<divid="description"><p>The installation follows a research on the way social trouble is perceived through photography and on what this protocol of representation might say about citizenship, ethical concern or political consciousness. The project attempts to address the topic from the point of view of social inter-surveillance and to explore the amount of information present in casual photography as a map of human value.</p>
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<divid="bio"><p>Ana Luísa Moura (PT) has a background in Architecture / Urban Planning and is currently exploring means of visual storytelling and strategic illustration. Her research focuses on photographical protocols within media imagery, regarding in particular the instrumentalization of vulnerability and personal exposure.</p>
<p>The Aesthetics of Ethics is a reflection on the way social documentary photography shapes ethical concern. The aesthetics of these photographs map out a set of emotional reactions to social issues, tailoring a form of political consciousness. The project associated with the theoretical research, an illustration exercise, unfolds and explores the visual grammar of the genre. Attention to details of a manufactured informality allows the understanding of the images as an encoded language, detaching it from the objectivity and authority of the photographical medium (...)</p>
<divid="description"><p>Artyom’s work entitled “New Image” is a series of images of that have been made using Google Image search results. In his work Artyom explores the relations between images and the technology that is responsible for their production and distribution. Namely how technological endeavors came to affect the dynamics within image culture.</p>
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<divid="bio"><p>Artyom Kocharyan (AM) is visual artist based in Rotterdam. His work explores the contemporary visual culture, namely the culture of images that increasingly dominate the world of communication. Artyom’s work is concerned with the representation aspect of images and their ability to determine our vision of the world. Artyom is engaged with the representation apparatus that is peculiar to current digital and online culture.</p>
<divid="description"><p>Untitled is a work about visualizing non audible and non visual acoustic properties of a space. Every space has a certain acoustic reverberation, a property that can't be heard or seen on it's own. With this project I aim to visualize that property trough data visualization. Untitled contains a (few) examples of spaces that have been mapped and visualized in a new form and material. These sculptures are presented in a way that the viewer may contextualize on it's own what the nature of the sculpture is</p>
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<divid="bio"><p>Henk-Jelle de Groot is a Rotterdam based sound designer and musician. After graduating with an Audio / Visual design bachelor Henk-Jelle setup a sound studio in Rotterdam to work in the Audio / Visual industry. After 7 years of working he returned to the Piet Zwart Institute to graduate in a Master of comm design something something. In addition to working in the Audio / Visual industry, he is muscian and builder of electronic instruments.</p>
<divid="description"><p>Mina is a voice-operated chatterbot, a commercial project designed to fulfill humans' need of talking to someone else, in a world where communication has become almost completely mediated by social media services and the spoken word has given place to images and short text messages. The project is an interactive installation comprising 2 computers, which allows the exhibition visitor to talk with the bot.</p>
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<divid="bio"><p>The bio is coming soon.</p>
<divid="bio"><p>Lucia Dossin (BR/NL) has a background in architecture and webdesign. She works at the intersection of art and design, currently focusing on the interactions between humans and computers and their implications in subjectivity, language and politics.</p>
<p>thumbnail is TEMPORARY (since it is mandatory to have a thumbnail for making this page, I used a temporary placeholder).</p>
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<p>In a future not so far away, most humans were deprived from communicating with other humans through voice. Increased intolerance to raw subjective matters combined to a competitive labour market that practically forced every adult to work 12 to 16 hours everyday resulted in that most of human communication happened through written text messages or images using online social media services. As a side effect, the complexity of human conversation decreased to a level in which computers and people could understand each other reasonably well (an issue of Artificial Intelligence solved in an unexpectedly simple way, after many decades and much money spent on Natural Language research). Children were trained from early age to perform well in this environment. However, a parcel of the population still had the need to engage in conversation using their voices, like humans used to do 'in the good old times' (that's what they read somewhere online). Within this group, a few actually met other humans to talk. Others did not manage to find time or energy, despite their longings. With this group of people in mind, a promising startup company launched Mina, a chat bot that was able to fulfill this need for voice interaction remarkably well.</p>
<h3id="free-text---full-version-601-words">free text - full version 601 words</h3>
<p>In a future not so far away, most humans were deprived from communicating with other humans through voice. Increased intolerance to raw subjective matters combined to a competitive labour market that practically forced every adult to work 12 to 16 hours everyday resulted in that most of human communication happened through written text messages or images using online social media services. As a side effect, the complexity of human conversation decreased to a level in which computers and people could understand each other reasonably well (an issue of Artificial Intelligence solved in an unexpectedly simple way, after many decades and much money spent on Natural Language research). Children were trained from early age to perform well in this environment. However, a parcel of the population still had the need to engage in conversation using their voices, like humans used to do 'in the good old times' (that's what they read somewhere online). Within this group, a few actually met other humans to talk. Others did not manage to find time or energy, despite their longings. With this group of people in mind, a promising startup company launched Mina, a chat bot that was able to fulfill this need for voice interaction remarkably well. Mina was presented as high technology, a product of years of research done by the brightest minds in the tech world. But in fact, it was a very old program, written in the infancy of digital electronic computing. This program worked quite well, since humans did not communicate too complex ideas anymore. But admitting the re-use of something old was completely out of question. Recycling was highly encouraged in matters like packaging, for example, but unthinkable for products and ideas. (That was regarded as not creative.) So, Mina was presented as a contemporary creation.</p>
<p>Mina was a program that managed natural language in a quite rudimentary fashion. When the program was initiated, it loaded a script. This script contained a specific set of instructions for a conversation. It was able to identify some language patterns and according to these patterns, it chose a response that would sound plausible. But in order for the program to have the desired effect, these scripts would have to contain changes in the responses on a regular basis. These changes would keep alive the illusion of talking to another human being. Without them, subscribers would probably notice they were talking to a robot and would cancel their subscriptions. Also, scripts would be changed according to the calendar and the news - and would count on social media profile data to increase the (sanitized) subjectivity rate of the conversation. So for example, on Christmas season, the scripts would be almost completely different than scripts loaded along the year. For some subscribers, according to their profile data, Christmas scripts would contain emotional and inspiring words in a frequency higher than usual. For others, they would transmit the subscriber a sense of belonging to a group that hates Christmas.</p>
<p>From time to time, the words database that was used to feed the scripts was attacked and the connections between words were switched or corrupted. That caused the script to reply using weird language constructs, and in many cases Mina's talk would not only unmask the robot but could also ignite a self-reflection process in the subscriber. Some would use this wake-up chance to try to find a way of having actual human contact back in their lives, others would instead sue the company and ask the subscription fee back. Nobody never found out if the ones responsible for these attacks were hackers or a business competitor.</p>
<p>In a future not so far away, most humans are deprived from communicating with other humans through voice. Increased intolerance to raw subjective matters combined to a competitive labour market forcing every adult to work 12 to 16 hours every day resulted in most of human communication happening through written text messages or images using social media services. As a side effect, the complexity of human conversation decreases to a level in which machines and humans can understand each other reasonably well (an issue of Artificial Intelligence solved in an unexpectedly simple way, after many decades and much money spent on Natural Language research). Children are trained from early age to perform well in this environment. However, a parcel of the population still has the need to engage in conversation using their voices. Within this group, a few actually meet other humans to talk. Others do not manage to find time or energy, despite their longings. Aiming at this target group, a promising startup company designed Mina, a chatterbot that manages to fulfill this need for voice interaction remarkably well. Marketed as high technology, as a product of years of research done by the brightest minds in the tech world, Mina is in fact a very old program, written in the infancy of digital electronic computing. Interaction with Mina is possible through a monthly subscription fee.</p>
<p>Mina manages natural language in a quite rudimentary fashion. When the program is initiated, it loads a script. This script contains a specific set of instructions for a conversation. It is able to identify some language patterns and according to these patterns, it chooses a response that will sound plausible. But in order for the program to have the desired effect, the responses in these scripts have to be changed on a regular basis. These changes will help keep alive the illusion of talking to another human being. Without them, subscribers would probably notice they are talking to a robot and would cancel their subscriptions. Also, scripts are changed according to the calendar and the news - and can count on social media profile data to increase the (sanitized) subjectivity rate of the conversation.</p>
<p>From time to time, the words database used to feed the scripts is attacked and the connections between words are switched or corrupted. That causes the script to reply using weird language constructs, and in many cases Mina's talk will not only unmask the robot but can also ignite a self-reflection process in the subscriber. Some subscribers use this wake-up chance to try to find a way of having actual voice-based human contact back in their lives, others instead sue the company and ask the subscription fee back. Nobody never found out if the ones responsible for these attacks are hackers or a business competitor.</p>
<divid="description"><p>The novel <strong>Q</strong> was written by four Bologna-based members of the LBP, as a final contribution to the project, and published in Italy in 1999. So far, it has been translated into English (British and American), Spanish, German, Dutch, French, Portuguese (Brazilian), Danish, Polish, Greek, Czech, Russian, Turkish, Basque and Korean. In August 2003 the book was nominated for the First Book Prize.</p>
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<divid="bio"><p>Luther Blissett is a multiple-use name, an open pop star informally adopted and shared by hundreds of artists and activists all over Europe and the Americas since 1994. The pseudonym first appeared in Bologna, Italy, in mid-1994, when a number of cultural activists began using it for staging a series of urban and media pranks and to experiment with new forms of authorship and identity. From Bologna the multiple-use name spread to other European cities, such as Rome and London, as well as countries such as Germany, Spain, and Slovenia.[1] Sporadic appearances of Luther Blissett have been also noted in Canada, the United States, and Brazil.</p>
<p>A solo performance exploring identity, perception and representation through automatic image analysis software. Software that is used to automatically tag online images is used to direct a live performance. Each scene is performed alongside software that reacts and interprets the performers actions. The performance explores the potential threat of computer vision and automated image perception on the human body. Every movement of the performance is analysed in detail to reductive categorisation.</p>
<p>How To Be More Or Less Human is a performance investigating how humans are identified by computer vision software. Looking specifically at how the human subject is identified and classified by image recognition software, a representation of the human body is formed. The living presence of a human being cannot be sensed by computer vision, so the human subject becomes a quantifiable data object with a set of attributes and characteristics. Seeing ourselves in this digital mirror allows us to reflect on other models of perception and develop an understanding of how the human subject is ‘seen’ by the machinic ‘other’. Looking at ourselves through the automated perception of image recognition can highlight how gender, race and ethnicity have been processed into a mathematical model. The algorithm is trained to ‘see’ certain things forcing the human subject to identify themselves within the frame of computer vision.</p>
