Ars Electronica KEPLER’s GARDEN Linz
LAB ON STAGE (Adriana Torres Topaga, Martyna Lorenc and Andrea Maria Handler): Phantom Data in our bodies and imagination
How to Become a High-Tech-Anti-Discrimination Activist Collective
This workshop undertakes a performing arts’ approach. Our departure is the embodiment of imagination and perceptual processes. With somatic exercises and performative games, we notice the data flowing in from our bodies: sensation, image, emotion or memory. Imagination has its own training dataset - therefore a specific priming/bias/imprint. We look for practices of becoming aware of HOW we imagine things and what escapes our field of attention.
Astrid Mager und Hong Phuc Dang: How to create your own AI device with SUSI.AI - An Open Source Platform for Conversational Web
How to Become a High-Tech Anti-Discrimination Activist Collective
The workshop introduces SUSI components like SUSI’s technology stack, its wiki-like skill editor and hardware prototype; participants work together to create a simple bot, develop new skills and test them. A reflection on data bias and algorithmic discrimination invites to collectively think about creating non-discriminatory digital technologies.
Doris Allhutter: “When I encountered discriminating IT-systems and did not want to take it anymore” - deconstructing affective entanglements in society-technology relations
How to Become a High-Tech Anti-Discrimination Activist Collective
This workshop uses the deconstructive method of mind scripting to understand the grip that even technologies that we reject may have on us. Using our own memories as an experimental resource we will explore how discrimination and privilege materialize in our practices. This aims at developing collective agency and activisms.
Safiya Umoja Noble: Algorithms of Oppression - How Search Engines Reinforce Racism
How to Become a High-Tech Anti-Discrimination Activist Collective
The landscape of information is rapidly shifting as new demands are increasing investment in digital technologies. Yet, critical scholars continue to demonstrate how many technologies are shaped by and infused with values that are not impartial, disembodied, or lacking positionality. Technologies hold racial, gender, and class politics. In this talk, Dr. Safiya Noble will discuss her recent book, Algorithms of Oppression, and the impact of technology on the public.
Lisa Nakamura: Estranging Digital Racial Terrorism After COVID
How to Become a High-Tech Anti-Discrimination Activist Collective
This talk argues that COVID-19 forced an accelerated migration to digital networks that exposed new audiences to traumatically racist digital events as well as new openings for critique and resistance.
How to Become a High-Tech Anti-Discrimination Activist Collective
IFG-LIT (AT)
New technologies have penetrated all aspects of our lives and promise a wide range of improvements and efficiencies. Contrary to general perception, though, the algorithms on which these technologies are based are neither neutral nor do they treat everyone equally.
Magic Darts or, when every throw is a perfect hit
Andreas Stelzer (AT), Rudolf Scheidl (AT)
Darts is a popular game, but difficult to master. In this version of darts, players always hit the bullseye. What looks like witchcraft is revealed as a mechatronic system, with a novel microwave sensor network and ultrafast hydraulic actors interacting. Such technologies will affect our future daily life, e.g. in self driving cars, with microwaves allowin us to see in the dark, with fog or dust; or in exoskeletons, where hydraulic actuation enables ultimate compactness.
K – JKU’s Interactive Robocar
Institute for Machine Learning, LIT AI Lab, LIT Robopsychology Lab, Johannes Kepler University (AT); Inseq Design (AT)
K is a likeable little robocar: small in size, but very smart on board! Named after JKU’s famous patron, Johannes Kepler, it drives itself autonomously on changing terrain, can predict the movement patterns of pedestrians and playfully interacts with its environment.
The Elephant in the Room
Melanie Baumgartner (AT), Florian Hartmann (AT), David Preninger (AT)
Nature-inspired robotics is collaborative, adaptable and ecological. With biodegradable and edible materials, new technologies that interact sustainably with humans and nature emerge. Imitations of an elephant's trunk embody such soft nature-inspired robots and interact quite naturally with visitors in Kepler's Gardens.
Robots Talking To Me
LIT Robopsychology Lab, Johannes Kepler University (AT)
How should robots communicate with people? What voice makes AI assistants sound trustworthy? Do we even have to listen to robots or should we always be in command ourselves? Under the title *Robots Talking to Me*, the *LIT Robopsychology Lab* presents four installations that give tangible expression to questions of human-machine relationships and invite participation.
The Pangolin Scales
Thomas Faseth (AT), Harald Pretl (AT), Christoph Guger (AT), Anouk Wipprecht (NL)
The Pangolin Scales demonstrates the world’s first 1.024 channel brain-computer interface (BCI), which is able to extract information from the human brain with an unprecedented resolution to control an interactive, fashionable dress.
Treeversity
Johann Höller (AT), Thomas Lorenz (AT), Florian Gruber (AT), Ursula Niederländer (AT), Tanja Illetits-Motta (AT), Raphael Blasi (AT), Andreas Rösch (IT), Stefan Küll (AT)
Treeversity focuses on the relation between Big Data and data visualization to convey complex information at a glance. A mirror of the university’s inner workings, diligently recording success, failure and evolution. A portrait of its life in the form of a tree. Courses, grades and exams become branches, creating many different trees. Fully grown or nascent, withering or growing erratically. Treeversity shows the university as a forest, providing a tool to analyze its mechanisms at the same time.
Exposed Building
Michael Roland (AT), Michael Mayr (AT), Robert Holzinger (AT), Markus Vogl (AT)
By opening a maintenance hatch and hacking into the network infrastructure behind it, we acquire access to the electronic locking system. By controlling the buzzers built into the office door locks, we transform the Science Park 2 building into an orchestra and it resounds like a huge walk-in instrument. The installation playfully provokes thought about the vulnerability of modern technology and its growing risks for society.
The Transparency of Randomness
Mathias Gartner (AT), Vera Tolazzi (AT)
"The Transparency of Randomness" is an interactive installation that provides insight into the world of randomness. Random numbers are continuously generated through a transparent dice system, to be used as the basis for real-time calculations and visualizations. Through its use of diverse materials, the process is influenced by the complexity of nature.
Digital Government in a Box
LIT Law Lab, Johannes Kepler University (AT)
From the “transparent citizen” and “social scoring” to AI-supported truth finding in the courtroom and machine-generated administrative notices: the digitization of administration and jurisdiction has many facets. It requires not only a consideration of what is technically possible, but also of what is legally permissible and what is desired in terms of legal policy. Against this background, the LIT Law Lab has two installations dedicated to the legal framework conditions (fundamental rights and data protection), problems and proposed solutions for a digitized enforcement.
Al truth machine
LIT Law Lab, Johannes Kepler Universität (AT)
From the “transparent citizen” and ”social scoring” to AI-supported truth finding in the courtroom and machine-generated administrative notices: the digitization of administration and jurisdiction has many facets. It requires not only a consideration of what is technically possible, but also what is legally permissible and what is desired in terms of legal policy. Against this background, the LIT Law Lab has two installations dedicated to the legal framework conditions (fundamental rights and data protection), problems and proposed solutions for a digitized enforcement.
Performance Workshop: Enacting Innovation
Judith Igelsböck (AT), Friedrich Kirschner (DE), Sarah Buser (CH), Mónica Rikić (ES), Leoni Voegelin (CH), Tomás Montes Massa (CL), Laura Zoelzer (DE)
Enacting Innovation is a participatory staging of the social fabric surrounding contemporary innovation practices. Participants will negotiate the roles and situations that are frequently encountered in innovation processes and act out conflicts with each other and the technical infrastructures typically employed within such contexts. The simulation is inspired by research on ‘innovation scripts’ – the recipes followed in dealing with the omnipresent pressure to prove innovative ability.
Dancing Water
Leon Kainz (AT)
This installation is based on a simple physical principle: the generation of electrostatic charges using water. The charged water droplets whirl in dynamic tracks around copper rods and react to nearby bodies. The collected charge can make a light bulb glow and generate flashes of lightning that can be centimetres long.
JKU LIT @ Ars Electronica
The digital revolution, demographic changes, and the climate crisis–addressing the complex, conflicting fields of our time requires an epistemic landscape that is conducive to traversing academic parameters. Crossing the borders between disciplines should be considered a starting point for possibilities – even essential as a to interlink them – rather than an act of deconstruction.
Fulldome / VR & AR Lab
Martin Kusch, Director ǀ Fulldome / VR & AR Lab, Ruth Schnell, Head Department of Digital Arts, University of Applied Arts Vienna (AT)
The Fulldome/VR & AR Lab at the Digital Arts Department of the University of Applied Arts Vienna is a platform for new creative processes with a focus on digital applications for fulldome, VR, and AR environments. Experimental research projects are carried out through interdisciplinary exchange among students, teachers, and researchers working to develop new artistic grammars while questioning the influence of immersive devices. The dome at Ars Electronica is part of the Lab’s infrastructure.
