Encoding Cultures: Living Amongst Intelligent Machines

The ZKM | Center for Art and Media invites you to the international conference »Encoding Cultures. Living Amongst Intelligent Machines«.

Recent advances in the field of artificial intelligence are revolutionizing the way with which we think and act. They give an idea of the fundamental changes that will affect our society in the coming years. The interdisciplinary symposium brings scientists, programmers and developers, cultural theorists and artists into dialogue with a broader public. The lectures and discussions provide insight into the latest state of research and development in the field of machine learning and ask about the current and long-term effects of this technology on science, business, politics, art and society.

Day I: Digital (D) effects. Living Amongst Intelligent Machines

The first day of the symposium, entitled »Digital (D)Effects«, will first address the philosophy of the digital: cultural theorists and philosophers will explore the prerequisites and consequences of global digitalization and the effects it has on our relationship to the world. The emerging algorithmic infrastructure increasingly creates a control system that mediates between mathematical models and our socio-political environment. How should we evaluate this algorithmic condition? What new forms of gouvernmentality and knowledge structures are emerging? Theories of software, the history of machine learning, the materiality of the digital and fundamental questions of computability will be discussed.

In the second part of the conference day, leading scientists will provide insight into current research in the field of machine learning, a technology that will affect all areas of society in the long term. They discuss the status of the application of artificial intelligence in the areas of big data analysis, autonomous driving, jurisdiction, automated translation as well as for the protection of privacy and point out potentials for future developments.

A concluding panel discussion invites representatives of the humanities and researchers in the field of artificial intelligence to a joint discussion on the technical, economic, social, political and cultural challenges of machine learning technologies.

Day II: The View of the Machine. Artificial Intelligence and Computer Vision

The second day of the symposium, »The Gaze of the Machine. Artificial Intelligence and Computer Vision«, will focus on machine vision, a field of research to which Artificial Intelligence research has devoted special attention from the very beginning. Scientists and artists present projects from various disciplines and show the current horizon of practice and reflection in this field of application. They will show how machines construct meaning from visual data, which visual tasks can perhaps be better performed by neural networks today than by humans, and which possibilities for action and new questions arise from this for research, industry, society and art.

The conference will be held in German and English. A simultaneous translation is available.
Presented by: Blanca Giménez, Yasemin Keskintepe, Julius Pfrommer, Margit Rosen, Jenny Starick