Monday, June 8, 2015 - Applications are now open for This time with FEELing - SPACE’s 2015/2016 residency cycle hosted in the mixed collaborative studio at The White Building, Hackney Wick. The human body is commonly accepted as the primary site of subjectivity, empathy and affective subcortical processes. However, with the pervasive and increasingly commercial development of Affective Computing and related prosthetic tracking technologies, the narrative of the breakdown of the putative boundary between human and the machine is recast into the popular imagination once again – this time pulling focus on algorithmic affect. MIT lab faculty Rosalin Picard’s Affdex – a webcam based system that detects “the emotional connection between people and brands” – is a case in point and points towards the assumption that emotion detection is a fast track to the limbic system positioned at the nexus of both our cognitive and lived experience. The growing integration and popular understanding of the nuances of sociotechnical systems disrupts the old binary of the technological “artificial” versus the authentically “natural” human experience. The This time with FEELing residency takes a critical approach to this boundary raiding and questions the commercial drive towards the naturalizing and subsumption of technologies that enable the trading in and simulating of algorithmic emotional capital. The residency and associated public programme also seeks to interrogate the socio-political implications and skewed values of “trust” and “community” orchestrated through the re-articulation of new, hybrid assemblages governed by the iterative co-deployment of socially “relevant” allegorical scripts and software-mediated algorithms. Submissions are welcomed from emerging artists, creative technologists and hybrid practitioners whose work engages with or responds to this provocation.
Deadline for applications: Monday June 15, 5pm GMT
Application forms, FAQ & Details
HERE.
