FUTUROLOGICAL CONGRESS
A Eurac Research project in collaboration with Festival Transart
⋙ HUMANITY IN THE AGE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE - DAY 2 ⋘
www.futurologicalcongress.it
All events are both at NOI TECHPARK and ONLINE!
Here worlds meet. The Futurological Congress is an interdisciplinary infotainment festival where science and art, technology and culture, online and offline, come together. Dealing with future issues requires all disciplines. All the more fitting therefore is the duo of organizers, consisting of Eurac Research's Center for Advanced Studies, which since its foundation has been dealing with questions of the future across disciplinary boundaries, and the festival of contemporary culture, Transart. The main theme will be “Humanity in the age of Artificial Intelligence”: philosophers, futurologists, performance artists and media scientists, computer scientists, musicians and publicists will venture a groundbreaking look at the future of human creativity and the astounding possibilities offered by the digital age - a colorful series of scientific keynotes, discussions and art performances, partly physical in the NOI Techpark, partly live-streamed.
Artificial intelligence, robotics and algorithms accompany human everyday life like no other development of the 21st century. They wage wars, handle money flows, make diagnoses, decide on the granting of loans and shape mobility. AI software blurs the line between man and machine. But can artificial intelligence create art? Does it remain just a tool, like a painter's brush, or can it develop its own aesthetics? And what other difference is there between man and machine - perhaps the inevitable transience of humans, compared to the possibility of the quasi-immortal existence of artificial intelligence? These and other questions will be discussed, among others, by the philosophers Julian Nida-Rümelin and Riccardo Manzotti, the transhumanist Zoltan Istvan, the Google X engineer Grace C. Young and the futurist Jason Silva, media artists Hexorcismos and Robin Meier, the musician Peter Kirn and the artistic curator Natalia Fuchs.
PROGRAM
10.00 – 18.00
SEMINAR 2
“UNDER CONTROL I ctrl+c(ut)” Installation by ::vtol:: (RU)
The project is an abstract robotic model of a nematode worm, which the viewer needs to "cut" in a certain place with an RFID tag plastic card. Cutting a worm with a card, we are, as it were, conducting an experiment that is possible with some types of worms, in which cutting them, under the influence of regeneration, leads to the emergence of two independent individuals. When "cutting", a digitized DNA and a mathematical model of the worm's nervous system are recorded on the card using a special scanner/reader placed in the worm. Thus, the worm divides not only physically, but also digitally - another copy of its DNA appears, which increases the chances of preserving the species. Visitors leave the card with this data to themselves. On the one hand, this is an ironic installation on the topic of information copying, digital life, and bioinformatics. On the other hand, this is a kinetic project with a non-standard form of interactivity.
10.00 - 18.00
KRANHALLE
Installation “DO YOU LIKE CYBER?” by Emilio Vavarella (Italy)
10.00 - 18.00
NOISE, NOI TECHPARK
STUDIO VISITS - WHERE FUTURE HAPPENS
Moscow: ::vtol:: / Dmitry Morozov (Russia)
Cambridge, Massachusets: Joe Davis (USA)
Beijing: Lu yang (China)
10.00 – 10.20
SEMINAR 1
Machines and creativity
Holger Volland, Vice President Frankfurter Buchmesse (Germany)
10.20-10.40
Preserving vital creative energy: How to act in times of dying systems
Rob van Kranenburg, founder of Council_IoT (Netherlands)
10.40-11.00
Why do we want to create art with computers?
Kathrin Passig, writer (Germany)
11.00 – 12.00
Can machines create art?
Introduction by Roland Benedikter, Co-Head of the Center for Advanced Studies, Eurac Research (Italy)
Discussion with Holger Volland (Germany), Riccardo Manzotti (Italy), Natalia Fuchs (Russia), Hoxorcismos/Moises Horta Valenzuela (Mexico/Germany), ::vtol::/Dmitry Morozov (Russia), Robin Meier (France).
Moderated by Peter Kirn, Create Digital Music (USA/Germany)
12.00 – 12.20
AI as an art collaborator
Ahmed Elgammal, computer scientist (USA)
12.20 – 12-40
Global catastrophic risks
Anders Sandberg, computational neuroscientist (UK)
12.45 – 13.10
The Future of Everything
Closing words by Jason Silva, futurist (USA)
Download the complete program here ▶︎ bit.ly/FuturologicalCongress