This group of presentations included Lev Manovich, a leading theorist of new media as well as a philosopher/computer scientist and the experimental performance art collective The Night Bears. The speakers address a range of issues from privacy, surveillance, and new concepts and practices of identity in an age of global digital and social media. This panel was structured as a conversation among the speakers and then with the audience. The video is of each speaker’s opening remarks followed by the discussion between the panelists and then the question and answer session with the audience.
John Jannone: What is the Post-human?
John J.A. Jannone, founding member of The Night Bears, studies cooperation, coordination, and collaboration with a particular interest in collective art-making and live performance. He is an Associate Professor at Brooklyn College, and designed the College’s MFA program in Performance and Interactive Media Arts (PIMA). He teaches courses in music composition, collaboration, computer programming, performance, multi-camera television production, and television aesthetics. He is an avid musician, martial artist, and athlete, with a recent interest in traditional boxing and contact improvisation. He is the recipient of numerous grants, including National Science Foundation Major Research Instrumentation and CreativeIT grants. John is the executive director of a family of summer arts camps for children: www.ballibayCamps.com
Samir Chopra: Opening Remarks
Samir Chopra is Professor of Philosophy at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He earned a BA in Mathematical Statistics from Delhi University (1984), an MS in Computer Science from the New Jersey Institute of Technology (1990) and a PhD in Philosophy from the City University of New York (2000). He has worked on logics for belief revision and merging; his current research interests include pragmatism, Nietzsche, the philosophical foundations of artificial intelligence, philosophy of law, the legal theory of artificial agents, and the politics and ethics of technology. He is co-author of A Legal Theory for Autonomous Artificial Agents (University of Michigan Press, 2011). Samir is a blogger at The Pitch, ESPN-Cricinfo, and at https://samirchopra.com/.
Lev Manovich: Opening Remarks
Lev Manovich is the author of Software Takes Command (Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), Soft Cinema: Navigating the Database (MIT Press, 2005), and The Language of New Media (MIT Press, 2001), which is described as “the most suggestive and broad ranging media history since Marshall McLuhan.” Manovich is a Professor at CUNY Graduate Center, Director of the Software Studies Initiative, and a Visiting Professor at European Graduate School (EGS).
Sophia Remolde and Daniel Munkus (The Night Bears): Opening Remarks
Sophia Remolde, founding member of The Night Bears, is a multimedia artmaker working in theater, film, dance, puppetry, and robotics. She is trained in Suzuki, Viewpoints, and Butoh, and works as a writer, director, actor, puppeteer, and fight choreographer. She is Associate Director of Puppet Junction Productions and co-founder of the performance duo Darth&Lobster. Sophia collaborates with groups such as the Endless Inside (a photography, video, and animation collective), The South Wing (a Suzuki-based experimental theater company), and SITI Company’s Extended Ensemble. She is currently [2013] collaborating with Falkor Systems and PhD students in the field of robotics and computer vision at City College on a large-scale dance work for humans and quadrotor flying robots.
Daniel Munkus, founding member of The Night Bears, is a musician and interdisciplinary artist. He is a songwriter and recording artist, performer, and composer of electronic music for collaborative ensembles. A student of mindfulness meditation and martial arts, he explores the body–mind connection in various contexts. As part of the theatrical ensemble Robot Immigrants, he questions the future of technology and labor ethics for the artificially intelligent. He sings under the nom de guerre Old Robes.