Video Archive – The Conference by Media Evolution

Jordi Roca – Senses and Sensibilities

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 09:14:20 GMT

“Why not create a dish from the smell of old book?”

“The most beautiful idea is to be able to eat a song.”

Senses can evoke memories. Jordi Roca explores the connection and interaction between senses, childhood memories, smell and taste. Inspired by Marcel Proust and his ‘In Search of Lost Time’, Jordi shares about his work evoking memories through smell, taste and texture: how he created desserts inspired by perfumes by deconstructing each perfume to create an aroma leading to him making his own perfume. He moved further and extracted the smell of an old book evoking a memory of reading old literature. Could you also eat a forest after a rain? Or taste different colours, each of which would have a specific melody attached to it? Might we evoke a sense of smell of people who had lost it by combining an experience of different senses, like seeing, hearing and others?

Liam Young – Senses and Sensibilities

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 09:14:05 GMT

“Fiction is an extraordinary shared language.”

Fiction is a product of culture but it also produces culture: it impacts how we see the world. The line between fiction and reality is a thin one, and the urban space is one where our imaginaries are often played out. Through his piece ‘The Planet City’, Liam Young takes us on a cinematic drift through imaginary worlds: one fictional, one we are currently living in. What if we stepped back, made room and let global wilderness return? How do these fictional worlds we construct portray our technological possibilities and our gravest concerns?

As already inhabitants of a planet city, we have remade the world. A new kind of story is needed to guide us into the future. We need to visualise our collective futures. We need to shape where we all want to go next. By telling the fictive story we get the chance to imagine a possible future, and by doing so, giving us the opportunity to imagine a new story for the planet: “As we write stories we also write the world.”

Matt Webb – How to use a computer

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 09:13:34 GMT

“Search is not a query. It’s always a conversation. You’re not building a search engine - you’re building a tool for users to embark on a knowledge quest.”

Matt Webb explores how different types of common search mechanisms online work and the type of results they return. He goes through a history of more analogue search systems to give context to the search algorithms we all use today. Matt frames search as not being a query but rather a conversation where people are using the search tool to embark on a knowledge quest. In doing so, he reveals the limitations of popular search tools and the silos they keep us in.

He has explored different ways of making search and aggregation tools work for himself in slightly different ways. By creating his own systems, he is able to come across new information before it gets to the point of trending or being recommended by an algorithm. Matt closes by sharing some ideas for how we could each build our own systems to find the information we’re truly seeking.

Hillary Juma – How to use a computer

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 09:13:23 GMT

“How will we garden the future of our abilities to speak with computers?”

Hillary Juma spoke about how each of us has a different experience interacting with voice recognition systems. The challenges we face in our interactions with voice recognition software differ significantly, for example some accents aren’t understood by systems as well as others because they were not included in training data sets.

Being diagnosed with dyslexia prompted Hillary to interact more with the voice-to-text systems and explore various voice recognition systems. In doing so, she realized their shortcomings and has become a “cyber doula with a specialism in linguistics” to acquaint people with these systems and their complexities.

Maya Man – How to use a computer

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 09:13:12 GMT

“My entire life my sense of self has been mediated by a computer screen.”

Growing up, Maya Man has always been fascinated with the presentation of self and the meaning of true authenticity in different contexts. Her sense of self has always been mediated by a computer screen, leading her to experiment with the possibilities this presented but also feel that everything she was doing was some form of performance for a third person audience. In her recent work, she has subverted the tone of voice of Seventeen magazine covers and motivational Instagram posts to explore notions of performance, identity, and our presentation of self in the 21st century.

Carl Benedikt Frey – Work – what science says

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 09:10:01 GMT

“Occupations paying less than 20 dollars per hour are most at risk to be replaced by technology.”

How do you heighten your chances of making money for rent in the future? Carl Benedikt Frey suggests creativity, social intelligence and the abilities to perceive and manipulate will be central skills. These particular skills are still proving hard to automate through Artificial Intelligence. So how do we build and strengthen these skills? Does our education system and social environments support these learning processes? Who does not have access to this type of learning? Will we even need money for rent in the future? What can we build with our creativity, if we do not need to work to pay for a place to live?

Calle Rosengren – Work – what science says

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 09:09:51 GMT

“Covid-19 has done more for the digitalisation of organisations than the COO and CEO.”

During their online meeting, Calle Rosengren’s colleague from Lund University received four missed calls from her son. There must have been a fire in his room. She knocked on his door. Nah, no fire. He wanted to know whether he could eat the last semla. How do we find healthy digital boundaries and a chance to focus in these new hybrid working days?

Rosengren’s research suggests that it’s worth looking into some digital boundary management strategies. Suggested strategies circle around for example building good habits very consciously. But also - and particularly in this seriously urgent semla situation - involving any family members in conversations around digital boundaries.

Rita Fontinha – Work – what science says

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 09:09:42 GMT

“People wish to work less, but also to have more control over their time.”

How do we free humanity up to choose meaningful work? Is value actually connected to working many hours? Who defines what is ‘productive’? Who defines what is valuable? Valuable for who? Do we produce more value on our days off? What do we do to each other, when some people have control over other people’s chance to choose the most meaningful way to spend moments, hours and lives?

Rita Fontinha suggests a progressive implementation of freed up valuable time through a 4 day work week as a potential first step.

Q&A Work – What Science Says

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 09:08:48 GMT

Q&A with Calle Rosengren (Lund University), Carl Benedikt Frey (Oxford University) and Rita Fontinha (Henley Business School, University of Reading) during The Conference 2022.

Alice Rawsthorn – Design Emergency

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 09:08:15 GMT

“Design is an agent of change which can help us make sense of what is happening and turn it to our advantage. Design has done this long before word has been invented to describe it.”

How can we approach an everyday challenge as a design project? How can people use design for activism? What is the potential of design as a tool for societal change? How can people working as professional designers work with all of us as co-designers of the future?

In her optimistic keynote session, Alice Rawsthorn describes multiple examples from her books “Design Emergency” and “Design as an Attitude'' that illustrate design as a way to respond to unforeseen circumstances and illustrate human tragedy. If design is being used responsively, empathically and intelligently, it can be a catalyst for positive change, reconstruct our lives and spark hope.

One of her most recent examples is a group of graphic designers that are hacking road signs in the Ukraine to disrupt transportation - and world community awareness - of war. They repurposed highway signs to mislead Russian soldiers by showing the only destination as “the Hague” - the seat of the International Court of Crimes against humanity.

Grace Boyle – Spatial Computing

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 09:07:03 GMT

“There are challenges when you’re trying to work in a multisensory medium in that the tools and the frameworks for this don’t really exist so we’ve had to create a lot of them ourselves along the way.”

Grace Boyle explains the vast myriad of senses that humans possess beyond the ‘big five senses’. She speaks about the concept of embodied cognition, whereby the human body and not only the brain is involved in our perceptions and thought processes. She goes on to explore digital realities created using spatial computing. Currently, these largely focus on visual and, to a lesser extent, auditory forms of communication. As a result, we are omitting lines of communication that are critical for things like learning, remembering, and forming value judgments based on how we feel. The Feelies' studio aims to produce narratives that engage the viewer's senses on a deeper level. Grace shares her explorations into creating more multisensory experiences and the range of benefits these experiences bring.

Lucia Tahan – Spatial Computing

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 09:06:55 GMT

“There seems to be a great inspiration that's being taken by AR artists today from the world of surrealism and its symbolism and aesthetic language.”

Alongside her work at Meta’s Spark AR Studio, Lucia Tahan has pursued a range of AR experiments. These include using AR to distort the world around us in interesting ways and exploring how AR may shape our future. She discusses the language of AR, “haunted realism”, and the interplay between AR filters and what is being created in real life. The talk concludes with examples of what a future including more AR integration could look like and an exploration of the possibilities of the reality-virtuality continuum.

Bas van de Poel – Spatial Computing

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 09:06:43 GMT

“At some point we might not refer to augmented reality anymore but instead just refer to reality.”

Bas van de Poel dives into the different definitions of the metaverse that exist today and why he believes the next big paradigm will be spatial computing, where the environment becomes the interface. He details the transition of AR from being used a lot for entertainment to becoming more utilitarian in its application. Bas shows examples of projects at the forefront of AR development, including a range of interesting projects he’s worked on recently. He closes by speculating on the concept of “reality channels” - people having different views of the same physical location using AR - and how future AR developments may influence changes in digital zoning laws.

Kristina Höök – Being well – body and place

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 09:04:39 GMT

“The tools we have change us fundamentally. They change our feelings and our cultures.”

Have you wondered why video conferencing still sucks? Because we are not just visual and auditory beings. The movements of our body are linked to our emotional processes. The tools we use impact our muscles, nervous systems, feelings, experiences and even our culture. Kristina Höök works at the Royal Institute of Technology where she studies Soma design, aesthetic and ethical wellness. Soma focuses on the fact that mind and body are not separate – how engaging with your senses will make you more present and will give you a richer life. She has been test designing products to develop this skill.

As designers, you leave a set of sedimented movements in design. You ask users to move, think and feel in certain ways. Somaesthetics is an approach to design that sees the mind and body as one. It is about designing with oneself, using one’s own soma in designing. It’s about being present in the world giving us a possibility to have richer experiences of the world we are living in. How might a lamp, a mat or even a corset help us change our way of being in the world?

Ewa Westermark – Being well – body and place

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 09:04:30 GMT

“Spaces change people's behaviour.”

Urban Misery or Urban Joy - a matter of place

The context we find ourselves in influences us as human beings. It influences our choices. It influences how we feel. We are humans that are sensitive beings and social animals. Meeting other people is the essence of the city. How can the environment help us get out and meet other people rather than hinder us? And how is urban joy a matter of the everyday place?

Ewa Westermark explores what it is like to be in a city today, discussing the difference between urban misery and urban joy. What she found is that “Spaces change people's behaviours.” Trying out temporarily removing cars and traffic from the city streets she is showing us how we can bring back life to our cities. Ewa shares examples of changing the urban space and ultimately culture to foster social connection and wellbeing and demonstrates how rebuilding the city centre of Christchurch after the 2014 earthquake could be done by tapping into people’s memories and dreams to make the place better than it was.

Q&A Being well – body and place

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 09:04:14 GMT

Q&A with Kristina Höök and Ewa Westermark during The Conference 2022.

What is a good life?

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 09:03:49 GMT

“By the age of 25 there’s no atom in your body that you were born with. It’s all food. So some of us are just pot noodles.”

Carolyn Steel is of the belief that we live in a world shaped by food and everything ultimately comes back to food. She takes us on a journey back through time, looking at how humans used to interact with food in the days of hunting and gathering all the way through to our relationship with food today. Looking at industrialisation and its promises to solve the problem of how to live, Carolyn questions whether our ideas of progress when it comes to food can truly be seen as progress. She encourages us to see food as a starting point for imagining a good life.

How could we change our collective approaches to food to value it and see it as something that brings us pleasure rather than an inconvenience and something that needs a quick fix in the age of busyness? Carolyn looks at what we could learn from the times of the hunter gatherer lifestyle and how we could better align ourselves with the natural cycles of the planet to create better lives for everyone.