Technoculture, Posthumanism, and the End of World as We Know It

In the last few decades, we have witnessed dramatic implosions between biology and technology, such that animals and human beings are being technologically redesigned and reworked through technology (e.g., genetic engineering, cloning, and cyborg developments in the human body), as technology increasingly takes on organic or human properties (e.g., DNA computer chips, artificial intelligence and self-organizing computer systems, increasingly lifelike and emotionally interactive robots). In a world of virtual reality, biotechnology, surrogate mothering, neural implants, wearable computers, bionic implants, modified genes, and artificial intelligence and life, reality has morphed into surrreality and science fiction becomes science fact. Science and technology undermine the erection of any firm boundaries between reality/unreality, natural/artificial, inorganic/organic, biology/technology, human/machine, and the born and the made. For many the age of humanism is over, we are rapidly morphing into a new posthumanist/transhumanist condition, and the reality principle of Western culture is now quaint and passé. Through both empirical mappings and the works of science fiction visionaries, I will chart a number of implosions that call into question human identity, traditional mappings and boundary lines of Western reality. The ambiguity of the present moment is that the science and technologies which could bring stunning benefits to the humanity race also engender new forms of domination and destruction. The outcome depends upon whether individuals and communities can democratically restructure society and culture

Bio
Dr. Steven Best is Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Texas, El Paso. Working in areas such as philosophy, social and political theory, cultural studies, science and technology studies, animal rights, environmentalism, and biotechnology, he has written and edited 10 books and published over 100 articles and reviews. He is co-founder of the Institute for Critical Animal Studies (http://www.criticalanimalstudies.org/) and Chief Editor of its online Journal for Critical Animal Studies. Best is a seasoned activist, strong advocate of applied philosophy, and a noted public figure internationally. Many of his writings are posted at his website: http://www.drstevebest.org .

 Virtual Worlds and Interactive Video Production

Mattia’s speech will focus on the emerging Virtual Worlds technologies and their applications in content generation, especially for video making and production. The speech will start with an introduction to Virtual Worlds and their state of the art picture as of 2008. After this first introduction, Mattia will focus on the main future predictions for the evolution of these systems and their use by different type of organizations. Moreover the speech will focus on the applications of virtual worlds to video production and for the generation of interactive content as a natural progression of traditional video broadcasting and movie making.
The speech will be backed-up with some reference slides and various videos our projects and content produced in virtual worlds, by ISN Virtual Worlds.

Bio
Mattia Crespi is one of the pioneers and evangelists of on-line Virtual Worlds for businesses in Italy. Active in the industry since 2006, Mattia has developed and managed some of the most significant virtual worlds projects in Italy and for the Second Life Grid. Mattia participates in the leading world conferences on virtual worlds and has held speeches on the subject in Italy and the USA.
Mattia is the Founder and CEO of ISN Virtual Worlds (www.isnvirtualworlds.com), the leading Italian virtual worlds service provider and project management firm, one the top 25 worldwide virtual worlds companies and Gold Solution Provider of Linden Lab. With ISN Virtual Worlds, Mattia had also produced the first Italian full animated fictions and series, entirely produced inside a virtual world and broadcasted on web and TV. Other projects include virtual simulations for training, virtual learning, virtual artificial intelligence customer care and marketing projects for some of the leading Italian Telcos. ISN Virtual
Worlds has recently launched ISNoTV (www.ISNoTV.com), an Italian web-based interactive TV channel, entirely based on virtual worlds. ISN will also be releasing in October 2008, the first fully integrated virtual learning platform for virtual worlds.

 Cinema:Realities

This lecture will trace the interaction of cinema and urban space,ffrom early outdoor advertisements with blinking and moving letters to the abstract color projections on skyscrapers during the 1920s and 1930s and finally to the newest projects of entire facades as projection canvases or Urban LED screens. Has Paul Virilio's
controversial and prescient remark about our city centers as media simulation, as a  "cinema of city lights," become reality today?

Bio
Dietrich Neumann was trained as an architect in Munich and London (Architectural Association) and received his PhD in architectural history from the Technical University of Munich. Since 1990 he has been a professor for the history of modern architecture and Urbanism at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, USA. Among his publications are "Film Architecture," (a history of cinematic set design) "Architecture of the Night," "Richard Neutra's Windshield House," "Luminous Buildings," "Visualizing the City" (with Alan Marcus) and others. He has curated a number of international travel exhibitions and edited their catalogues. His publications have won both the Philip Johnson Award and the Founder's Award from the Society of Architectural Historians. At Brown University he has received five Teaching Awards and is currently holding the Royce Family Chair for Teaching Excellence. He has been a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and a scholar at the Canadian Center for Architecture; He is currently the Vincent Scully Visiting Professor at the Yale School of Architecture and president of the Society of Architectural Historians.

 States of Existence: Reality, Hyperreality and virtual reality

In this one hour talk I will attempt to clarify the concepts of Reality, Hyperreality and Virtual Reality, and to offer my opinions on them in plain English without using esoteric works such as semiotics and Simulacra.  I will also attempt to avoid the often complex and endless discussion of key concepts such as consciousness and meaning.

Bio
Plantec is a pioneer digital media journalist and 5 star bestselling author. His book "Virtual Humans" has become a standard in the animation world.
Plantec is currently a cutting edge columnist at both StudioDaily in New York and VFXWorld in Hollywood with approximately a quarter million industry readers.
In addition, Plantec hosts key film industry conferences around the world including:

  * 5D in Long Beach, California, USA
  * Mundos Digitales, in A Caruna, Spain
  * FMX in Stuttgart (Europe’s largest conference on Digital
    Entertainment.)

And he sits on the boards on a number of film conference Boards including VIEW in Turin, and Design Cinema in Istanbul.

Plantec also sits on the board of advisers of the Digital Design Foundation in Beijing, China where he consults with the China Ministry of Education and teaches animation.

He has served as an Art Director in games, a Virtual human designer. As President of Virtual Personalities, Inc. he created the first practical animated virtual human interface.

He lives in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado USA.

 Exceptional Uses of Objects in Narrative Cinema

Alongside a screening of recent projects, Noam Toran will talk about exceptional uses of objects in narrative cinema, citing works such as "Kiss me Deadly" (Aldrich, 1955) and "Dead Ringers" (Cronenberg, 1988).

Bio
Born 1975 in Las Cruces, New Mexico

Noam Toran’s work spans multiple disciplines and mediums, from film to installations, conceptual product design to photography.

Toran’s research informs the creation of objects and films that reflect upon and critique the intersection between design, mass culture, technology, cinema and psychology. Consistently, the work appropriates the discourse of design as a means with which to investigate and envision anomalies in contemporary and speculative human behaviour. Often foregrounding them in short films, the objects are imagined as constructions for particular individuals and psyches, vehicles for an elaboration of the desires, fantasies and pathologies unique to specific modern subjects.

Toran’s work is exhibited, screened and published internationally, and is part of the NY MoMA and Paris FRAC collections. He currently teaches at the Royal College of Art and lectures worldwide

Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt

Semiconductor Films

Semiconductor will present an overview of their work and history alongside a program of their short films. They will start  with a look at their early days of experimenting with the computer as a medium in its own right where a new language of aesthetics is defined that sets the human input apart from the digital output and where Semiconductor are the mediators. With their explorations in sound and data as a direct source for visual translation they have developed their own distinct approach that juxtaposes that of the choreographed and metaphorical. They will continue with an overview of the physical world in their work and our experiences of it through time, architecture and phenomena. Following a series of residencies culminating at the Space Science Laboratory in UC Berkeley they will discuss the effect of science visualisations and the way NASA wants you to see the universe.

http://www.semiconductorfilms.com/

Bio
Semiconductor make moving image works which reveal our physical world in flux; cities in motion, shifting landscapes and systems in chaos. Since 1999 UK artists Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt have worked with digital animation to transcend the constraints of time, scale and natural forces; they explore the world beyond human experience, questioning our very existence.