art and media in Brussels, she works on poetic software, performative publications, educational prototypes and other collective processes. Together with Jara Rocha she activated Possible Bodies, a collective research project that questions the concrete, while also fictional, entities of “bodies” and the context of 3D-tracking, modelling and scanning. Femke teaches at the Piet Zwart institute (experimental publishing, Rotterdam).

The integrated software of artificial intelligence is envisioned to one day become so complex, that it may be perceived as having its own form of consciousness. For ROBOT LOVE, Jennifer is interested in the mental life of an artificial brain. If we align Robots with human values, should we also take into account a form of subjective or creative experience? A mental space a robot will play in, a form of Robot imagination? If so, how to go about such a design?

‘Do Robots Dream of Electric Sheep?’ is a question made famous by Philip K. Dick. What if we indeed make an attempt to design mental experiences for Robots similar to that to the function of dreaming in humans? Dreaming is essentially a state of madness or psychosis. One sees things that are not there, one holds ideas that do not make sense, one is disoriented in time and space and is disconnected from reality. Dreaming helps us process the subjective experiences of the day. It helps maintain a healthy brain. Should we aim to include a design of machine madness?

Jennifer Kanary Nikolov(a) is the founder of roomforthoughts, an artistic research practice that uses multi-media to address mental health issues by investigating the physics of thought. Jennifer is most known for her PhD project Labyrinth Psychotica, a wearable interactive mixed reality psychosis simulation tool that simulates approximately 33 elements of the subjective experiences of psychosis, helping to better understand what a person experiences in psychosis and how it affects functional abilities, cognition, and social interactions. Labyrinth Psychotica has trained over 14.000 professionals in 20 countries, helping teams to build on their empathy skills in a way that helps to better understand, reduce and de-escalate stressful situations.

Guerrero will mobilize a critique on thinking through algorithms and illustrate the (im)possibility of thinking through algorithmic reason by analyzing two influential texts in cultural thought (by Benjamin and Heidegger) as well as discussing the role of the ‘normal’ and ‘normality’. He draws on the idea and role of the digital actuary in calculating contemporary insurance risks and the ‘moral’ effects it brings into society.

Luis Lobo-Guerrero is Professor of History and Theory of International Relations at the University of Groningen. He is the author of Insuring Security: Biopolitics, Security and Risk, and Insuring War: Sovereignty, Security and Risk, and Insuring Life: Value, Security and Risk. He is director of the Centre for International Relations Research (CIRR),  member of the Executive Board of the Groningen Research Institute for the Study of Culture,  member of the editorial/advisory boards of the journals Security Dialogue; Journal of Intervention and State Building; and Resilience: International Policies, Practices and Discourses. He is also a member of the international advisory board of Revista Pleyade (Chile)

Marije Baalman is investigating how body prostheses may mediate our senses in a speculative futuristic setting, a further development of wearables into so-called e-bodilies. The project will eventually be presented as a multiparticipant environment, where participants will each take on the role of a malbody, a person with e-bodilies not functioning according to the norm and cast out of society. The project takes a critical stance at body-based sensing, control of artificial intelligence on our experience of the world and how society deals with difference.

bio

Marije Baalman is a freelance artist and researcher/developer working in the field of interactive sound art and working in between art & technology, based in Amsterdam.

She has a diverse background in Applied Physics, Acoustics, Electronic Music, Computation Arts and Interactive Technologies, researched at the TU Delft, TU Berlin, Concordia University (Montr), has worked at STEIM. She is a member of the Instrument Inventors Initiative (iii) in The Hague. Her research and interest goes into the use of wireless sensor networks for live performance (such as dance and music), installations and interactive environments, and code and algorithms to generate patterns and behaviours in real-time. Her current focus is on creating multi-participant interactive environments.