Color Coding: Thinking Race, Culture and Computation Monday, September 29, 5 p.m. Friends of the USC Libraries Lecture Hall, Doheny Memorial Library 240 MIT professor Fox Harrell is one of very few computer scientists studying the relationship of computational systems to society and culture. His projects link innovative technological design with a deep concern for liberation, dignity and human rights. His Living Liberia Fabric, a computational system based in Liberia’s culture and history, exemplifies a perspective that resists a purely rational approach to computation, insisting that technology is always deeply connected to the cultures in which it is developed. Harrell and Chong-U Lim, a PhD student from his lab, will discuss the lab’s work, including how research unfolds in a lab where students have a high degree of autonomy, and engage participants in hands-on demonstrations.
Archives, Algorithms and Art Thursday, October 30, 5 p.m. Friends of the USC Libraries Lecture Hall, Doheny Memorial Library 240 Trace the history of computation to its underpinnings in the Cold War, and you will find inextricable links between science and technology and the arts and humanities. Kevin Hamilton, a leader in national conversations about arts-based research, will shed light on an early cybernetics lab that also produced zines, an interactive database of nuclear-test films and a comic book examining the anti-war and racial politics of the 1960s. Hamilton will be joined by former student Ben Grosser, whose projects include a painting robot and a software program intended to confuse the NSA. Their compelling and wide-ranging discussion will consider how digital interfaces are changing our conceptions of friendship, why we become emotionally attached to software and much more. The lecture will be followed by a hands-on workshop on prototyping, collaboration and critique for interactive art and design. Organized by Tara McPherson (Critical Studies and Gender Studies). Co-sponsored by the Harman Academy for Polymathic Studies.
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VISIONS AND VOICES
Image: Ben Grosser
Technology in Context