Talks

Watch this page to keep track with all inspirational speakers

Lecture Title

Date

Time (CET)

Who

Theme

Design Possibilities, Recycle Experiences & Identify Opportunities

26.10

13:00 - 14.30

Paula Saul

Self & Identity

Power & Media: An examine into Historical Art & Modern Media

27.10

09:00 - 10.30

Mahan Charmshir

Social / Cultural Anthropology

Images for Change Making

27.10

10.30 - 12:00

Alice Nell

Social / Cultural Anthropology

Complexity Rules Everything Around Me

27.10

13:00 - 15:00

Eleanor Saitta

System Design

Ethical Algorithm: Art & Data as Political Tool

28.10

09:00 - 10.30

Tom Laurenzo

Humane Technology, Ethical A.I

The Professional Paradox of Self Knowledge: Coming out for Creatives

28.10

10:30 - 12:00

Daniel Montano

Self & Identity

Eco-communities and shared living: autonomy through egalitarianism

28.10

13:00 - 14:00

Penny Clark

Social / Cultural Anthropology

Cyber Security & The Gender Gap

28.10

14:00 - 15:00

Hila Meller

FemTech & Cyber Security

The Internet Alchemy

28.10

15.30 - 17:00

Pepe Borrás

Human Technology & Data Privacy

Design Fiction & World-Building

29.10

09:45 - 10:30

Pebbles Lin

Design Fiction

Identity & Intersectionality

29.10

13:00 - 15:00

Cecilia Gentili

Self Discovery

Story Living on a Scaffold of Data

29.10

15:30 - 17:00

Nandi Nobell

Design Fiction

How the world of design has changed, from physical to digital - Case study: Isola Design District

09.11

10:00 - 12.00

Elif Reşitoğlu

Immersive Environments & Phygital Design

Looking Outside the Box

10.11

16:00 - 17:30

Amaka Nkele-Onyioha

Collective Identity & Culture Building

Design Possibilities, Recycle Experiences & Identify Opportunities / Paula Saul

Monday, Oct 26th, 13:00 - 14:30 CET Here we look forward to connecting ideas of design, sustainability and identity through the timeline of my life. Born in a small town in the south of Brazil, I’ve come a long way finding my own voice. Fashion is a powerful tool and it incorporates more than just taste but can be used as a way of expression and exploration of the self. In order to recognise ourselves as plural individuals we have to tell our stories based on the complex combinations of our life experiences and abilities as you would by sewing meticulously cut pieces of fabric together. My most recent work with recruitment and community building has made me realize we should be more willing to adapt and re-signify than to ignore or even diminish someone’s personal trajectory.

Lecture Keynote:

#identity #sustainability #community #transgenderism

Power & Media : An Inspection into Historical Art & Modern Media / Mahan Charmshir

Tuesday, Oct 27th, 09:00 - 10:30 CET What do we talk about when we talk about power? What is power? How do we interpret it? How do we perceive it? Do we know if we talk about the same concept when we talk about power? Is power real or an illusion? Why are we attracted to/ by power? An explorative interactive talk to explore all our own understanding of “power” together.

#anthropology #collectivebias #perceptivemedia #humanitarianrights #historicalart

Images for Change Making / Alice Nell

Tuesday, Oct 27th, 10:30 - 12:00 CET How is it that Uyghurs in camps aren’t massive news and haven’t been. How would society’s perspective be different if we would have photos of thousands of women and men being kept hostage, abused, and raped? Why don’t we see them? Bushfires in California and Australia. What happens when we are immunized to these recurring images? The content of our news cycle is reliant on the images made available to us. The way our world works often seems and feels obscure, complex, too hard to change. Too hard to fix. But although we can’t change the entire world at once -- all of us together as a civilisation, are without a doubt changing it. Every day, every year, every decade. Think about your parents, and your grandparents. Which freedoms do you have that they didn't? What opportunities? Which rights? Big corporations, industries, and politicians, can hire lobbyists and expensive business, marketing, and advertising firms to represent them and fight for their freedoms and rights.

Who fights for the freedoms and rights of normal people like you and me? Activists. Campaigners. Non-for-Profits. Foundations. Charities… There’s a whole spectrum of organisations and individuals out there that work tirelessly, day in day out, to make change in the world.

I want to open a conversation with you about activism, and how each single one of us has the power, the freedom, and the right -- to be an activist in their own way. You don’t need to work at an NGO like Greenpeace, or Doctors without Borders, or WWF to make change in the world. If every business, every advertisement agency, design studio, financial institution -- would have just one, single person working for them who dares to speak up bravely, and honestly. Just one person, who takes it upon them to go the extra mile and come up with new, alternative ideas to represent who we are -- who we can be. Who feels the urge to tell a different story -- we can change even more rapidly than we already are. A few things I’d love to talk about with you:

  • Activism 101 -- a quick download

  • Creating change from the inside out: employee rebellions

  • How media & news influences how we think -- and who we are (and become)

  • Photography, Video, Art, and Design -- to influence the news cycle.

  • Photography, Video, Art, and Design -- to create and sustain movements What do the images of the world say about us? How do YOU curate the right imagery for your story?

#humanrights #digitalcampaign #imagery&media #collectivebias

Complexity Rules Everything Around Me / Eleanor Saitta

Tuesday, Oct 27th, 13:00 - 15:00 CET In this talk, we'll look at what immersive design and immersion mean, and how you can use embodied experiences to interrogate and co-design sociotechnical systems and processes. We'll do so from a whole-systems perspective, drawing on three threads — resilience engineering, speculative design, and the theories and praxis of the Nordic live-action role-playing community.

Lecture Keynote:

#systemdesign #bigdata #sociotechnical #processdesign #engineering #speculativedesign

Ethical Algorithm: Art & Data as Political Tool / Tom Laurenzo

Wednesday, Oct 28th, 09:00 - 10:30 CET In this talk Tomas will give a brief introduction to AI / machine learning. He will then discuss the socio-political impact of this technology as well as present some of his interactive artworks that incorporate machine learning.

Lecture Keynote:

#AI #Machinelearning #EthicalData #DataPolitics #InteractiveArts

The Professional Paradox of Self Knowledge: Coming out for Creatives / Daniel Montano

Wednesday, Oct 28th, 10.30 - 12:00 CET We are all walking paradoxes, we are taught from an early age to fit in, to dress for success, but what happens when we own the paradox, the contradictions, the complexity that is the self?

Using the lived queer experience as our jumping off point we will explore the power of self reflection and self knowledge in a professional context.

#identity #queer #socialanthropology #genderequality

Eco-communities and shared living: autonomy through egalitarianism / Penny Clark

Wednesday, Oct 28th, 13.00 - 14:00 CET Springing from utopian ideologies, yet domestic in nature, eco-communities and shared living, in their myriad of forms, offer hopeful visions of the future which are not only physically different, but are underpinned by alternative value systems.

This talk will explore how power hierarchies are flattened within eco-communities and shared living, and how this enables a collective level of autonomy which would not be possible on an individual level. In this talk, Penny will first define eco-communities and shared living, touching upon some of her research. She will explore the egalitarian power structures employed by some of these communities, looking at the benefits and challenges of power distribution and communications techniques. She will then make the case that shared living engenders personal fulfilment and empowerment through ‘inner work’ and sense of place, whilst also encouraging ‘larger-than-self’ thinking. Finally, she will demonstrate how shared living can to some extent enable autonomy from our dominant economic systems.

Lecture Keynote:

#communitybuilding #strategicspatialdesign #socialanthropology #genderequality

Cyber Security & The Gender Gap / Hila Meller

Wednesday, Oct 28th, 14:00 - 15:00 CET What does a Cybersecurity mean? In her talk, Hila will cover her personal journey to becoming a leader in this space and some of the career decisions she took. Key item in her session will be the development of the Cyber Security industry originating in more traditional Physical Security operations moving to the cyber and technological space, thus removing boundaries that are linked to gender, physical appearance or disabilities. She will explain the shortage of skills in the Cyber employment market which as a driver for diversity and inclusion and will touch on the remaining gaps.

Lecture Keynote:

#humanetechnology #dataprivacy #socialinclusion

The Internet Alchemy / Pepe Borrás

Wednesday, Oct 28th, 15:30 - 17:00 CET There’s a global movement of technologists, hackers, policy makers, activists and philanthropists fighting to keep the Internet free, open and accessible for everyone. The Internet Freedom community is one of the most interesting stories of multidisciplinary collaboration ever told – but nobody has ever told it… Yet. The internet isn’t Facebook, or Google – it isn’t search engines, or social media, either. The Internet is a shared global resource, and we need storytellers, creatives and dreamers to build powerful, hopeful visions for the future we want for the web.

I’d like to invite you to join me in a journey through uncharted narrative-building territory: Can positive, inspiring narratives be more impactful and engaging than catastrophism and dystopian techno-futurism? In the darkness, the faintest light source becomes a beacon.

Lecture Keynote:

#dataprivacy #humanetechnology #digitalrights #technofuturism

Design Fiction & World-Building / Pebbles Lin

Thursday, Oct 29th, 09:45 - 10:30 CET The world is a story, and you are the stage. How do you design a narrative that is visual compelling and emotionally alluring? How do you grapple with the power of truth, and how can you direct that narrative as in a fictional world? What is the space between reality and fiction, where you invite your audience to exist?

#speculativedesign #creativenarratives #alternaterealitygaming #scriptwriting #neurothinking

Identity & Intersectionality / Cecilia Gentili

Thursday, Oct 29th, 13:00 - 15:00 CET How identities get intertwined with each other forming not only specific nuances with the groups we are part of because of those identities but also how the create specifics realities.

#identity #personalnarrative #selfdiscovery

Story Living on a Scaffold of Data / Nandi Nobell

Thursday, Oct 29th, 15:30 - 17:00 CET Arguably we all live in our own individual fictional bubble - made real through our semi-joined fictional bubbles of friends, families and societies. You will likely have heard the term story-living. I first came across it at a lecture by the iMLxLAB of LucasArts - the company behind the Star Wars franchise, now owned by Disney and part of all that means. When we project the idea of story living further into human life and society by the tools of extended reality, what once was limited to the theme park is everywhere internet and cloud computing can reach - this already include, some jungles, Mount Everest as well as outer space. Story living is of course also tainted by the advertisement industry, that does all it can to pull us into their customized vocabularies making some use of story living too, fueled by algorithms feeding off our data, but what happens when instant customization of product reaches a level of sophistication that makes advertisement of standardized goods and services obsolete? The sole role of advertisement is to standardize you so that your mind aligns with standard product. Converging technologies point towards possibilities of inhabiting a semi-virtual world in a seamless fashion. Virtual goods is a rapidly growing market, and the way we can alter things in 3D software will increasingly be the way we can alter our own immediate experiences of reality. Everything harnessing our data is often pitched as dystopian, but there is also an immense potential therein as everything advanced in the digital realms depend on customization per individual, which in turn requires data. In order to design fiction we don’t want to leave - and to create services within this inhabitable fiction that generate real economy, gives rise to real jobs and evolves into a customizable reality on our own individual terms beyond most imaginations. Join for a mixed presentation and conversation on concepts focusing on extended reality and the possibilities thereof, growing on a scaffolding of data resulting in endless narratives.

Lecture Keynote:

#designfiction #narrativebuilding #futurism

How the world of design has changed, from physical to digital - Case study: Isola Design District / Elif Reşitoğlu

Monday, Nov 9th, 10:00 - 12:00 CET The world of design was, like many other creative sectors, twisted by the pandemic both due to the cancellation of the main trade fairs, and due to a significant drop in sales in the first quarters of 2020. Young and independent studios have been overwhelmed by this situation. This is how Blank's idea was born to launch a digital platform of Isola Design District, a design event that was taking place exclusively during design weeks. The curated platform has a focus on innovation, sustainability and experimental materials and it was realized in very short time, where you can find a design community, magazine, events calendar and a digital design district with virtual exhibitions developed by involving over 300 designers , design studios, important international partners and contributors from all over the world. With two events already underway in 2020, the platform immediately had a great media success and aims to revolutionize and democratize the market. Elif will share her experience on how the world of design has changed, from physical to digital.

#phygitaldesign #immersiveenvirnoments #creativestrategy

Looking Outside the Box / Amaka Onyioha-Nkele

Tuesday, Nov 10th, 16:00 - 17:30 CET Searching for the homeland of many has been a fundamental quest in science and culture, particularly because we all carry genetic echoes from our original fathers and mothers. Going back in time poring over fossils and peering at genetic ancestry and the intense signs say all modern humans roaming the Earth came from Africa. Africa is an enormous continent featuring an overwhelming scope of geographical and cultural diversity. Today, anywhere between 1,000 to 2,000 languages stretch from the Saharan desert across the mountain rainforests to the savannah grasslands. It is then noted the migration to other parts of the earth played a role in the change in the physical appearance to the ability to adjust to the new environment. The exploration of what lies beneath, where our differences lie, where our similarities collide in traditions, cultures and how we see ourselves in each other via the stories, concepts, fashion and more from a place of non-judgement, bore the idea of AfroStyle Magazine.

#identity #contentcreation #africanstyle

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