What epistemic or ontological shifts do we arrive at when we interweave the two
actors from opposite ends of a Western mythological narrative of progress into an expanded, sympoietic subject?
The evening's
contributors open up different perspectives on these questions, oscillating between Western anthropocentrism and Amerindian
anthropomorphism. They neither allow themselves to be overwhelmed by non-human subjectivities, nor do they colonise them with
a hegemonic concept of time and history.
Session Chairs:Elisabeth von Samsonow
(Session Moderator) holds the Chair of Philosophy and Anthropology of Art at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
Klaus
Spiess (LASER Chair) is Associate Professor of the Art&Science Programme at the Medical University of Vienna.
Session Contributors:Rodrigo Bonaldo (BRA, online) and
Ana
Carolina Barbosa Pereira (BRA, online):
Reading Artificial Intelligence from Indigenous Knowledges.
Rodrigo Bragio Bonaldo is a Professor of Theory of History at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil. He co-founded
"Theory of History on Wikipedia" initiative and leads an AI and History research group at his institution. His current
work focuses on developing machine learning to depict complex theories of historical time. Ana Carolina Barbosa Pereira
is a Professor of Theory of History at the University of Bahia, Brazil. In 2021, she was a visiting professor at McGill University,
focusing on digital culture's scientific denialism. Her publications explore Indigenous knowledge, Anticolonial Theories,
and AI's intersection with historical concepts.
Christian Kosmas Mayer's (DE) work is characterized
by intensive research into those stories that a society constructs of itself, and revolves around the question of what significance
material phenomena have in this context. At the center of his interest are the conditions of perception in relation to their
cultural and technological preconditions. Different times and cultures, the foreign and the familiar are thereby subjected
to a critical historical interpretation, which at the same time sharpens our view of the present and its historical imprints.
In
Maa Kheru, he recreates the vocal tract of an ancient Egyptian mummy and meditatively penetrates immortality with
its AI-supported voice.
Camila Sposati (BRA) holds a Master's degree in Fine Arts from Goldsmiths
College.. Her works investigate transformation and energy processes, using methods that often approach scientific research
methodologies. It has examined processes on a microscopic and global scale. In her work Phonosophia, Sposati juxtaposes material
and historical processes in order to challenge official time and its significations. It questions various assumptions and
categories that shape the Western way of thinking - such as anthropocentrism, the linear conception of time, or the separation
of culture and nature - and makes it possible to experience changes in perspective .
HSURAE
(TWN/US, online) is an artist and educator from Taipei, Taiwan, currently based in New York. They hold a Masters of Science
in Art, Culture, and Technology from MIT. Their performative installation
Water/Soil Discontent is offering
multimodal readings on the microbiopolitics of the movement of bodies across lands. Taking recent scientific studies on gut
microbiome colonization among immigrants as a starting point, the project journeys backwards to interweave narratives and
materials from Traditional Chinese Medicine and household remedies as an attempt to cut across coloniality, both in the gut
and in systems of knowledge but also as an anti-aesthetic, a spatial operator delimiting the illusory boundaries of a contained
self.
Klaus Spiess (A),
Emanuel Gollob (A),
Paul Gründorfer
(A) and
Jens Hauser (DE/FR)
In their installation
Chronolalia, the oral microbiome, based
on its growth-related vibrational needs, selects the vibrations of the audience's voices , creating a hybrid chorus of "cross-species
intelligence" that unfolds in both microbial and human interest. By adjusting the tempo of their voices, visitors enter into
a symbiotic cycle with the oral microbiome. Only in combination with machine learning do lab data and real-time data enable
the performative engagement of the audience.
Captions: Christian Kosmas Mayer,
Maa Kheru, 2021
Exhibition view: Shift–AI and a Future Community, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, 2023 ©: Gerald Ulmann
Camila Sposati,
Phonosophia, 2023
Exhibition view, Breath Pieces. Camila Sposati, ifa Gallery Stuttgart,
2023 ©ifa, photo: Andreas Körner
HSURAE
Water/Soil Discontent, 2022. Exhibition view: TORN space,
Buffalo, NY. ©: HSURAE
Spiess, Gollob, Gründorfer, Hauser: Chronolalia, 2023. Exhibition view: Ars Electronica
©: vog.photo Ars Electronica
LASER Talks are a collaborative Art&Science lecture format with Leonardo
MIT Press, associated with 40 universities globally. The Vienna LASER is currently hosted by the Medical University in partnership
with the Department of Media Theory, University of Applied Arts.
More
About the LASER (Leonardo Art & Science Evening Rendevouz) Series
Funded by PEEK AR 687 Semiotic Sympoiesis
for the Posthuman Commons, the Angewandte Interdisciplinary Laboratory and the Medical University of Vienna
16
Nov, 19:30
AIL
(and online: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86776346540)
