BCNM Around the Web Summer 2023
Check out the great work of our faculty and alumni around the web this Summer!
Trevor Paglen
— Trevor Paglen’s multidisciplinary artistic practice – spanning photography, video, sculpture, and installation – is often based on intensive investigative research into state surveillance, military operations, and data collection. His groundbreaking work on machine vision uncovers and exemplifies the paradigm shift related to the status of images caused by constant and rapid technological development. Making invisible power structures and technology visible while critically questioning their influence in shaping today’s societies and environments is a central concern in Trevor Paglen’s work.
In the context of his solo exhibition Hide the Real, Show the False at n.b.k., Trevor Paglen, together with Hari Kunzru, Mark Pilkington, and Caroline Busta will discuss and offer further perspectives into topics of the exhibition such as mind control, deception and disinformation strategies, and psychological operations (PSYOPS) of the U.S. military.
Check it out Here!
— 50 years since Picasso's death, 50 works from the artist's last period, 50 contemporary artists who retitle and resignify the works. The exhibition Picasso: Untitled presents 50 works from the artist's last period (1963-73) —his most prolific period, closest to our time and, probably, the most unknown— ranging from ceramics, engraving or drawing , going through large format paintings . 50 contemporary artists propose new readings on them.
Check it out Here!
Ken Goldberg
— Art & language are pinnacles of human expressive achievement. This panel offers conversations between artists and technologists about intersections in their work. How might their AI-aesthetic experiments in poetry, movement, performance, and music, for example, change and challenge traditional ideas about both art and tech? How might arts informed by disability studies invite questions about the medical model of the human informing AI assistive tech and our thinking about human “optimization” and performance?
AI, Performance, & Choreo-robotics
Speakers: Ken Goldberg. Professor, Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, University of California, Berkeley. Sydney Skybetter. Deputy Dean of the College and Senior Lecturer in Theatre Arts and Performance Studies, Brown University.
Moderators: Catie Cuan.‘Choreorobotics’; PhD Candidate, Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University
Check it out Here!
— ROS By-The-Bay is the Bay Area's only meetup exclusively for Robot Operating System (ROS). This month we'll have three speakers, a ROS community update, lightning talks, and plenty of time to chat with your fellow developers. Whether your just starting to learn about robotics, or a seasoned industry veteran, ROS By-The-Bay is a great event for connecting with other local roboticists.
Check it out Here!
— Ken Goldberg was featured in an article for The New York Times titled, "Aided by A.I. Language Models, Google’s Robots Are Getting Smart". The article gave a sneak peek into Google’s new robotics model, RT-2, which melds artificial intelligence technology with robots.
Check it out Here!
Bo Ruberg
Join UCLA English for our first Text/Tech event: How to Queer the World: Queer Worldbuilding in Video Games and Beyond, featuring Bo Ruberg.
Bo Ruberg, PhD (they/them) is an associate professor in the Department of Film and Media Studies and affiliate faculty in the Department of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine. They are the co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies. Their research explores gender and sexuality in digital media. They are the author of three monographs: Video Games Have Always Been Queer (NYU Press, 2019), The Queer Games Avant-Garde: How LGBTQ Game Makers Are Reimagining the Medium of Video Games (Duke University Press, 2020), and Sex Dolls at Sea: Imagined Histories of Sexual Technologies (MIT Press, 2022). They are also the co-editor of Queer Game Studies (University of Minnesota Press, 2017) and Real Life in Real Time: Live Streaming Culture (MIT Press, 2023).
Check it out Here!
Celeste Kidd
The ARED project team is delighted to announce that a practitioner workshop is in the works. Taking place in late November to early December at the University of Stirling, the workshop will provide a platform for practitioners and researchers in the field of animal behaviour, animal minds and animal welfare to exchange insights and experiences related to the mental and cognitive lives of animals. Designed to bridge the gap between theory and practice, this workshop aims to foster knowledge exchange and promote meaningful collaboration.
Check it out Here!
Edgar Fabian Frias
The Coded exhibition explores the impact of computer technology on art making and the public consciousness over the period 1952–1982. Reflecting with a view from 2023, we see how our public and internal spaces have been restructured. How do we represent and share our experience? What is rendered inaccessible? What are the ways to fill an empty room?
A Full Room is an after hours happening in An Empty Room, an installation by Casey REAS at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, commissioned for the Coded: Art Enters the Computer Age, 1952-1982 exhibition. Featuring performances by Edgar Fabián Frías, Lauren Lee McCarthy, Romi Ron Morrison, and Casey REAS, we’re asking “What is social software?”
Check it out Here!
Jane McGonigal
We've all had the desire to travel through time and see what our lives will be like later in life. While we want the best possible future for ourselves, we often fail to make decisions that would truly make that a reality. Why do we choose steak over vegetables at dinner, waving off concerns about high cholesterol? Why do we splurge on luxury cars rather than save for retirement? Why can’t we stick to our exercise programs? Why are so many of us so disconnected from our future selves? Join us on Thursday, June 8 at 9am Pacific Time when Your Future Self author Hal Hershfield talks to Jane McGonigal, IFTF Director of Game Research & Development, about the science on how the mind views our future selves as strangers and what that means for our health and wellbeing. Hal will describe the mental mistakes we make in thinking about the future and give us practical advice for imagining our best future so that we can make that a reality. Come learn how people who are able to connect with their future selves are better able to balance living for today and planning for tomorrow.
Check it out Here!
Hannah Zeavin
Presented by Hannah Zeavin
Grief: A Peril of Infancy, René A. Spitz, 1947, digital projection, 24 mins
A Two-Year-Old Goes to Hospital, James Robertson, 1952, digital projection, 30 mins
Rock-a-Bye-Baby, L. Richard Ellison, 1984, digital projection, 29 mins
Check it out Here!