Speaker 1: Dr Kim Baraka (VU)

Title: How the performing arts can help us develop more capable interactive robots

Abstract: In this talk, I will discuss the interplay between my background as an interactive robotics researcher and my background as a dance artist. I will discuss concrete ways in which the performing arts, and particularly expertise and knowledge from dance, can inspire, inform, and help test technical advances in interactive robotics, from social robots to physically assistive robots. This will use the following op-ed piece as a starting point https://shorturl.at/yCPHr.

About the Speaker: Kim Baraka is a tenured assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at the Free University (VU) in Amsterdam, and member of the Social AI group. Before joining the VU, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Socially Intelligent Machines Lab at UT Austin. He holds a dual Ph.D. in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and the Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon, Portugal and a M.S. in Robotics from CMU. His interdisciplinary research, at the cross-roads of human-centered robotics, machine learning, and dance, focuses on enabling robots and humans to teach and learn from each other through situated social interactions. He is part of the Hybrid Intelligence Center, which fundamentally researches hybrid human-AI systems, with applications to healthcare and education. As a professionally trained contemporary dancer, he is particularly interested in new frontiers in robotics that draw inspiration from the performing arts.

Speaker 2: Dr Rosa Wevers (Minerva Academy, Groningen)

Title: Algorithmic Surveillance: A curatorial Inquiry

Abstract: This presentation explores the critical potential of curatorial inquiry in the realm of algorithmic surveillance. I reflect on the exhibition ‘Face Value’ (2021), a research-exhibition (Sheikh 2015) I curated in collaboration with IMPAKT [Centre for Media Culture]. Through a series of artistic interventions, ‘Face Value’ sought to defamiliarize the normalized technologies of algorithmic surveillance, revealing their hidden politics. By creating these defamiliarizations, the exhibition aimed to engage visitors not just in sense-making but also in sensing surveillance, ultimately offering tools for them to become more responsive to it. In doing so, the research-exhibition aimed to foster a critical surveillance spectatorship.

About the Speaker: Dr. Rosa Wevers works as Senior Researcher Art & Technology at Research Centre Art & Society (part of Minerva Art Academy in Groningen). She is co-curator at Noorderlicht (platform for lens-based media), and host of the podcast Kunstmatig. In her research and curatorial practice, Rosa explores the relations between art, technology and society. Rosa obtained her PhD at Utrecht University. Her project explored how contemporary art exhibitions confront visitors with critical perspectives on surveillance and engage them in strategies of resistance. As part of her PhD, Rosa curated the exhibition ‘Face Value’ in 2021, in collaboration with 2021 IMPAKT [Center for Media Culture] and NFF.