“Elephant Clocks and Stuttering Parrots: Art, Automation, and Artificial Intelligence”

THIS WEDNESDAY AT PAROLA 💡
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“Elephant Clocks and Stuttering Parrots: Art, Automation, and Artificial Intelligence”
A Lecture by Dr. Gunalan Nadarajan, University of Michigan
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While historical and contemporary discussions of automation and artificial intelligence have primarily focused on its technological instantiations, specifically on its mechanical and industrial instances, it is useful to understand automation as embedded in and programmed into practices, discourses, and materialities that are sometimes ‘non-technological. ’
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Dr. Nadajaran’s talk proposes that automation be (re)conceived in an expanded way as a constellation of elements through which cultures are produced and structured to predispose specific behaviors and material effects; as structures and programs for the deferral of decisions and actions. It provides an abbreviated genealogy of automation by excavating the historical and culturally specific technological devices, industrial machinations, and technical discourses that have come to be associated with automation, and as these are tempered by the changing philosophical, neurological, psychological, legal, and ethical conceptions of human agency. It proposes that artistic explorations of automation and AI show us ways of imagining and acting to ethically restitute agency back to humans.
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About the speaker
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Gunalan Nadarajan, an art theorist and curator working at the intersections of art, science, and technology, is Dean Emeritus and Professor at the Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design at the University of Michigan.
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March 12 (Wednesday), 10:00 – 11:30 A.M.
Atrium and Gallery Lobby
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FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
Registration starts at 9:30 A.M. Limited seating.
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Walk-in guests are welcome from Tuesdays to Saturdays, from 9 AM to 4 PM. For inquiries, email us at [email protected].
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See you!

Source: UP Fine Arts Gallery Facebook
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