Happening @ Michigan https://events.umich.edu/list/rss RSS Feed for Happening @ Michigan Events at the University of Michigan. DSI & DISCO Network Book Talk | Discriminating Data: Wendy Chun in Conversation with Lisa Nakamura (December 6, 2021 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/89099 89099-21660478@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, December 6, 2021 12:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Digital Studies Institute

In Discriminating Data, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun reveals how polarization is a goal—not an error—within big data and machine learning. These methods, she argues, encode segregation, eugenics, and identity politics through their default assumptions and conditions. Correlation, which grounds big data's predictive potential, stems from twentieth-century eugenic attempts to “breed” a better future. Recommender systems foster angry clusters of sameness through homophily. Users are “trained” to become authentically predictable via a politics and technology of recognition. Machine learning and data analytics thus seek to disrupt the future by making disruption impossible.

Wendy Hui Kyong Chun is Simon Fraser University’s Canada 150 Research Chair in New Media and leads the Digital Democracies Institute. She is the author of several works including Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics (MIT, 2006), Programmed Visions: Software and Memory (MIT, 2011), Updating to Remain the Same: Habitual New Media (MIT, 2016), Discriminating Data (MIT, 2021), and the co-author of Pattern Discrimination (University of Minnesota & Meson Press, 2019). She has been Professor and Chair of the Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University, where she worked for almost two decades. She has also been a Visiting Scholar at the Annenberg School at the University of Pennsylvania, Member of the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), and she has held fellowships from: the Guggenheim, ACLS, American Academy of Berlin, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard.

Lisa Nakamura is the Gwendolyn Calvert Baker Collegiate Professor of American Culture and Digital Studies at the University of Michigan. She is the author of several books on race, gender, and the Internet. She is the founding Director of the Digital Studies Institute at the University of Michigan and the Lead P.I. for the DISCO (Digital Inquiry, Speculation, Collaboration and Optimism) Network (disconetwork.org).

Please register in advance for this zoom webinar here: https://bit.ly/3bVf65j.

We want to make our events accessible to all participants. This online meeting will have live, automated captions. If you anticipate needing accommodations to participate, please contact ericcman@umich.edu Please note that some accommodations must be arranged in advance and we encourage you to contact us as soon as possible.

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Livestream / Virtual Wed, 17 Nov 2021 12:15:37 -0500 2021-12-06T12:00:00-05:00 2021-12-06T13:30:00-05:00 Off Campus Location Digital Studies Institute Livestream / Virtual chun
Welcome to the Indigenous Future (December 9, 2021 3:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/89388 89388-21664061@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, December 9, 2021 3:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Digital Studies Institute

A Digital Studies Institute panel discussion, co-presented by the University of Michigan and the Consulate General of Canada

The logic of so-called "technological evolution" categorizes innovations into binaries of Old/Defunct and New/Good, without a fluid understanding of time, influence, or use. Likewise, settler cultural studies compartmentalize indigenous peoples and practices as outside of the present time and space. This panel discussion taps into growing movements around the discussion of indigenous technologies and indigenous futures (itself a nod to Afrofuturism), taking a more expansive view of the holistic relationship between people and technologies. The panelists are coders, artists, and theorists who investigate not only the history but also the present and future of indigenous technologies, as well as the language and methodologies used to study them.

Presenters include:

- Amelia Winger-Bearskin, Banks Preeminence Chair and Associate Professor of Artificial Intelligence and the Arts, University of Florida, Digital Worlds Institute;
- Ron Eglash, Professor of Information, School of Information and Professor of Art and Design, Penny W Stamps School of Art and Design, University of Michigan;
- Jason Edward Lewis, University Research Chair in Computational Media and the Indigenous Future Imaginary at Concordia University;

Moderated by DSI Executive Director Marisa Olson, with opening remarks from the Consulate General of Canada.

Live Captioning will be provided.

Register here: https://bit.ly/3rvri5H

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Livestream / Virtual Thu, 02 Dec 2021 14:19:39 -0500 2021-12-09T15:00:00-05:00 2021-12-09T16:30:00-05:00 Off Campus Location Digital Studies Institute Livestream / Virtual indigenous
Applied Trans Technology Studies (January 22, 2022 1:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/88815 88815-21658548@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Saturday, January 22, 2022 1:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Digital Studies Institute

The Center for Applied Transgender Studies is proud to host its first virtual symposium, co-organized by Senior Fellows Oliver Haimson, Alex Hanna, and Anna Lauren Hoffmann and co-sponsored by:

Northwestern University (NU) Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing,

University of Michigan (UM) School of Information,

UM Digital Studies Institute,

UM Institute for Research on Women and Gender,

NU PhD in Technology and Social Behavior,

The Sexualities Project at Northwestern, and

NU Gender and Sexuality Studies Program.

This event highlights existing and emergent connections between applied trans studies and the critical and cultural study of technological design, development, application and use—especially in the domains of digital studies and critical data studies. Importantly, the event conceives of these connections as multifaceted and multidirectional. Rather than merely identifying trans lives and subjects within the existing matrices of study, we ask how the precepts and commitments of an applied trans studies challenges how we think about and understand data and digital technologies today.

SESSION 1: Applied Trans Studies X Critical Data Studies

In this session, we will hear from scholars on entanglements of gender, surveillance, and data technologies—in particular, computational techniques predicated on capturing, classifying, labeling, sorting, bounding, optimizing, and visualizing data in various contexts. Particular concern will be paid to the practical and material effects of these processes on trans lives and livelihoods, as well as the ways trans subjects make evident the assumptions of organizing logics of machine learning, artificial intelligence, and beyond.

Moderator: Alex Hanna (Google)

Panelists: Avery Everhart (University of Southern California), Jack Gieseking (University of Kentucky), Mar Hicks (Illinois Institute of Technology), Morgan Klaus Scheuerman (University of Colorado, Boulder), and Nikki Stevens (Dartmouth College)

KEYNOTE: How To Stuff a Wild Duck: Configurations of Transness in Corporate Computing

In this keynote, we will hear from Dr Cassius Adair (University of Minnesota), who will bring us closer to a trans history of computing through an analysis of IBM.

SESSION 2: Applied Trans Studies X Digital Studies

In this session, we will hear from scholars who work at the intersection of applied trans studies and digital studies. We will explore the past, present, and future of trans technologies like apps, social media sites, health resources, games, and internet forums to understand some ways digital technologies do and can help to address challenges faced by trans people and communities.

Moderator: Oliver Haimson (University of Michigan)

Panelists: Alex Ahmed (Carnegie Mellon University), Moya Bailey (Northwestern University), Tee Chuanromanee (University of Notre Dame), Avery Dame-Griff (Washington State University, Pullman), and Whit Pow (New York University)

Register here:http://bit.ly/CATS003

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Livestream / Virtual Thu, 16 Dec 2021 11:17:19 -0500 2022-01-22T13:00:00-05:00 2022-01-22T17:00:00-05:00 Off Campus Location Digital Studies Institute Livestream / Virtual applied
DSI Book Talk with Anna Watkins Fisher & Kris Cohen (January 25, 2022 3:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/90651 90651-21672073@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, January 25, 2022 3:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Digital Studies Institute

Safety Orange first emerged in the 1950s as a bureaucratic color standard in technical manuals and federal regulations in the United States. Today it is most visible in the contexts of terror, pandemic, and environmental alarm systems; traffic control; work safety; and mass incarceration. In recent decades, the color has become ubiquitous in American public life—a marker of the extreme poles of state oversight and abandonment, of capitalist excess and dereliction. Its unprecedented saturation encodes the tracking of those bodies, neighborhoods, and infrastructures judged as worthy of care—and those deemed dangerous and expendable. This talk takes up Safety Orange as an interpretive key for theorizing the uneven distribution of safety and care in twenty-first-century U.S. public life and for pondering what the color tells us about neoliberalism’s intensifying impact often hiding in plain sight in ordinary and commonplace phenomena.

Anna Watkins Fisher, author of Safety Orange (Minnesota, Dec 2021), Digital Studies Institute faculty member, and Associate Professor of American Culture at the University of Michigan, is a cultural and media theorist whose research spans the fields of digital studies, performance studies, visual culture, environmental humanities, and critical theory. Her first book, The Play in the System: The Art of Parasitical Resistance (Duke University Press, 2020), explores what artistic resistance looks like in the 21st century when disruption and dissent can be easily co-opted and commodified. Her essays have appeared in such venues as Journal of Visual Culture, Social Text, Discourse, WSQ (Women's Studies Quarterly), MIRAJ, and TDR/The Drama Review. She is the co-editor with Wendy Hui Kyong Chun of the 2nd edition of New Media, Old Media: A History and Theory Reader (Routledge, 2015). She's also a founding member of the digital research collective Precarity Lab; the collective's manifesto, Technoprecarious, was published by Goldsmiths/MIT Press in 2020. She co-leads the Critical Futures Project, a research collective based at the University of Michigan that explores theoretical approaches for addressing the new urgency of climate change under digital and racial capitalism.

Respondent Kris Cohen is an associate professor of Art History and Humanities at Reed College. He works on the relationship between art, economy, and media technologies, focusing especially on the aesthetics of collective life. His first book, Never Alone, Except for Now: Networked Life between Populations and Publics (Duke University Press, 2017), looks at the art of Thomson & Craighead, Sharon Hayes, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres, artists who straddle the border between image culture and network culture, between a logic of spectacle and a logic of networks. His second book manuscript, The Human in Bits, is a study of how and why artists working out a non-representational politics of Blackness have engaged a history of the pixel and the raster of the graphical computer screen or graphic user interface (GUI), expanding that history beyond the confines of a liberal, post-racial politics that sought to recuperate whiteness as a part of a multicultural national social matrix.

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Livestream / Virtual Wed, 19 Jan 2022 13:59:07 -0500 2022-01-25T15:00:00-05:00 2022-01-25T16:00:00-05:00 Off Campus Location Digital Studies Institute Livestream / Virtual safety
Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow in the Metaverse Panel (February 17, 2022 1:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/90653 90653-21672075@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, February 17, 2022 1:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Digital Studies Institute

This panel convenes a group of leading international artists and curators working in online spaces in a variety of modalities, including net art, video/animation, game development, VR, XR and the NFT-adjacent art community. The speakers will briefly introduce their own practice and participate in a roundtable discussion that reflects critically on the present concept of the "metaverse," from creative, art historical, and socio-politically-informed perspectives. The conversation will seek to chip away at some of the hype and corporately co-opted buzzwords clouding the present discourse in order to underscore some important legacies and trace a path for the trajectory of the most compelling work in the metaverse.

Panelists:
LaTurbo Avedon, Artist/Avatar
Yvette Granata, Artist, Digital Studies Institute faculty, Assistant Professor, Dept of Film, TV & Media, University of Michigan
Auriea Harvey, Artist, Professor of Games, Kunsthochschule Kassel
Tina Sauerlaender, Director & Head Curator, Peer to Space
Moderator: Marisa Olson, Artist, Executive Director, Digital Studies Institute

*Live captioning (CART) will be provided. Please let us know if you have any additional access needs, at dsi-administration@umich.edu.

Zoom Link: https://umich.zoom.us/j/92670896264?pwd=QnNNRXdTeUx0WXg0SkNPMkZBVUtzUT09

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Livestream / Virtual Thu, 17 Feb 2022 13:06:53 -0500 2022-02-17T13:00:00-05:00 2022-02-17T14:30:00-05:00 Off Campus Location Digital Studies Institute Livestream / Virtual metaverse
The New Space Race in Context Panel (March 10, 2022 3:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/90655 90655-21672076@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, March 10, 2022 3:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Digital Studies Institute

News of the new space race has been abundant on both mainstream news and social media over the last year. While Billionaire Space Race content and “to the moon“ memes have entertained audiences, there’s a deeper context to unpack with regard to the relationship between aerospace technology and social justice issues.

Three interdisciplinary panelists will explore what's motivating these new developments and bring historical context to their present-day political, environmental, and cultural implications. What are the ethics of Space Studies? Will the widening aeronautics industry reproduce the fraught labor issues of Silicon Valley? Beyond the fun of playing out sci-fi fantasies in real time, are we also activating the tropes of colonialism and xenophobia associated with space travel and development narratives?

Panelists:

Timiebi Aganaba-Jeanty, Asst Prof, School for the Future of Innovation in Society and the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law; Founder, Space Governance Lab and Project Lead, Space Advisory at the Interplanetary Initiative, Arizona State University

Frederick Scharmen, Assoc Professor, School of Architecture and Planning, Morgan State University; Author of Space Forces: A Critical History of Life in Outer Space (Verso, 2021)

Danielle R. Wood, Asst Prof of Research in Education, Program in Media Arts & Sciences and Department of Aeronautics & Astronautics; Director: Space Enabled Research Group, MIT Media Lab; Faculty Advisor: African and African Diaspora Studies, MIT

Moderator: Marisa Olson, Executive Director, Digital Studies Institute, University of Michigan

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Livestream / Virtual Wed, 02 Mar 2022 15:18:16 -0500 2022-03-10T15:00:00-05:00 2022-03-10T16:30:00-05:00 Off Campus Location Digital Studies Institute Livestream / Virtual image
Imaginative Activism of Digital Citizens Symposium (March 24, 2022 10:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/90657 90657-21672078@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, March 24, 2022 10:00am
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Digital Studies Institute

This symposium is a collaboration between the University of Michigan’s professor of Art & Design and Digital Studies Irina Aristarkhova and UCLA’s Slavist and curator Dr. Sasha Razor. It is focused on events that took place during the summer of 2020 in Belarus, bringing them into a broader discussion around digital citizenship, activism, and the new emerging scholarship. The symposium aims to introduce new concepts and approaches to imaginative activism, grounded in critical digital studies, feminist and new media theory, digital curation, contemporary art history, and information studies, in addition to the study of democracy and the Eastern European region.

Description: In the summer of 2020, many countries experienced protests against police violence and demanded democratic social change. A small country in Eastern Europe - Belarus - became one of the centers of global activism. Activists, IT professionals, artists, designers and neighbors teamed up to coordinate, connect, and amplify their work on digital platforms, such as Telegram, Instagram and Youtube, to overthrow the dictatorial regime. They created visual representation and identity of a social movement that now exists largely in digital formats and often made for digital platforms that themselves could be compromised and used against them. What is the role of scholars and librarians who study citizen activism, contemporary art and digital culture? What kind of new questions and solutions are posed by today’s digital citizens? Reimagining what these tools enable and how they can be used, and researching new forms of “imaginative activism,” are the primary goals of this interdisciplinary symposium and the digital exhibition curated by Sasha Razor at Michigan Libraries.

Symposium Program

PART 1 (10am-12pm)
"Digital Activism Roundtable of Artists,
Designers and Cyber-activists"
Yuliana Shemetovets
Andrew Maximov
Yanina Sazanovich
Maxim Tyminko
Anastasia Kostyugova
Moderated by Sasha Razor

PART 2 (1-2:45pm)
"Digital Citizenship and
Its Scholarly Discontents" Panel
Irina Aristarkhova
Fee Christoph
and Kendra Eaton
Elena Gapova
Georgy Mamedov
Moderated by Mikhail Krutikov

PART 3 (3-4pm)
Librarian Roundtable: "Saving the Future,
Archiving Digital Content"
Brendan Nieubuurt
Jamie Vander Broek
Anne Cong-Huyen
Anna Rakityanskaya
Moderated by Igor Pilshchikov

PART 4 (4:15-5:15pm)
Exhibition Launch: "The Code of Presence: Belarusian Protest Embroideries and Textile Patterns"
Rufina Bazlova
Lesia Pcholka
Daria Sazanovich
Yuliya Tsviatkova
Discussant: Alisa Lozhkina
Exhibition Curator and Moderator: Sasha Razor


Register for the Zoom Link here: https://umich.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJcpfuCspj0oEtzVzusHe2MCx64QCDmp7rCR

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Conference / Symposium Tue, 22 Mar 2022 14:37:18 -0400 2022-03-24T10:00:00-04:00 2022-03-24T17:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Digital Studies Institute Conference / Symposium
Amplify: DSI Student Showcase (April 13, 2022 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/94456 94456-21739822@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, April 13, 2022 4:00pm
Location: Michigan League
Organized By: Digital Studies Institute

Are you curious about virtual reality or glitch art? Do you want to learn more about online privacy and feminist approaches to digital aggression? Come to the DSI Student Showcase! We invite you to engage with interactive creative installations and research posters that think about these questions and more. Prizes will be awarded for outstanding student research projects and creative innovation in digital studies.

Refreshments and snacks will be provided.

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Exhibition Fri, 08 Apr 2022 09:54:26 -0400 2022-04-13T16:00:00-04:00 2022-04-13T17:30:00-04:00 Michigan League Digital Studies Institute Exhibition Amplify
Crip Mentoring, Access Advocacy, & the Job Market (April 15, 2022 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/94174 94174-21723573@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, April 15, 2022 12:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Digital Studies Institute

Learn from emerging scholars about navigating interdisciplinary work as a new faculty member, how to think through disability disclosure and pandemic burnout, as well as advice about access advocacy and crip mentoring.

Panelists:
Dr. Sara M. Acevedo, Assistant Professor in Disability Studies (She/her)
Dr. Acevedo is an Autistic Mestiza educator and scholar-activist born and raised in Colombia. Her work her work is grounded in anti-racist, anti-ableist, decolonial, anti-capitalist, disability justice praxis.
Crystal Yin Lie, Assistant Professor at California State University Long Beach (she/her/hers)
Crystal Yin Lie received her PhD in English Language & Literature with a graduate certificate in Science, Technology, & Society from the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor. Her research and teaching interests lie at the intersections of disability studies, contemporary literature, and visual culture. She is working toward a book project on women’s life writing on dementia and the memory of historical trauma. She currently teaches courses in Health Humanities, Literature & Medicine, and Comics & Graphic Narratives.
Vyshali Manivannan, Lecturer of Writing Studies and Director of the Pleasantville Writing-Enhanced Courses Program, Dept. of Writing & Cultural Studies at Pace University - Pleasantville (she/her/hers)
Vyshali Manivannan is an interdisciplinary creative-critical scholar who has written extensively about the experience of non-apparent chronic pain and about the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka. Her scholarship has appeared in publications such as the Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics, Digital Health, Fibreculture, and Enculturation, and her creative work has been featured in literary journals like Fourth Genre, The Paris Review, Consequence, and Black Clock. She serves as a Writing Studies Lecturer at Pace University and is a Ph.D. candidate in Journalism and Media Studies at Rutgers University. She also holds an M.F.A. in Fiction from Columbia University and a B.A. in English from Dartmouth College.
Rua M. Williams, Assistant Professor Purdue University (They/Them)
Rua M. Williams is an Assistant Professor in the User Experience Design program at Purdue University. They study interactions between technology design, computing research practices, and Disability Justice. Common approaches to technology and service design for marginalized people tend to naturalize existing inequities, exacerbating injustice even while they attempt to ameliorate it. Dr. Williams deploys Feminist and Anti-Racist approaches to Technoscience, Critical disability Studies, and Science and Technology Studies in the design and evaluation of technological systems to simultaneously illustrate injustice in technology as well as marginalized users’ own practices of resistance through those same technologies.

Accessibility: CART will be provided. Reach out to ericcman@umich.edu for questions about accommodations.

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Livestream / Virtual Wed, 30 Mar 2022 08:57:33 -0400 2022-04-15T12:00:00-04:00 2022-04-15T13:30:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Digital Studies Institute Livestream / Virtual crip
DSI Decompress Day (April 26, 2022 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/94521 94521-21747489@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, April 26, 2022 12:00pm
Location: Mason Hall
Organized By: Digital Studies Institute

DSI Minors and interested students are invited to decompress after a long academic year in the DSI lounge from 12-3pm.

We will include:

-Pugs (yes, the dog)
- Donuts & other treats
- Board games
- Nintendo Switch

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Social / Informal Gathering Wed, 13 Apr 2022 11:23:07 -0400 2022-04-26T12:00:00-04:00 2022-04-26T15:00:00-04:00 Mason Hall Digital Studies Institute Social / Informal Gathering decompress
Designing AI 4 Black Diaspora (May 12, 2022 1:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/95089 95089-21788457@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, May 12, 2022 1:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Digital Studies Institute

Designing AI for the Black Diaspora seeks to transcend disciplinary boundaries in which the artistic, mathematical, scientific, and legal are dichotomized and hierarchized for academic conventions to instantiate a fluid digital practice for socially just technological design.

This virtual symposium is an open-ended series of conversations prompting black creatives, legal workers, researchers, and academics to collectively imagine the many modes in which social justice can take place through the use of algorithms, data, and AI.

Registration Link: https://www.ai4bdiaspora.com/rsvp

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Livestream / Virtual Wed, 11 May 2022 10:05:39 -0400 2022-05-12T13:00:00-04:00 2022-05-12T14:15:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Digital Studies Institute Livestream / Virtual ai
DISCO Graduate Scholar Lightning Talks (May 23, 2022 10:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/93211 93211-21701538@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, May 23, 2022 10:00am
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Digital Studies Institute

Each DISCO Graduate Scholar will give a “lightning talk” on their research affiliated with their DISCO Network lab.

The DISCO Graduate Scholars Program is designed for graduate student researchers committed to developing interdisciplinary work in collaboration with our Co-Principal Investigators and postdoctoral fellows.

We want to make our events accessible to all participants. This online event will have CART and provided. If you anticipate needing accommodations to participate, please contact our administrative assistant Eric (ericcman@umich.edu) or fill out our anonymous access form. Please note that some accommodations must be arranged in advance and we encourage you to contact us as soon as possible.

Registration: https://umich.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0kdOqqrTsrHtQIv1KO7wVjfZNIgK_LR-Tn

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Livestream / Virtual Tue, 19 Apr 2022 15:08:04 -0400 2022-05-23T10:00:00-04:00 2022-05-23T12:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Digital Studies Institute Livestream / Virtual summer
DISCO Super Panel: Futures of Race, Gender, Disability, & Technology (May 23, 2022 1:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/93212 93212-21701539@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, May 23, 2022 1:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Digital Studies Institute

DISCO Super Panel: Futures of Race, Gender, Disability, & Technology
DISCO Network Co-Principal Investigators Lisa Nakamura, Rayvon Fouché, Remi Yergeau, André Brock, Stephanie Dinkins, and Catherine Knight Steele will come together in a panel discussion to address current trends and challenges relating to race, gender, disability, and technology, and to address the importance of building a network of scholars and technologists examining these intersections.

We want to make our events accessible to all participants. This online event will have CART and provided. If you anticipate needing accommodations to participate, please contact our administrative assistant Eric (ericcman@umich.edu) or fill out our anonymous access form. Please note that some accommodations must be arranged in advance and we encourage you to contact us as soon as possible.

Registration: https://umich.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_QzNmA_nJT16D6odTiGyhMw

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Livestream / Virtual Tue, 19 Apr 2022 15:08:32 -0400 2022-05-23T13:00:00-04:00 2022-05-23T14:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Digital Studies Institute Livestream / Virtual summer
DISCO Network Lecture Series | Racial Replication: Michelle N. Huang in Conversation with Lisa Nakamura and Huan He (October 20, 2022 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/97625 97625-21794842@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, October 20, 2022 4:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Digital Studies Institute

Asiatic interchangeability is made, not born. In her talk, Michelle N. Huang discusses how dystopian clone narratives challenge notions of individual racialized identity at both the genetic and generic levels. Drawing on Saidiya Hartman’s concept of racial fungibility, Huang will examine Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (2005) and Larissa Lai’s Salt Fish Girl (2002) to trace how Asian American interchangeability is produced through reproductive control as well as an economy of character. In rearticulating, rather than rejecting, notions of shared subjectivity, hivemind, and fellow feeling, Asiatic clones ask for experimental alternatives to the ethnic bildungsroman and demonstrate the novel form itself to be a racialized technology of identity.

Michelle N. Huang is an Assistant Professor of English and Asian American Studies at Northwestern University. She has research and teaching interests in contemporary Asian American literature, posthumanism, and feminist science studies. Her current project, Molecular Race, examines posthumanist aesthetics in post-1965 Asian American literature to trace racial representation and epistemology at nonhuman, minute scales. Molecular Race argues that a rapprochement with scientific discourse is necessary to fully grasp how the formal and aesthetic qualities of Asian American literature unsettle sedimented structures of racial formation.

Michelle’s work appears in American Literature, Contemporary Literature, Twentieth-Century Literature, Journal of Asian American Studies, Amerasia, and Post 45: Contemporaries, among other venues. Her film essay, INHUMAN FIGURES: Robots, Clones, and Aliens can be viewed online at the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center website.

Lisa Nakamura is the Gwendolyn Calvert Baker Collegiate Professor of American Culture and Digital Studies at the University of Michigan. She is the author of several books on race, gender, and the Internet. She is the founding Director of the Digital Studies Institute at the University of Michigan and the Lead P.I. for the DISCO (Digital Inquiry, Speculation, Collaboration and Optimism) Network (disconetwork.org).

Huan He is a Curriculum Development Fellow at the DISCO Network Michigan Hub and holds a PhD in American Studies and Ethnicity from the University of Southern California. Most broadly, his research engages Asian/American literature and culture, histories of media and technology, visual culture, digital game studies, and poetics. His book project, currently titled, “The Racial Interface,” explores the racial associations linking Asian/Americans and information technology in the digital era. Drawing from literature, art, and archival sources, this project reveals how myths of racial and technological progress converge in the shadow of U.S. liberal capitalism. He foregrounds minoritarian writers and artists who challenge the dominant technological imaginaries shaping the digital present. He is also interested in the relationship between race, gaming, cheating, and scams and pursuing a second project on these topics. His scholarly writing has been published in College Literature: A Journal of Critical Literary Studies and Media-N and is forthcoming in an anthology on Asian/American game studies. In Fall 2023, he will start as an Assistant Professor of English (Asian American and Asian Diasporic Literature) at Vanderbilt University.

We want to make our events accessible to all participants. This event will be a hybrid event with both a physical meeting space and an online meeting space. Please register in advance for the online Zoom Webinar here: https://bit.ly/3CcvgFL

Please register for the physical meeting space at the University of Michigan’s Central Campus: https://bit.ly/3R2S3bG

We will have automated captions. If you anticipate needing accommodations to participate, please contact the DISCO Network at disconetwork@umich.edu. Please note that some accommodations must be arranged in advance and we encourage you to contact us as soon as possible.

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Lecture / Discussion Mon, 29 Aug 2022 14:31:47 -0400 2022-10-20T16:00:00-04:00 2022-10-20T17:30:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Digital Studies Institute Lecture / Discussion A purple background with a black disco ball. White retro lettering reads, "DISCO Network Lecture Series. Michelle N. Huang in Conversation with Lisa Nakamura and Huan He. Thursday, October 20, 2022. 4:00 pm to 5:30 pm ET." Below that are six white stars surrounded by a black border. Below that are 3 circular headshots of the speakers. Michelle N. Huang has shoulder length brown hair and is wearing a white shirt, a thin tie tied into a bow, and a black blazer. She is standing in front of a bookcase with books of varying sizes, shapes, and colors. Lisa Nakamura has short reddish hair and is wearing a blue-grey top. Her background is a blurred image of trees. Huan He has short black hair. He is wearing a black shirt with a gold necklace. He is in front of a dark grey background. Below that is a black text box with white words that read, "This event will be presented in a hybrid format. In person attendance is limited. Attendees will be registered for in person attendance on a first come first served basis."
Neural Architecture Exhibition & Symposium (November 2, 2022 5:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/99553 99553-21798329@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, November 2, 2022 5:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning

The Neural Architecture Symposium at Taubman College presents itself as an opportunity to survey the emerging field of Architecture and Artificial Intelligence, and to reflect on the implications of a world increasingly entangled in questions of the agency, culture, and ethics of AI. This rapidly developing field of architectural inquiry is ripe for a rigorous interrogation. Almost daily, new practices emerge that focus on the incredible opportunities that an expanded human mind through AI offer for the discipline of architecture. At the same time, AI is observed with suspicion in regards to potentially displacing entire practices out of the field. The symposium oscillates between those poles of tension, in order to inform the public audience, and the discipline, about the status quo and the vision of this paradigm-changing new ecology of design.

AI is quite a generalist term, used to describe several varying approaches. In Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence is defined as the study of Intelligent Agents, which includes any device that perceives its environment and that takes actions to maximize its chance of successfully achieving its goals. In general, the term Artificial Intelligence is applied when a machine mimics cognitive functions that humans associate with other human minds, such as learning and problem-solving. The prevailing trajectory of this line of inquiry is preoccupated with aspects of optimization, such as ideas of optimizing floorplans, material consumption, and time schedules of construction sites – which cover the tamed problems of disciplinary considerations. At the same time, it interrogates the wicked problem in the production of architecture – creativity, intuition, and sensibility. This opens ontological questions about the nature of creativity, its role in the inception of architectural projects, and the methods to evaluate this. This symposium and exhibition would be among the first of its kind, framing this problem in this particular way. Can an AI create a novel sensibility (?) -and if so: can we as humans perceive and understand it? This is one of a set of questions that the event is set out to examine and explicate through the format of the symposium. This symposium serves as a launch pad for the examination of an emergent field of technology that is currently profoundly changing multiple levels of society, economy and culture demonstrated through the use in the discipline of architecture.

The topic is presented through a series of lenses: design projects, speculations, theoretical considerations, and scientific insight. This combination allows for an insightful, but entertaining symposium, about a very pressing affair in architecture and society at large. The stunning visual quality of the projects and proposed architecture studios in combination with the voice of science and theory allow for a deep interrogation of current development in architecture. This symposium and exhibition will provide insights into posthuman design methodologies operating in a world shifting away from an anthropocentric universe. We consider that, in the foreseen future, humans will continue using the machine as their tool, not the other way around.

The first genuinely 21st-century Architecture design method

Taubman College is perceived as a pioneer within this novel area of inquiry in the architecture discipline – an area that will affect every aspect of the discipline. Not only the theory but also the practice, the construction, and the use of architecture. It is possibly the first genuinely 21st-century Architecture development, as it will change the way architecture is conceived, designed, and built on a massive scale. Posing questions about authorship, the nature of ingenuity, of imagination, and creativity the proposition discusses a posthuman world operating within this frame of considerations.

Demystifying Artificial Intelligence

A particular goal of this Symposium is to demystify Artificial Intelligence for the population of the architecture community as much as for the public at large. The term AI evokes dark pictures of dominance, control, and surveillance triggered through movie productions such as Terminator, The Matrix, and Ex Machina. Nothing could be farther away from the truth. The bigger danger these days are data abuse and bias in datasets. Both of which form part of a conversation within the program of the Symposium. For one the ethical questions of operating AI’s within the architecture discipline. Questions that are discussed in interdisciplinary panels consisting of architects, computer scientists,s and roboticists.

Wednesday, November 2, 2022

Keynote Lecture by Dr. Lev Manovich
"Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, and Study of Culture"
5:00pm – 6:30pm
Taubman College Commons

Exhibition Opening Reception
7:00pm – 9:00pm
Liberty Research Annex

Thursday, November 3, 2022

Symposium Sessions
9:00am - 6:00pm
Taubman College Commons

Session 1: An Introduction into our world through the eyes of artificial intelligence
Session 2: Do Machines dream of architecture?
Session 3: Neural Architecture – A paradigm shift in architecture design
Session 4: Roundtable: The emergence of a posthuman design ecology

Detailed session descriptions and schedules can be viewed at neural-architecture.org

This symposium will be presented in person at the Art & Architecture Building and on Zoom. Webinar registration is required at: https://umich.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_OU20BaOQRxGmoRMgjnLL0w

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Conference / Symposium Wed, 19 Oct 2022 14:20:26 -0400 2022-11-02T17:00:00-04:00 2022-11-02T18:30:00-04:00 Off Campus Location A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning Conference / Symposium Neural Architecture Symposium
Neural Architecture Exhibition & Symposium (November 2, 2022 5:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/99553 99553-21798328@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, November 2, 2022 5:00pm
Location: Art and Architecture Building
Organized By: A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning

The Neural Architecture Symposium at Taubman College presents itself as an opportunity to survey the emerging field of Architecture and Artificial Intelligence, and to reflect on the implications of a world increasingly entangled in questions of the agency, culture, and ethics of AI. This rapidly developing field of architectural inquiry is ripe for a rigorous interrogation. Almost daily, new practices emerge that focus on the incredible opportunities that an expanded human mind through AI offer for the discipline of architecture. At the same time, AI is observed with suspicion in regards to potentially displacing entire practices out of the field. The symposium oscillates between those poles of tension, in order to inform the public audience, and the discipline, about the status quo and the vision of this paradigm-changing new ecology of design.

AI is quite a generalist term, used to describe several varying approaches. In Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence is defined as the study of Intelligent Agents, which includes any device that perceives its environment and that takes actions to maximize its chance of successfully achieving its goals. In general, the term Artificial Intelligence is applied when a machine mimics cognitive functions that humans associate with other human minds, such as learning and problem-solving. The prevailing trajectory of this line of inquiry is preoccupated with aspects of optimization, such as ideas of optimizing floorplans, material consumption, and time schedules of construction sites – which cover the tamed problems of disciplinary considerations. At the same time, it interrogates the wicked problem in the production of architecture – creativity, intuition, and sensibility. This opens ontological questions about the nature of creativity, its role in the inception of architectural projects, and the methods to evaluate this. This symposium and exhibition would be among the first of its kind, framing this problem in this particular way. Can an AI create a novel sensibility (?) -and if so: can we as humans perceive and understand it? This is one of a set of questions that the event is set out to examine and explicate through the format of the symposium. This symposium serves as a launch pad for the examination of an emergent field of technology that is currently profoundly changing multiple levels of society, economy and culture demonstrated through the use in the discipline of architecture.

The topic is presented through a series of lenses: design projects, speculations, theoretical considerations, and scientific insight. This combination allows for an insightful, but entertaining symposium, about a very pressing affair in architecture and society at large. The stunning visual quality of the projects and proposed architecture studios in combination with the voice of science and theory allow for a deep interrogation of current development in architecture. This symposium and exhibition will provide insights into posthuman design methodologies operating in a world shifting away from an anthropocentric universe. We consider that, in the foreseen future, humans will continue using the machine as their tool, not the other way around.

The first genuinely 21st-century Architecture design method

Taubman College is perceived as a pioneer within this novel area of inquiry in the architecture discipline – an area that will affect every aspect of the discipline. Not only the theory but also the practice, the construction, and the use of architecture. It is possibly the first genuinely 21st-century Architecture development, as it will change the way architecture is conceived, designed, and built on a massive scale. Posing questions about authorship, the nature of ingenuity, of imagination, and creativity the proposition discusses a posthuman world operating within this frame of considerations.

Demystifying Artificial Intelligence

A particular goal of this Symposium is to demystify Artificial Intelligence for the population of the architecture community as much as for the public at large. The term AI evokes dark pictures of dominance, control, and surveillance triggered through movie productions such as Terminator, The Matrix, and Ex Machina. Nothing could be farther away from the truth. The bigger danger these days are data abuse and bias in datasets. Both of which form part of a conversation within the program of the Symposium. For one the ethical questions of operating AI’s within the architecture discipline. Questions that are discussed in interdisciplinary panels consisting of architects, computer scientists,s and roboticists.

Wednesday, November 2, 2022

Keynote Lecture by Dr. Lev Manovich
"Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, and Study of Culture"
5:00pm – 6:30pm
Taubman College Commons

Exhibition Opening Reception
7:00pm – 9:00pm
Liberty Research Annex

Thursday, November 3, 2022

Symposium Sessions
9:00am - 6:00pm
Taubman College Commons

Session 1: An Introduction into our world through the eyes of artificial intelligence
Session 2: Do Machines dream of architecture?
Session 3: Neural Architecture – A paradigm shift in architecture design
Session 4: Roundtable: The emergence of a posthuman design ecology

Detailed session descriptions and schedules can be viewed at neural-architecture.org

This symposium will be presented in person at the Art & Architecture Building and on Zoom. Webinar registration is required at: https://umich.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_OU20BaOQRxGmoRMgjnLL0w

]]>
Conference / Symposium Wed, 19 Oct 2022 14:20:26 -0400 2022-11-02T17:00:00-04:00 2022-11-02T18:30:00-04:00 Art and Architecture Building A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning Conference / Symposium Neural Architecture Symposium
Neural Architecture Exhibition & Symposium (November 3, 2022 9:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/99553 99553-21798331@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, November 3, 2022 9:00am
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning

The Neural Architecture Symposium at Taubman College presents itself as an opportunity to survey the emerging field of Architecture and Artificial Intelligence, and to reflect on the implications of a world increasingly entangled in questions of the agency, culture, and ethics of AI. This rapidly developing field of architectural inquiry is ripe for a rigorous interrogation. Almost daily, new practices emerge that focus on the incredible opportunities that an expanded human mind through AI offer for the discipline of architecture. At the same time, AI is observed with suspicion in regards to potentially displacing entire practices out of the field. The symposium oscillates between those poles of tension, in order to inform the public audience, and the discipline, about the status quo and the vision of this paradigm-changing new ecology of design.

AI is quite a generalist term, used to describe several varying approaches. In Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence is defined as the study of Intelligent Agents, which includes any device that perceives its environment and that takes actions to maximize its chance of successfully achieving its goals. In general, the term Artificial Intelligence is applied when a machine mimics cognitive functions that humans associate with other human minds, such as learning and problem-solving. The prevailing trajectory of this line of inquiry is preoccupated with aspects of optimization, such as ideas of optimizing floorplans, material consumption, and time schedules of construction sites – which cover the tamed problems of disciplinary considerations. At the same time, it interrogates the wicked problem in the production of architecture – creativity, intuition, and sensibility. This opens ontological questions about the nature of creativity, its role in the inception of architectural projects, and the methods to evaluate this. This symposium and exhibition would be among the first of its kind, framing this problem in this particular way. Can an AI create a novel sensibility (?) -and if so: can we as humans perceive and understand it? This is one of a set of questions that the event is set out to examine and explicate through the format of the symposium. This symposium serves as a launch pad for the examination of an emergent field of technology that is currently profoundly changing multiple levels of society, economy and culture demonstrated through the use in the discipline of architecture.

The topic is presented through a series of lenses: design projects, speculations, theoretical considerations, and scientific insight. This combination allows for an insightful, but entertaining symposium, about a very pressing affair in architecture and society at large. The stunning visual quality of the projects and proposed architecture studios in combination with the voice of science and theory allow for a deep interrogation of current development in architecture. This symposium and exhibition will provide insights into posthuman design methodologies operating in a world shifting away from an anthropocentric universe. We consider that, in the foreseen future, humans will continue using the machine as their tool, not the other way around.

The first genuinely 21st-century Architecture design method

Taubman College is perceived as a pioneer within this novel area of inquiry in the architecture discipline – an area that will affect every aspect of the discipline. Not only the theory but also the practice, the construction, and the use of architecture. It is possibly the first genuinely 21st-century Architecture development, as it will change the way architecture is conceived, designed, and built on a massive scale. Posing questions about authorship, the nature of ingenuity, of imagination, and creativity the proposition discusses a posthuman world operating within this frame of considerations.

Demystifying Artificial Intelligence

A particular goal of this Symposium is to demystify Artificial Intelligence for the population of the architecture community as much as for the public at large. The term AI evokes dark pictures of dominance, control, and surveillance triggered through movie productions such as Terminator, The Matrix, and Ex Machina. Nothing could be farther away from the truth. The bigger danger these days are data abuse and bias in datasets. Both of which form part of a conversation within the program of the Symposium. For one the ethical questions of operating AI’s within the architecture discipline. Questions that are discussed in interdisciplinary panels consisting of architects, computer scientists,s and roboticists.

Wednesday, November 2, 2022

Keynote Lecture by Dr. Lev Manovich
"Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, and Study of Culture"
5:00pm – 6:30pm
Taubman College Commons

Exhibition Opening Reception
7:00pm – 9:00pm
Liberty Research Annex

Thursday, November 3, 2022

Symposium Sessions
9:00am - 6:00pm
Taubman College Commons

Session 1: An Introduction into our world through the eyes of artificial intelligence
Session 2: Do Machines dream of architecture?
Session 3: Neural Architecture – A paradigm shift in architecture design
Session 4: Roundtable: The emergence of a posthuman design ecology

Detailed session descriptions and schedules can be viewed at neural-architecture.org

This symposium will be presented in person at the Art & Architecture Building and on Zoom. Webinar registration is required at: https://umich.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_OU20BaOQRxGmoRMgjnLL0w

]]>
Conference / Symposium Wed, 19 Oct 2022 14:20:26 -0400 2022-11-03T09:00:00-04:00 2022-11-03T18:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning Conference / Symposium Neural Architecture Symposium
Neural Architecture Exhibition & Symposium (November 3, 2022 9:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/99553 99553-21798330@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, November 3, 2022 9:00am
Location: Art and Architecture Building
Organized By: A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning

The Neural Architecture Symposium at Taubman College presents itself as an opportunity to survey the emerging field of Architecture and Artificial Intelligence, and to reflect on the implications of a world increasingly entangled in questions of the agency, culture, and ethics of AI. This rapidly developing field of architectural inquiry is ripe for a rigorous interrogation. Almost daily, new practices emerge that focus on the incredible opportunities that an expanded human mind through AI offer for the discipline of architecture. At the same time, AI is observed with suspicion in regards to potentially displacing entire practices out of the field. The symposium oscillates between those poles of tension, in order to inform the public audience, and the discipline, about the status quo and the vision of this paradigm-changing new ecology of design.

AI is quite a generalist term, used to describe several varying approaches. In Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence is defined as the study of Intelligent Agents, which includes any device that perceives its environment and that takes actions to maximize its chance of successfully achieving its goals. In general, the term Artificial Intelligence is applied when a machine mimics cognitive functions that humans associate with other human minds, such as learning and problem-solving. The prevailing trajectory of this line of inquiry is preoccupated with aspects of optimization, such as ideas of optimizing floorplans, material consumption, and time schedules of construction sites – which cover the tamed problems of disciplinary considerations. At the same time, it interrogates the wicked problem in the production of architecture – creativity, intuition, and sensibility. This opens ontological questions about the nature of creativity, its role in the inception of architectural projects, and the methods to evaluate this. This symposium and exhibition would be among the first of its kind, framing this problem in this particular way. Can an AI create a novel sensibility (?) -and if so: can we as humans perceive and understand it? This is one of a set of questions that the event is set out to examine and explicate through the format of the symposium. This symposium serves as a launch pad for the examination of an emergent field of technology that is currently profoundly changing multiple levels of society, economy and culture demonstrated through the use in the discipline of architecture.

The topic is presented through a series of lenses: design projects, speculations, theoretical considerations, and scientific insight. This combination allows for an insightful, but entertaining symposium, about a very pressing affair in architecture and society at large. The stunning visual quality of the projects and proposed architecture studios in combination with the voice of science and theory allow for a deep interrogation of current development in architecture. This symposium and exhibition will provide insights into posthuman design methodologies operating in a world shifting away from an anthropocentric universe. We consider that, in the foreseen future, humans will continue using the machine as their tool, not the other way around.

The first genuinely 21st-century Architecture design method

Taubman College is perceived as a pioneer within this novel area of inquiry in the architecture discipline – an area that will affect every aspect of the discipline. Not only the theory but also the practice, the construction, and the use of architecture. It is possibly the first genuinely 21st-century Architecture development, as it will change the way architecture is conceived, designed, and built on a massive scale. Posing questions about authorship, the nature of ingenuity, of imagination, and creativity the proposition discusses a posthuman world operating within this frame of considerations.

Demystifying Artificial Intelligence

A particular goal of this Symposium is to demystify Artificial Intelligence for the population of the architecture community as much as for the public at large. The term AI evokes dark pictures of dominance, control, and surveillance triggered through movie productions such as Terminator, The Matrix, and Ex Machina. Nothing could be farther away from the truth. The bigger danger these days are data abuse and bias in datasets. Both of which form part of a conversation within the program of the Symposium. For one the ethical questions of operating AI’s within the architecture discipline. Questions that are discussed in interdisciplinary panels consisting of architects, computer scientists,s and roboticists.

Wednesday, November 2, 2022

Keynote Lecture by Dr. Lev Manovich
"Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, and Study of Culture"
5:00pm – 6:30pm
Taubman College Commons

Exhibition Opening Reception
7:00pm – 9:00pm
Liberty Research Annex

Thursday, November 3, 2022

Symposium Sessions
9:00am - 6:00pm
Taubman College Commons

Session 1: An Introduction into our world through the eyes of artificial intelligence
Session 2: Do Machines dream of architecture?
Session 3: Neural Architecture – A paradigm shift in architecture design
Session 4: Roundtable: The emergence of a posthuman design ecology

Detailed session descriptions and schedules can be viewed at neural-architecture.org

This symposium will be presented in person at the Art & Architecture Building and on Zoom. Webinar registration is required at: https://umich.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_OU20BaOQRxGmoRMgjnLL0w

]]>
Conference / Symposium Wed, 19 Oct 2022 14:20:26 -0400 2022-11-03T09:00:00-04:00 2022-11-03T18:00:00-04:00 Art and Architecture Building A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning Conference / Symposium Neural Architecture Symposium