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Alternative You – How are we reinventing and editing our identities?

 

Ghislaine Boddington curated into the 'Alternative You' strand of the 2018 festival. This included programming a range of speakers, installations and debate panels exploring themes linked to the body and data and our emerging digital presence and identity in the world – examining the blending interface between the physical and data self.

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Boddington created and curated 4 sub themes for her Alternative You curation and invited main stage speakers, debate speakers and installations to illustrate each of them, waving a journey for the audience between seeing, hearing and experiencing multi-modal inputs on the topics: Virtual Physical Immersion, Machines that Care for Us, Future Humans: Augmented Selves, and Just The Job – vocational callings in a digitalised world.

The Main Stage

• Douglas Rushkoff (Team Human, USA) - Team Human: Mastering the Digital

• Proff Noel Sharkey (Emeritus Professor, University of Sheffield, Chair elect, ICRAC) - Sex, race and Gender in Robotics and AI

• Prof Rebecca Allen (UCLA, USA) - The angel of mind and matter

• Jude Kelly (Director WOW / South Bank Centre London) and Russ Shaw (Director, Tech London Advocates) - Occupational Futures

• Kyle McDonald (Interactive media artist, USA) - Weird Intelligence - Reimagining Interaction

• Imogen Heap (Composer / Musician) - The Creative Passport - Reimagining the Music Industry and Mi.Mu musical gesture gloves demonstration

• Aral Balkan (Cyborg Rights Activist) - Building the Peoples Internet
   

Series of Debates on The Debate Stage:

• Virtual Physical Immersion: Holistic interactions between our physical and data bodies. With panelists: Ghislaine Boddington (body>data>space / University of Greenwich), Kyle McDonald (Interactive media artist, USA), Prof Atau Tanaka (Goldsmiths University), Ling Tan (Senior Designer/ Coder, Umbrellium). Read more →

• Future Humans: Augmented Selves. With panelists: Douglas Rushkoff (Team Human, USA), Prof Rebecca Allen (UCLA, USA), Jasmin Idun Isdrake (Experience Designer, Sweden), Ghislaine Boddington (body>data>space / University of Greenwich). Read more →

• Machines that Care for Us. With panelists: Gareth Mitchell (BBC World Service Digital Planet), Proff Tony Prescott (Sheffield Robotics), Catherine Allen (Liminal VR), Hannah Allen (Babylon - Telepresence Medicine). Read more →

• Just The Job - Vocational Callings in a Digitalised World. With panelists: Proff Noel Sharkey (Emeritus Professor, University of Sheffield, Chair elect, ICRAC), Anne-Marie Imafidon (Head / Co-founder, Stemettes), Ann Branch (European Commission, DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion), Mike Stubbs (then Director of FACT).
  Read more →

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Installation Works:

• Bio-Body-Tech. A room of 5 highly innovative, interactive projects, that only work in connection with our bodies through expanding and enhancing our senses, utilising our bio-signals and reacting to our body transmissions. Read more →

• The Reader by Stanza explores what could happen in the future when embedded chips in our bodies have a direct connection to all the world’s information, data, and knowledge.

• The Nemesis Machine by Stanza raises questions around surveillance culture, privacy and the connected city. The artwork visualises life in a big city on the basis of real time data from London, transmitted from a network of sensors.

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