PhD Workshop with Aalborg University and the IT University of Copenhagen

The PhD workshop contributed to and took place place prior to and after the international conference “Politics of the Machine: Art and After” (May 15-17 2018 in Copenhagen). The attendees participated in a workshop where they generated online and offline outputs related to the conference theme. The conference was centered around questions about how machines impact and contextualise artistic production and perception and in doing so welcomes submissions that take an innovative approach to the politics of the machine.

The overall themes of the workshop were openness in/of machines and the potential political and social effects of opening up the machine. It was organized along two tracks:

1 — Open Structures, Open Machines – Production of Futures
2 — Open Bodies, Open Machines – Future Pleasure Objects

 

Selected projects from the workshop:

Exploratory Experiments of Robotic and Bodily Sensory Perception

Maja Fagerberg and David Kadish’s project on Exploratory Experiments of Robotic and Bodily Sensory Perception deals with the stimulation of bodies through different sensory organs and the collection of those stimulations into experiences, perception, and eventually meaning.

The project was related to the sub-theme Open Bodies/Open Machines – Future Pleasure Objects of the PhD workshop.  

The work evolves around the theme of robotic and bodily perception and through these the building of a lifeworld or umwelt. The process takes the form of a material exploration of sensoriality, through the crafting of unconventional electronic sensors. 

Using a kit of Arduino input/output solutions that play with senses, haptics, bodies, skin, stimulation, organic materials, etc., Fagerberg and Kadish have developed a wearable Arduino system that senses, perceives and communicates. The device becomes part of three connected perceptual experiences: the AI-sensor perceives stimulus, the AI-sensor produces a stimulus for the human body holding it, and the human body experiences the original stimulus and the stimulus created by the AI-sensor’s stimulus through its own sensory organs.

 

Machines and Mapping the body

Vanessa Carpenter, Sarah Homewood, Rosemary Lee works with mapping of the body and what the next level of quantified self might entail, especially in relation to role of body fluids in body-mapping. With the development of digital at-home testing the role of bodily fluids in the body-mapping and optimization process transforms. Through material experiments and scenario building the group interrogates these questions; how does our relationship with our present selves, our past selves and our futures selves change when we measure our bodily fluids in our own homes? How and why do we ask our bodies questions, and what answers can we expect?

The project was related to the sub-theme Open Bodies/Open Machines – Future Pleasure Objects of the PhD workshop.