BIO 26| TALK #3 | Data

This third event in the BIO 26| Talks series aims to address several key questions surrounding data. In a time when society is producing and gathering more data than it is able to process, and is blindingly relying on algorithms to take important decisions, ranging from access to loans or universities, to healthcare, criminal justice or job market, it is high time to stop and think how data is impacting our lives now and in the future. We are just beginning to understand the power, dangers and benefits of Big Data and how its use, misuse and abuse is creating a very toxic environment for democracy and our social and economic ecosystems. On the other hand, its benefits are also incalculable, and felt in every aspect of our lives and creative production. The question remains: is data the beauty or the beast of the digital era?

The first session of our talk will focus on data, power, control and sovereignty. How to create a balance on the current trade-offs between: Safety x Autonomy, Free online services x Personal Data Protection, Data Privacy x Open Code in a data-driven world? The guests will be Livia Nolasco-Rózsás and Kim Albrecht. On the second session we will discuss the future possibilities and alternative perspectives to the ubiquitous and indispensable presence of algorithms and data in our lives. How artists, designers and writers, in close collaboration with scientists, are speculating and offering critical insights and guidance on how to deal with, and think of data.

GUESTS:

⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣☞ KIM ALBRECHT
Kim Albrecht visualizes cultural, technological, and scientific forms of knowledge. His diagrams are meant to unfold and question the structures of representation and explore the aesthetic of the intermingling of technology and society through the sensual knowledge of tracing information.
Kim holds a BA in graphic design and an MA in interface design. Between 2015 and 2017, Kim worked as a researcher at the Center for Complex Network Research with Prof. Laszlo Barabasi and joined the metaLAB (at) Harvard in 2017. Besides, Kim writes his Ph.D. thesis at the University of Potsdam in the field of media theory. As knowledge designer and aesthetic researcher, Kim Albrecht explores the boundaries of visual knowledge in the post-digital age.

⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣☞ LIVIA NOLASCO-ROZSAS
Lívia Nolasco-Rózsás is a curator and researcher. She has curated exhibitions at contemporary and media art institutions worldwide since 2006, among others at the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Chronus Art Center (Shanghai), Tallinn Art Hall, Műcsarnok (Budapest), focusing on the constantly changing media of contemporary art and intersections with various disciplines. She initiated and developed thematic exhibitions raising questions such as the genealogy and social impact of planetary computation and computer code, electronic surveillance and democracy, or synesthetic perception.
As of 2019 she has conducted research in curatorial studies on the “virtual condition” and its implications in the exhibition space at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig, and as acting head of the international collaboration project entitled BEYOND MATTER at ZKM | Karlsruhe, in which institutions such as Centre Pompidou, Aalto University, and others participate. She completed her studies of art history and aesthetics at the Eötvös Loránd University Budapest in 2010.

⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣☞ SARA BOŽANIĆ
Sara Božanić is CEO of the Institute for Transmedia Design, based in Slovenia. She is a ‘hybrid’ – a designer, strategist, educator, and thinker. She has been working for many years on the promotion of transmedia design disciplines in Europe, organizing events, designing labs, and lectures. As a consultant, producer, and director, she has worked on numerous international projects funded by the European Commission. In 2015, she was chosen among 40 EU consultants working on audience development via digital means to take part in policy debates under the Voice of Culture project ‒ a structured dialogue between the European Commission and the cultural sector. In 2011, she received a Young Creative Entrepreneur Media Award by the British Council for her achievements in the development of the interactive media design sector in Slovenia. Sara believes that digital opens new paths to the public and fosters an endless series of design possibilities.
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⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣☞ VLADAN JOLER
Prof. Vladan Joler is an academic, researcher and artist whose work blends data investigations, investigative journalism, writing, data visualisation, critical design, and numerous other disciplines. He explores and visualises different technical and social aspects of algorithmic transparency, digital labour exploitation, invisible infrastructures, and many other contemporary phenomena in the intersection between technology and society. In 2018, in cooperation with Kate Crawford, he published Anatomy of an AI System, a large-scale map and long-form essay investigating the human labour, data, and planetary resources required to build and operate an Amazon Echo. Vladan Joler’s work is included in the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and included in the permanent exhibition of  Ars Electronica Center. His work is exhibited in more than a hundred international exhibitions, including institutions and events such as ZKM, XXII Triennale di Milano‎, HKW, Vienna Biennale, Transmediale, Ars Electronica, Biennale WRO, etc. He has received numerous awards, including the 2019 Design of the Year award by the Design Museum in London and S+T+ARTS Prize ’19 Honorary mention by the European Commission and Ars Electronica.