Conference session organized in collaboration with the Masters in Media Design at Geneva University of Art and Design (HEAD – Genève)

Introduction and panel discussion : Nicolas Nova
Speakers : Michelle Kasprzak, Daniel Williams

After decades of R&D, machine vision is now commonly deployed in our digital everyday. Think about how our smartphone cameras have facial detection features, how algorithms count cars and analyze human notion and how drones play an important role if warfare and urban surveillance. Machines are making sense of the world around us and this increasingly affect our individual and social behavior. However, such technologies are also repurposed by artists and designers, leading to intriguing productions and subtle critiques of their frightening potential. This session will address the creative potential of such phenomenon and how it currently leads to a new aesthetic.

Nicolas Nova is a writer, ethnographer, and a consultant at the Near Future Laboratory. He teaches design ethnography and interaction design at HEAD – Genève.

Daniel Williams is a Creative Technologist for Pervasive Media Studio in Bristol, UK. As a software developer building for the web, mobile and physical computing, he works with studio residents and collaborators to find interesting uses for new technologies.

Michelle Kasprzak is a Canadian curator and writer based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She is a Curator at V2_ Institute for the Unstable Media and the Dutch Electronic Art Festival (DEAF). She has appeared in Wired UK, on radio and TV broadcasts by the BBC and CBC, and lectured at PICNIC. She is a member of IKT (International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art) and the founder of curating.info, the web’s leading resource for curators. She has written critical essays for C Magazine, Volume, Spacing, Mute, and many other media outlets.