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Getting to Know Your Inner Cyborg: 5 Posthuman Dialogue

Lecture 1: Turing Testing: Distinguishing Man from Machine
Speakers: Korean Art Collective Shinseungback Kimyonghun
and Dr. Anna Greenspan, moderated by Rebecca Catching

Saturday, April 1, 2017, 2-3:30
OCAT Shanghai
30 Wen’an Lu, Jing’an District, Shanghai
In 1950, computer scientist Alan Turing developed a test to determine if computers were able to exhibit intelligent behavior. A “tester” sat in a sealed room communicating through keyboard with a “test subject” in another room. The role of the tester would be to distinguish if the responses of the test subject were initiated by a human or machine.

Today up to half of the traffic on the internet is composed of bots interacting with us on social media, spamming advertising, trading stocks, crawling eBay and other sites to find deals. . . doing human things and doing them better than most humans.

In this multi-media talk with Korean artist collective Shinseungback Kimyonghun (Shin Seung Back and Kim Yong Hun) and Dr. Anna Greenspan, Interactive Media Arts and Assistant Professor of Global Contemporary Media at NYU Shanghai, we will look at shifting concepts of “the human” in relation to the artistic practice of Shinseungback Kimyonghun which focuses on how machines think and act through their experiments in AI, CAPTCHA and google facial recognition software. As machine learning pushes us closer to superintelligence and the potential of “technological singularity”, questions of “personhood” will soon leave the realm of theory and science fiction and take on a real-life everyday urgency.

About the Speakers
Shinseungback Kimyonghun is a Seoul based artistic duo consisting of Shin Seung Back and Kim Yong Hun. Their collaborative practice explores technology’s impact on humanity. Shin Seung Back studied Computer Science and Kim Yong Hun completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts at the Sydney College of the Arts. They met while studying at the Graduate School of Culture Technology in KAIST and after completing Masters in Science and Engineering, they started to work as Shinseungback Kimyonghun in 2012. Their work has been presented extensively, including the Ars Electronica Festival, Vienna Biennale, the ZKM and MMCA Korea. http://ssbkyh.com/

Anna Greenspan is Assistant Director of Interactive Media Arts and Assistant Professor of Global Contemporary Media at NYU Shanghai. She holds a PhD in Continental philosophy from Warwick University, UK. While at Warwick, Anna was a founding member of the Cybernetic culture research unit (ccru). Her current research interests include critical cartography and the informal economy, wireless media, Chinese modernity and the philosophy of technology. Anna was the co-founder of the Shanghai Studies Society (http://shanghaistudies.net) and a founding member of the research hub Hacked Matter, (http://www.hackedmatter.com/.) which is dedicated to investigating the process of technological innovation in China. She is currently working on a project on modern Chinese philosophy and the wireless wave. Anna’s latest book Shanghai Future: Modernity Remade was published by Oxford University Press in 2014. www.annagreenspan.com

Rebecca Catching is the Executive Director of the contemporary art platform Assembly Line Project and co-founder of the online Chinese art magazine Ran Dian. During the past 17 years in China, she has worked as a magazine editor, art critic, gallery director and museum curator. Rebecca’s research and curatorial interests include the continuing dialogue between Buddhist/Taoist thought and contemporary Chinese art (Learning from the Literati series), the field of social practice (Assembly Line Project Studio) and the topic of posthumanism in the context of East Asian new media art practice (Foreign Bodies Project).

About the Lecture Series:
“Getting to Know Your Inner Cyborg: 5 Posthuman Dialogues” will, through a series of five lectures, examine the increasing importance of posthumanism in our everyday lives through moderated dialogues between artists and academics in East Asia. Here we use the term “cyborg” as a metaphor for the the increasing influence intelligent technology which has begun to mount a challenge the definition of “humanity.” This project is an extension of the exhibition series “Foreign Bodies: Human Identity in a Posthuman World” first commissioned by the Department for Culture and Education of the German Consulate General in Shanghai in 2016 and curated by Rebecca Catching.

Getting to Know Your Inner Cyborg: 5 Posthuman Dialogues
Lecture 1: Turing Testing: Distinguishing Man from Machine
Speakers: Korean Art Collective SSBKYH and Dr. Anna Greenspan
Saturday, April 1, 2017, 2-3:30
OCAT Shanghai
30 Wen’an Lu, Zhabei District, Shanghai
OCAT Shanghai, 30 Wenan Lu, Jing’an District
Talk in English and Chinese

Organized by: OCAT Shanghai

  • new talk invite English -01

    new talk invite English -01