Arts/Sciences #18: RRI-ICT Forum

Lectures programme

On 10 November 10, from 14:00 to 18:30, a series of lectures by Paolo Cirio, Patrick Tresset, Kris Verdonck, Bénédicte & Laure-Anne Jacobs / LarbitsSisters, Rybn, Antoinette Rouvroy and Mark Coeckelbergh, followed by a debate. Moderation: Bram Crevits

About the artists

Paolo Cirio

Paolo Cirio works with information systems that impact the dynamics of social structures. Cirio's artworks investigate fields such as privacy, copyright, economy and democracy affected by communication networks. He shows his conceptual works through prints, installations, videos, online performances and interventions in public spaces.

Cirio has exhibited in international museums and institutions and has won numerous prestigious art awards. His artworks have been covered by hundreds of media outlets and he regularly gives public lectures and workshops at leading art festivals and universities.

Patrick Tresset

Patrick Tresset is a London based artist. In the context of his art practice, Tresset presents theatrical installations in which robotic agents are actors, these installations are often evocations of humanness. Tresset crafts the computational systems driving the robots so that their behaviour can be perceived as artistic and expressive. These systems are influenced by research into human behaviour, more specifically how human artists depict other humans, how humans perceive artworks and how humans relate to robots. Tresset also uses robots and autonomous computational systems to produce series of drawings and paintings of classical subjects such as portraits, nudes and still lives.

Patrick’s work has been internationally exhibited in solo and group shows, in association with major museums such as The Pompidou Center, Tate Modern, Museum of Israel, Victoria & Albert Museum (London), Science Museum (London), and other events such as Ars Electronica, Update_5, London Art Fair, Kinetica and Istanbul biennial. Forthcoming exhibitions include MMCA (Seoul), Bozar (Brussels), Laznia Center (Gdansk), La Maison D’ailleurs (Yverdon, Switzerland).

Originally a painter, he is part of a generation of contemporary artists coming out of Goldsmiths’ computing department. In 2004 Tresset joined Goldsmiths to study for a Master of Sciences in Arts Computing where from 2009 until 2012 he co-directed the AIkon-II project, and is a currently a visiting research fellow and doctoral candidate. He also developed and taught a creative robotics module. In 2013 Patrick was a Senior Fellow at the Zukunftskolleg, University of Konstanz in Germany working with Prof. Deussen. Tresset has published research papers in the fields of computational aesthetics, social robotics, drawing research and AI.

Kris Verdonck

Kris Verdonck (born 1974) studied visual arts, architecture and theatre and this training is evident in his work. His creations are positioned in the transit zone between visual arts and theatre, between installation and performance, between dance and architecture. As a theatre maker and visual artist, he can look back over a wide variety of projects.

He directed theatre productions and produced various installations, a.o. 5 (2003), Catching Whales Is Easy (2004), II (2005). The first STILLS, consisting of gigantic projections, were commissioned by La Notte Bianca in Rome. In 2007 he created the theatrical installation I/II/III/IIII, while in 2008 END premièred at the Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels.

LarbitsSisters

Under the name LarbitsSisters, Bénédicte and Laure-Anne Jacobs form a duo. An important part of their work focuses on the exploration of digital technologies. Emerging issues around the Internet such as digital identity, privacy, 2.0 practices form the starting point of their work. On each occasion the challenge is unique: examining societal and technical implications by closely observing the creative drives and patterns in digital media. For the duo the strategies and practices of digital media are above all materials and tools of investigation, creation and innovation allowing works to be developed that questions critical issues of today’s society.

RYBN.ORG

RYBN.ORG is an extra-disciplinary artistic research platform, funded in 2000 as a web entity, disseminated into several servers all over the internet and physically present in Paris, Montréal, Berlin and Bruxelles. RYBN.ORG operates through interactive & networked installations, digital/analog visual cross-performances and pervasive computing. Their projects refer as well to the codified systems of the artistic representation (aesthetic, painting, architecture, avant-garde, music) as to the socio-politic and physical phenomenons, exploring various fields such as economics, data mass analysis, perverted artificial intelligence, disrupting auto-learning, language and syntaxes, sensory perception and cognitive systems. Their work have been shown in numerous contemporary art exhibitions and media art festivals, such as Ars Electronica, transmediale, ISEA, Elektra, Cellsbutton, and museums and institutions like the ZKM, LABoral, le Centre Pompidou, La Gaîté Lyrique, ZKM.

About the scientists

Antoinette Rouvroy

Doc­tor of Laws of the Eu­ro­pean Uni­ver­si­ty In­sti­tu­te (Flo­rence), Antoinette Rouvroy is per­ma­nent re­se­arch as­so­cia­te at the Bel­gi­an Na­tio­nal Fund for Sci­en­ti­fic Re­se­arch (FNRS) and se­ni­or re­se­ar­cher at the Re­se­arch Cent­re In­for­ma­ti­on, Law and So­cie­ty, Law Fa­cul­ty, Uni­ver­si­ty of Na­mur (Bel­gi­um). She is also mem­ber of the French CNIL (Com­mis­si­on In­for­ma­tique et Li­bertés)’s Fo­re­sight com­mit­tee. She aut­ho­red ‘Hu­man Ge­nes and Neo­li­be­ral Go­ver­nan­ce: A Fou­caul­di­an Cri­tique’ (Rout­ledge-Ca­ven­dish, 2008) and co-edi­ted, with Mi­reil­le Hil­de­brandt, ‘Law, Hu­man Agen­cy and Au­to­no­mic Com­pu­ting: Phi­lo­so­phers of Law meet Phi­lo­so­phers of Tech­no­lo­gy’ (Rout­ledge, 2011).

In her wri­tings, she has ad­dres­sed, among other things, is­su­es of pri­va­cy, data pro­tec­tion, non-dis­cri­mi­na­ti­on, equa­li­ty of op­por­tu­nities, due pro­cess in the con­text of “data-rich” en­vi­ron­ments (the so-cal­led ge­ne­tic re­vo­lu­ti­on, the so-cal­led in­for­ma­ti­on/​sur­veil­lan­ce so­cie­ty) with an ap­proach com­bi­ning le­gal and po­li­ti­cal phi­lo­so­phy. Her cur­rent in­ter­di­sci­pli­na­ry re­se­arch in­te­rests re­vol­ve around the con­cept of al­go­rith­mic go­vern­men­ta­li­ty. Un­der this fou­caul­di­an neo­lo­gism, she ex­plo­res the se­mio­tic-epis­te­mic, po­li­ti­cal, le­gal and phi­lo­so­phi­cal im­pli­ca­ti­ons of the com­pu­ta­tio­nal turn (Big Data, al­go­rith­mic pro­filing, in­dus­tri­al per­so­na­liza­t­i­on). She ex­plo­res the im­pact of al­go­rith­mic go­vern­men­ta­li­ty on our mo­des of pro­duc­tion of what counts and ac­counts for “rea­li­ty”, on our mo­des of go­vern­ment, and on the mo­da­li­ties of cri­tique, re­sis­tan­ce or re­cal­citran­ce.

Mark Coeckelbergh

Mark Coeckelbergh is Professor of Technology and Social Responsibility at the Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility, De Montfort University, UK. He is also co-Chair of the IEEE Robotics & Automation Society Technical Committee on Robot Ethics and is involved in European research projects in the areas of robotics and responsible innovation. Previously he was Managing Director of the 3TU Centre for Ethics and Technology. His publications include Growing Moral Relations (Palgrave Macmillan 2012),Human Being @ Risk (Springer 2013), and numerous articles in the area of philosophy of technology, in particular ethics of robotics and ICT. He also has research interests in moral philosophy, environmental philosophy and ethics of finance.

About the moderator

Bram Crevits

With a background in visual arts and a focus on media-art and digital culture, Bram Crevits is currently coordinating the design department of the School of Arts Gent, Belgium (textile design, furniture design, graphic design, new media, autonomous design, fashion design, musical instrument making). Besides higher art education he has been running Cimatics festival for digital digital culture (art, media, design and music) in Brussels and part of the ECAS network. As a curator, programmer or maker he has initiated or was involved in numerous conferences, exhibitions, workshops on 'digital culture'.