Speculative Interfaces IMPAKT festival

 

curatorial team: Barbara Perea, Marloes de Valk, Jan Adriaans

 

The IMPAKT Festival 2019, Speculative Interfaces questions existing notions of the interface and reimagines its future(s). The program will investigate how we interact with technology and how this relationship alters our behavior and perception.

 

Interfaces that mediate our understanding of and interaction with the world are so pervasive that their existence goes unnoticed. Everything we label ‘smart’, from cities to phones and self-driving cars, rely on increasingly sophisticated sensors embedded in our environment and devices. For the sake of seamless interaction, the interface has all but disappeared—only ourselves and our activities remain.

 

Despite their apparent simplicity, interfaces are very complex—scripting user interaction, perception and understanding of technology, environment and self. With this year’s program we want to critically examine the impact of current developments in interface design as well as identify how we can construct more emancipatory narratives.

 

The festival program will include three subthemes: Sensory Empowerment (Jan Adriaans), School of Non Humans (Barbara Perea) and Persuasive Tech Lab (Marloes de Valk). These themes will be addressed on the main festival days: Thursday 31 October, Friday 1 November and Saturday 2 November. Sunday 3 November will center the festival exhibition with guided tours and artist talks.

 

 

https://impakt.nl/festival/2019/

 

 

Wednesday:

OPENING:

 

Keynote:

Can I get a Cuddle? - Melanie Bonajo

 

Artist Melanie Bonajo has collected thousands of online animal pictures over a period of 10 years. In this presentation she will take you along on a survey of the wide array of amateur and scientific depictions of animals. Can the access to countless animal pictures on the internet modify our bias that only humans possess self awareness, language, culture, land and customs?

 

Performance:

Totem (SNN#1)

Chris Salter & Alexandre Saunier

 

In this new audio-visual performance, based on the large light installation Totem, the dynamic light visions of Moholy-Nagy meet the algorithms of artificial life. Salter and Saunier use custom sensor-based instruments in collaboration with neural networks used in Totem to create surprising luminous/sonic actions.

 

 

 

Thursday:

 

SENSORY EMPOWERMENT

Today we’ll investigate and discuss the growing potential of the interface to interact with our neurobiology, how it can track and train us, substitute or expand body properties, and transport our sense of self into virtual or robotic beings?

 

Panel:

Messages from the Biological Self

 

In this panel we'll look at the user interfaces that teach us how our bodies function. What are the consequences of a more extensive objectification of the body and our growing biological interdependence with technology? Can we replace or reinforce human traits like sensing the world.

 

Panel: Simon Dogger, Chris Salter, Erik Aernoutse

Moderator: Paulien Dresscher

 

 

Screening:

Co-opting Entities

 

In this series of videos the interface shows itself as an intimate mediator. It seems to know better how our body behaves than we do ourselves. It takes over our voices and tells us how our body sleeps, behaves in crowds and builds relationships. Who should we listen to?

 

Timothy Nohe - Bell Labs Mosh

John Rafman - Poor Magic

John Rafman - Disasters Under the Sun

Anna Adahl - Di-Simulated Crowds

Chen Xi - This is the Story of PEW

Martin Kohout - Slides

 

 

Panel:

Virtual Realitiy and Body Ownership

 

Virtual environments offer neuroscientists new possibilities to simulate natural events and social interactions. VR interfaces can change our personality, but how is this possible? Are we already living in a virtual reality? We'll look at the processes of body ownership, body-trauma, phobias and biases.

 

panel: Mavi Sanchez Vives, Miguel Angel Rego, Mark Farid

Moderator: Natalie Dixon

 

 

Screening:

The Medical Subject

 

Historical medical artifacts from the University of Zurich, animated mice lab, a person suffering from anosognosia, and VR simulations for for training and treatment of soldiers with PTSD. In this series of short films we'll investigate assumptions of medical science, and our nature to adapt to any circumstances.

 

Paula Tyliszczak - I Feel Blue, They Sense Rose

Philip Ullman - Closed Circuit

Harun Farocki - Serious Games III: Immersion

Miguel Angel Rego, Post Contingent Coherence

 

 

Keynote:

Transforming Lives with Virtual reality - Mavi Sanchez Vives

 

Once immersed in a virtual environment, our brain responds to this fake reality as if it were real. This new reality can also include taking another physical body. We have the illusion that our body model is very stable, but that's only because we've never encountered anything else. Mavi Sanchez Vives will talk about research and applications of virtual and robotic embodiment.

 

 

Performance:

Permissions A.K.A. Loving with both hands - Marianna Maruyama

 

Smartphone technology is a quiet agent, discreetly involved in everyday experience. In Permissions A.K.A. Loving with Both Hands, personal devices are exploited to generate events and questions on the spot. This piece exposes a story centered on feminist perspectives, data ethics, and privacy concerns.