Talks – Page 2 – medieninitiative

AI in the History of Art and Literature — Gerui Wang and Unjoo Oh, March 11, 2024

On March 11 (4:00-5:30pm, McMurtry Building 370), Gerui Wang and Unjoo Oh will be presenting work related to AI and the history of art and literature:

Gerui Wang, “Infinite Curves in Soungwen Chung’s Art: Towards Human-AI Collaborative Creativity”

This talk explores human-AI collaborations in the works of the contemporary artist Soungwen Chung. Chung designs her own robots for drawing operations. She utilizes computer vision technologies to train robots to observe, learn, and respond to her creative processes. Chung experiments possibilities and creative potential of AI systems when her brain waves are transmitted to the robot arms through an EEG device. The presentation investigates the visual effect of infinite curves in Chung’s art, varying in volume, color, density, tones, and directions. Chung’s works introduce an infinite reproducibility and variation that evokes aesthetics of the ink medium from East Asia. Do Chung’s completed works show legible differences between the marks made by herself and those made by the robot arms? Do “conversations” and collaborations between human creators and AI systems redefine our perceptions of creativity? How do AI systems change our engagement with cultural traditions? This talk invites you to think with these AI-infused artworks.

Gerui Wang is a Lecturer in the Department of History of Art and Visual Culture at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and at Stanford University’s Center for East Asian Studies (Spring 2024). Her research interests span arts, public policy, environment, and emerging technologies. Her book manuscript, Landscape, Governance, and Ecology in China, 1000-1400, demonstrates the overlooked ecological thinking and notions of “sustainability” manifested in flourishing landscape imagery across artistic media. Gerui’s new project examines artificial intelligence and contemporary art in Asia and its diaspora. Gerui holds a PhD in the history of art from the University of Michigan.

Unjoo Oh, “Visual Interfaces for Poetic Data: Early Modern and AI Technologies”

How might the sonnets of William Shakespeare and AI exist—or be made to exist—in symbiosis? This talk explores the mutual insights that Shakespeare’s Sonnets and AI tools (such as LLMs and text-to-image generators) offer to each other. At the intersection of textual criticism and artificial intelligence, it is possible to leverage bibliographical uncertainty and rethink the (re)presentation of Shakespeare’s poetry. Image (re)production can be newly considered in this process as a node for early modern print and generative AI. Most importantly, we can test the capabilities and biases of these models in processing poetic data and begin to construct visual interfaces that reorient literary analysis.

Unjoo Oh is a Ph.D. candidate in English at Stanford University. Her research centers around textual materiality, critical posthumanism, and digital humanities, investigating how (in)organic nonhumans affect notions of intelligence and the remediation of premodern texts. Her work has been published in Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies and the Journal of Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance English Literature. She is also a graduate coordinator of Renaissances at Stanford and an assistant editor of the Stanford Global Shakespeare Encyclopedia.

“Weaving as Coding: Complexity and Nostalgia” — Hideo Mabuchi at Critical Making Collaborative, March 4, 2024

The Critical Making Collaborative at Stanford proudly presents Hideo Mabuchi, Professor of Applied Physics and Denning Family Director of the Stanford Arts Institute, for a presentation titled “Weaving as Coding: Complexity and Nostalgia.” The presentation will take place on Monday, March 4 (12:30-2:00pm in the McMurtry Building, room 370). All are welcome!

In Hideo’s words:

Weaving as Coding: Complexity and Nostalgia

Textiles are cultural objects that organically support nested layers of coding. In this talk I’ll first illustrate what I mean by this with brief examples borrowed from papers in anthropology and media studies, and then discuss a small textile piece I recently wove on an eight-shaft table loom. My piece employs a traditional block draft (Bronson spot lace) and weft-faced weaving to mimic the appearance of a seven-segment numeral display, as can be found in common LED alarm clocks, and spells out the “calculator word” h-E-L-L-0 as the upside-down view of the digit string 07734. To complete the arc of the story I’ll offer a semantic mash-up of Boymian reflective nostalgia with the information-theoretic concept of algorithmic complexity, and argue on this basis that hand-weaving offers a rich paradigm for critical making that undermines framings of generative AI as a tool that augments human creativity.

As a quantum physicist devoted to the traditional crafts of ceramics and weaving, I live a kind of spiral between abstraction and materiality that keeps me dithering over what it means to know something. I profess this equivocation in my teaching, which increasingly looks to the humanities for help in relativizing rigorous thought and embodied understanding. The project I’ll discuss grew out of class prep for teaching APPPHYS100B “The Questions of Cloth: Weaving, Pattern Complexity, and Structures of Fabrics”, but I’ve only picked up on its critical making aspect as a result of things I learned while co-teaching ARTHIST284/484 “Material Metonymy: Ceramics and Asian America” with Marci Kwon.

Intermediations/MTL Presents: Ruth Mayer, “The ‘Girl’ in Weimar Germany,” February 22

I am very excited to be hosting Ruth Mayer, Professor of American Studies at the Leibniz Universität Hannover, for a series of events at Stanford this quarter. The Program in Modern Thought & Literature nominated her as an International Visitor at the Stanford Humanities Center, where she’ll present her current research in March. First, though, there are two events in MTL:

The Program in Modern Thought and Literature invites you to a special event: On Thursday, February 22, at 4pm in the Terrace Room (4th floor, Margaret Jacks Hall), Professor Ruth Mayer will be giving a talk titled “The ‘Girl’ in Weimar Germany: Illustrated Magazines in Trans-Atlantic Circulation.” The talk will be followed by a reception with food and drink.

Please RSVP here by Tuesday, February 20, so that we have a head-count.

The talk explores the ways in which illustrated magazines of the Weimar period act contribute to a larger gendering of transnational exchange particularly through image-text doubling and shifts. It takes the Weimar society magazine Uhu as a major reference point, investigating how it modeled itself on American lifestyle and ‘smart’ magazines and made use of the iconic figure of the ‘Girl’ to carve out a spatiotemporal continuum between ‘Amerika’ and Europe. While the Girl is a figure of the stage and screen as much as of the modern magazine, it is in the magazine that this figure comes into her own. The Girl incorporates modernity as a multimodal and multifaceted configuration much like the modern magazine itself. The talk argues that the Girl enters the illustrated magazines not only as a subject matter but also as a tool of gendered self-reflection, particularly in the work of female writers, illustrators and photographers.

Prof. Ruth Mayer holds the chair of American Studies, teaching American literature and culture from the 17th century to the present time, with a strong focus on theoretical and formal questions. Her research focuses on aspects of popular culture (particularly seriality and serialization), media history, globalization, science studies, and cultural contact. Her book Serial Fu Manchu: The Chinese Super-Villain and the Spread of Yellow Peril Ideology appeared in 2013 with Temple University Press and in 2019 she co-edited Modernities and Modernization in the United States (Winter). She is currently directing the research projects “Contingency and Contraction: Modernity and Temporality in the United States, 1880-1920″ and “Multiplication: Modernity, Mass Culture, Gender.” The Program in Modern Thought and Literature is currently hosting Prof. Mayer as an International Visitor at the Stanford Humanities Center.

In addition to the talk on 2/22, Prof. Mayer will also be holding a workshop session for grad students on the following day, 2/23, from 11am-2pm in the Terrace Room. Lunch will be served.

“Mimetic Virtualities” — Yvette Granata at Digital Aesthetics Workshop, February 6, 2024

Please join us for the next Digital Aesthetics Workshop, when we will welcome Yvette Granata for her talk on “Mimetic Virtualities: Rendering the Masses and/or Feminist Media Art?” on February 6, 5-7pm PT. The event will take place in the Stanford Humanities Center Board Room, where refreshments will be served. Below you will find the abstract and bio attached, as well as a poster for lightweight circulation. We look forward to seeing you there!

Zoom link for those unable to join in-person: tinyurl.com/2r285898

Abstract:

From stolen election narratives to Q-anon cults, the politics of the 21st century are steeped in the mainstreaming of disinformation and the hard-core pursuit of false realities via any media necessary. Simultaneously, the 21st century marks the rise of virtual reality as a mass media. While spatial computing technologies behind virtual reality graphics and head-mounted displays have been in development since the middle of the 20th century, virtual reality as a mass media is a phenomenon of the last decade. Concurrently with the development of VR as a mass media, the tools of virtual production have proliferated – such as motion capture libraries, 3D model and animation platforms, and game engine tools. Does the pursuit of false realities and the proliferation of virtual reality technologies have anything to do with each other? Has virtual reality as a mass medium shaped the aesthetics of the digital masses differently? Looking to the manner in which virtual mimesis operates via rendering methods of the image of crowds, from 2D neural GAN generators to the recent development of neural radiance fields (NERFs) as a form of mass 3D rendering, I analyze the politics and aesthetics of mimetic virtualities as both a process of rendering of the masses and as a process of the distribution of the sensibility of virtualized bodies. Lastly, I present all of the above via feminist media art practice as a critical, creative method.

Bio:

Yvette Granata is a media artist, filmmaker, and digital media scholar. She is Assistant Professor at University of Michigan in the department of Film, Television and Media and the Digital Studies Institute. She creates immersive installations, video art, VR experiences, and interactive environments, and writes about digital culture, media art, and media theory. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at film festivals and art institutions including, Slamdance, CPH:DOX, The Melbourne International Film Festival, The Annecy International Animation Festival, Images Festival, Harvard Carpenter Center for the Arts, The EYE Film Museum, McDonough Museum of Art, and Hallwalls Contemporary Art, among others. Her most recent VR project, I Took a Lethal Dose of Herbs, premiered at CPH:DOX in 2023, won best VR film at the Cannes World Film Awards, and received an Honorable Mention at Prix Ars Electronica in Linz Austria. Yvette has also published in Ctrl-Z: New Media Philosophy, Trace Journal, NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies, International Journal of Cultural Studies and AI & Society. She lives in Detroit.

Intermediations/MTL Presents: Mediation Between the Lines — January 29, 2024

On Monday, January 29, 2024 (6pm in the Terrace Room, 4th floor of Margaret Jacks Hall), four PhD students will present talks originally given at the 2023 Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts (SLSA) conference: Danielle Adair (Theater & Performance Studies), Hank Gerba (Film & Media Studies/Art History), Grace Han (Film & Media Studies/Art History), and Kola Heyward-Rotimi (Modern Thought & Literature).

The panel, entitled “Mediation Between the Lines,” will be accompanied by some finger food and refreshments. Please RSVP here so that we have an idea of how many to expect.

Intermediations/MTL Presents: Celine Parreñas Shimizu on “Crafting Oneself in Community: Theory, Practice, and the Interdisciplinary PhD”

On Thursday, 1/25, from 5-7pm in the Terrace Room, MTL alumna Celine Shimizu (’01) will be returning to Stanford to give a presentation, “Crafting Oneself in Community: Theory, Practice, and the Interdisciplinary Ph.D.” Prof. Shimizu’s presentation will be followed by a conversation with Prof. Shane Denson, as well as a Q&A. Light food and refreshments will be provided. Please RSVP here if you plan to attend so that we have a rough headcount.

Prof. Shimizu is a film scholar and filmmaker, as well as Dean of the Division of the Arts and Distinguished Professor of Film and Media at the University of California at Santa Cruz. She wrote The Proximity of Other Skins (2020), Straitjacket Sexualities (2012), and The Hypersexuality of Race (2007) and co-edited The Feminist Porn Book (2013) and The Unwatchability of Whiteness (2018). Her new book The Movies of Racial Childhoods: Screening Self-Sovereignty in Asian / America, is forthcoming from Duke University Press.

Her numerous peer-reviewed articles appear in top journals in the fields of cinema, performance, ethnic, feminist, sexuality studies, and transnational popular culture in Asia and Asian America. She is formerly Associate Editor of Gay and Lesbian Quarterly (GLQ), founding USA editor of Asian Diasporas and Visual Cultures of the Americas and Associate Editor of Women Studies International Forum. Her latest film 80 Years Later (2022) screened in over 50 film festivals and won 15 awards including for best historical documentary and excellence in directing. Her previous film The Celine Archive (2020) won several festival awards and both are distributed by Women Make Movies and available on demand via wmm.com.

“Marx After Simondon” — Bryan Norton at Digital Aesthetics Workshop, Jan. 30, 2024

Happy New Year! For our first Digital Aesthetics workshop of 2024, please join us in welcoming Bryan Norton, who will present on “Marx after Simondon: Metabolic Rift and the Analog of Computation” on January 30, 5-7PM PT. The event will take place in the Stanford Humanities Center Watt Dining Room, where refreshments will be served. Below you will find the abstract and bio. We look forward to seeing you there!

Zoom link for those unable to join in-person: tinyurl.com/s8248e2e

Abstract:

A growing number of scholars have recently urged a return to German Idealism to account for the relationship between computation and cognition. This paper will elucidate this trend by tracing the centrality of analogy in theories of computation back to the unstable formalization of the concept in Immanuel Kant’s epistemology. While Kant viewed analogy as a cognitive operation capable of revealing hidden similarities between life and thought, analogy also leads humans to seek false connections between biology and geology. This divide Kant creates between life, cognition, and geological process has drastic consequences for how we consider twentieth century analogies between cognition and computation, as Gilbert Simondon has noted. Turning ultimately to recent artwork that addresses the role of geology in digital infrastructures, this paper seeks to highlight the ongoing relevance of Marx’s notion of metabolic rift for theories of computation, as it presents a post-Kantian synthesis of geology, biology, and cognition.

Bio:

Bryan Norton is a Mellon Fellow in the Humanities at Stanford University and Lecturer in the Department of German Studies. He is the editor of a forthcoming volume, Negentropy and the Future of the Digital (with Mark Hansen), and is completing a monograph on media and the environment in German romantic philosophy and poetry, titled Planetary Idealism. A preview of this book, “Novalis and Simondon: Notes for a Romantic Mechanology,” is forthcoming from SubStance. Other recent writings can be found in Cultural Politics, Philosophical Salon, and the Journal of Visual Culture.

“Harvesting Light” — Thomas Lamarre at Digital Aesthetics Workshop, Dec. 5, 2023

For our last Digital Aesthetics workshop of Fall 2023, please join us in welcoming Thomas Lamarre, who will present on “Harvesting Light” on December 5, 5-7PM PT. The event will take place in the Stanford Humanities Center Watt Dining Room, where refreshments will be served. Please find the abstract and bio below. We look forward to seeing you there!

Zoom link for those unable to join in-person: tinyurl.com/mrxahnbe

Abstract:

Discussions of environmental media tend, as if ineluctably, to introduce a rigid divide between economy and ecology, with infrastructures, markets, and geopolitical forces on one side of destruction, while ecology implies an utterly different, highly vulnerable set of processes. This talk aims to reconsider some of these seemingly insuperable divides through a focus on artificial photosynthesis, which often described as a form of bioinspiration, biomimicry, or homeotechnology. Part of what is interesting about artificial photosynthesis is that it tentatively blurs and contests the distinction between artificial and natural. It thus encourages a rethinking of the production of value in terms of a systematicity that does not rely on a strict divide between economy and ecology. Here I propose to explore the production of value by opening a dialogue between artificial photosynthesis and some recent thinkers of environmental Marxism such as Jason Moore and Saitō Kōhei. In this way, I hope also to reconsider what media studies has to offer environmental studies in an era of anthropogenetic climate change.

Bio:

Thomas Lamarre teaches in the departments of Cinema and Media Studies and East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. Publications on media, thought, and material history include work on communication networks in 9thcentury Japan (Uncovering Heian Japan, 2000); silent cinema and the global imaginary (Shadows on the Screen, 2005); animation technologies (The Anime Machine, 2009) and infrastructure ecologies (The Anime Ecology, 2018). Major translations include Kawamata Chiaki’s Death Sentences (2012), Muriel Combes’s Gilbert Simondon and the Philosophy of the Transindividual (2012), David Lapoujade’s William James, Empiricism, and Pragmatism (2019), and Isabelle Stengers’s Making Sense in Common (2023).

“My Life as an Artificial Creative Intelligence: A Speculative Fiction” — Mark Amerika, Dept of Art & Art History, Nov. 29, 2023

In this artist talk, Mark Amerika shares his creative process as a digital artist whose symbiotic relationship with both language and diffusion models informs his artistic and theoretical pursuits. Turning to his most recent book, My Life as an Artificial Creative Intelligence (Stanford University Press) and his just-released art project, Posthuman Cinema, Amerika will demonstrate, through personal narrative and theoretical asides, how different rhetorical uses of language can transform AI into a camera, a fiction writer, a poet and a philosopher.

Throughout the performance, Amerika will ask us to consider at what point a language artist becomes a language model and vice-versa. He will also question what new skills artists will have to develop as they co-evolve in a creative work environment where one must maintain a playful and dynamic relationship with the rapid technical maneuvering of the machinic Other. Will a more robust, intuitive yet interdependent relationship with AI models require artists to fine-tune what Amerika refers to as a cosmotechnical skill, one that is at once imaginative and indeterminate, playful and profound, grounded yet otherworldly in its aesthetic becoming? And how do we teach this skill at both the undergraduate and graduate level?

Borrowing from Beatnik poets and jazz musicians alike, Amerika suggests that a continuous call-and-response improvisational jam session with AI models may unlock personal insights that reveal how one’s own unconscious neural mechanism acts (performs) like a Meta Remix Engine. Engaging with other artists and writers who have tapped into their creative spontaneity as a primary research methodology, Amerika will discuss how digital artists can train themselves to intuitively select and defamiliarize datum for aesthetic effect. In so doing, Amerika suggests that this is how an artist connects with their own alien intelligence, a mediumistic sensibility that takes them out of their anthropocentric stronghold and invites them to reimagine what it means to be creative across the human-nonhuman spectrum.

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Mark Amerika has exhibited his art in many venues including the Whitney Biennial, the Denver Art Museum, ZKM, the Walker Art Center, and the American Museum of the Moving Image. His solo exhibitions have appeared all over the world including at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, the University of Hawaii Art Galleries, the Marlborough Gallery in Barcelona and the Norwegian Embassy in Havana.

Amerika has had five early and/or mid-career retrospectives including the first two Internet art retrospectives ever produced (Tokyo and London). In 2009-2010, The National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens, Greece, featured Amerika’s comprehensive retrospective exhibition entitled UNREALTIME. The exhibition included his groundbreaking works of Internet art GRAMMATRON and FILMTEXT as well as his feature-length work of mobile cinema, Immobilité. In 2012, Amerika released his large-scale transmedia narrative, Museum of Glitch Aesthetics (MOGA), a multi-platform net artwork commissioned by Abandon Normal Devices in conjunction with the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. His public art project, Glitch TV, was featured at the opening of the “video towers” at Denver International Airport.

He is the author of thirteen books including My Life as an Artificial Creative Intelligence, the inaugural title in the “Sensing Media” series published in 2022 by Stanford University Press.

See here for more information.