Video Archive – The Conference by Media Evolution

Ann Rosén – Opening performance

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 09:20:15 GMT

Artist and composer Ann Rosén performs a short concert.

Ann Rosén (born 1956) is the composer, musician and artist who began her career in the visual arts in the 1980s with interactive, intelligent, and intriguing works. Since the 1990s, the artistic focus has been on music and sound art and Rosén has more than one hundred works behind her. The works have been performed at the Swedish Royal Opera, Moderna Museet in Stockholm, and South Bank in London, among others

Rosén’s art revolves around the exploration of interpersonal communication, how we can understand ourselves in relation to the outside world and the barriers that can arise between us and others.

Johanna Koljonen – Opening remarks 2022

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 09:14:57 GMT

Moderator Johanna Koljonen opens The Conference 2022.

Tega Brain – The environment is not a system

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 09:03:14 GMT

“It can be dangerous to assume that more data just equals more reality.”

"Can AI open up new possibilities for thinking about intelligence and automation?" Could machine learning help us deal with vast amounts of data beyond human comprehension? Can these techniques produce a more robust representation of reality free of human judgement? Assistant professor at NYU, Artist and Environmental Engineer Tega Brain posed these crucial inquiries during The Conference 2022.

Tega explored critical questions about the new approaches to environmental management that incorporate artificial intelligence. She stresses the dilemma of data-driven methods and planetary computing in addressing the climate crisis, exploring a range of case studies where data-driven methods have fallen short of their grand promises. Tega Brain shares some of her own projects to visualise these shortcomings in AI systems and reimagines alternatives for better understanding our changing climate.

Victor Galaz – Systems thinking as a method

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 09:03:04 GMT

“Connection means synergy. It’s never too late. Quantum social change is possible.”

Victor Galaz explains the planetary boundaries model, and how exceeding these boundaries will affect us. He is emphasising how the effect of the changing climate will bring rising inequalities. Today for some of the world population the future is already here and they are living in the consequences of global warming, with 1,5 degrees of warming. In his talk Victor is stressing the fact that we are in great urgency, and all possible changes are important, we need to make everything we can to make a difference. Every tenth of a degree that is obstructed will save lives.

The nine planetary boundaries is a framework created by the Stockholm Resilience Centre to establish the area in which humanity can continue to thrive and develop while still maintaining a stable and resilient Earth system. Crossing these boundaries could mean irreversible environmental changes, for example waking the “sleeping giants”; being the CO2-emissions from shovelling the trees of the Amazon. We are already overshooting these boundaries, however, that overshoot is not equally distributed. Climate inequality in Sweden for example involves housing, access to green areas and health care, and working conditions.

Karol Gobczyński – Systems thinking as a method

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 09:02:44 GMT

“When we all act, we are reinforcing each other to act.”

“This planet is our only home - not the moon, not Mars.”

It is more important than ever to guide the policymakers on how to reduce emissions. To avoid the worst, we have to halve our emissions by 2030 and reach net-zero in 2050. We need to understand our own footprint, and share where we struggle. By having a common goal we are brought together - it’s about making the switch to renewable energy, making transportation systems zero-emission, and about closing the loop on materials and products as well as food.

Karol Gobczyński is the Head of Climate and Energy at Ingka Group, responsible for developing climate and energy strategy. He shows us how Ikea is driving change throughout the organisation, to reach net zero emissions. Making the switch towards renewables and closing the loops for the products with a circular business model.

Tessa van Soest – Systems thinking as a method

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 09:02:30 GMT

“Be the best FOR the world, not IN the world.”

What can system change look like from a business perspective; the goal of transforming to a regenerative economic system? Start measuring what matters.

The Executive Director of B Lab Tessa van Soest is explaining what B-corp certification is about, how it all started, while sharing examples of B-corp certified companies. The vision is to build a more inclusive, equitable and regenerative economic system for all people and the planet.

Certified B Corporation is a certification for businesses that help them start improving themselves on economic and social and environmental systems, working towards equity. It is a tool that measures your impact as a company and offers insight into your business model. B Corp is working to change behaviours of businesses, norms and cultural expectations about the role of businesses, and to change laws, policies and legal structures that govern businesses’ role in the economy.

Q&A – Systems thinking as a method

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 09:00:35 GMT

Q&A with Victor Galaz, Karol Gobczynski and Tessa van Soest.

Susanne Wedlich – (Natural) Intelligence

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 08:58:46 GMT

“Oceans - I am sorry to say this - are covered from top to bottom in slime.”

Life Is Slimey. What is slime? You wonder about that often, don’t you? Susanne Wedlich, the author of the book “Slime - A Natural History” does, too. If you ever write a book that several booksellers refuse to put on the shelves in sheer disgust, you will know that you’re onto something.

Inspired by love stories of snails, Susanne became an expert on slime. Have you realised how much slime is all around us? With the statement “all life is slimey”, Susanne sums up the versatile nature of slime. Sometimes it functions as glue, lubricant, filter or for defence purposes. Sometimes it is part of larger networks like wetlands. There is no exact definition of slime but it is rather a quality of material. Think of stiff water - slime accumulates a lot of water that is bound in a multidimensional network. It has the very cool ability to keep danger away, while remaining open. Have you ever wondered about how to establish healthy boundaries for yourself, while being open for connection with other beings? Slime can do that.

It is smart and has memory - this was exemplified by an experiment in Tokyo where researchers put slime on a city map and placed oatmeal on the outside edges. Slime then figured out the most effective way to reach the oatmeal. Fascinatingly, the slime trails resembled the actual transportation network map of Tokyo. She concluded her talk with the urge to find and preserve the right balance of slime in our lives: too much and too little is equally bad.

Christina Agapakis – (Natural) Intelligence

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 08:53:53 GMT

"The future is synthetic."

How do you feel about synthetics? Are you thinking about a wildly sticky, static electric, polyester shirt right now? Many of us have negative connotations of synthetics as something unnatural, artificial and based on ancient fossil fueled techniques. The history of science up until now has placed nature by definition as separate and below humans, thereby creating a division between nature and technology.

Christina Agapakis from Gingko Bioworks introduces in her talk the “meatverse”, her vivid vision for society, where we (re)unite technology and nature. She asks big questions like how might we create a new kind of culture around biological development with nature? How might we design biological tools regenerative for all beings without the use of fossil fuels? How might biological programmers log into the ‘wood wide web’ to help co-create new forests?

She closes her talk with a call to celebrate nature and technology and to reflect how we might use nature without filling the world with garbage.

Darja Isaksson – How to organise innovation

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 08:52:06 GMT

“Uncertainty is scary but also incredibly amazing.”

Nowadays, we can often feel like everyone is innovating only for the sake of innovation. In this talk, Darja Isaksson looks beyond the buzzword and explores how we might navigate uncertainty and complexity to create sustainable organisations.

Sweden has for a long time been a prime example of an innovative country. The old paradigm that this innovation model is built upon leans on three pillars: culture (characterised by boldness, openness, trust and a willingness to pay it forward), infrastructure (bases on reforms, policies, investments in infrastructures like available internet and making research in R&D a priority) and opportunity (creating possibilities, lower thresholds to take risks to try out new things and connecting innovators). But will this paradigm also work out in the future? How can Sweden - or any other country or organisation - foster a mindset and capability to adapt to ever-changing conditions and circumstances?

Darja reminds us that we are capable of rapid, radical, large-scale change as a global community. During the pandemic, Sweden as a community proved the capacity to be humble enough to acknowledge that we do not have all the answers. This allowed for conversations around radical, necessary societal change. Will you join the impact innovation mission that makes the most sense to you? The speaker encourages us to focus on societal outcomes that we really want while bringing together politicians, citizens and companies that are impacted by this transformation and then unpack the challenges and co-create new solutions.

Vaughn Tan – How to organise innovation

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 08:51:54 GMT

“Confusing risk and uncertainty can be very expensive and unpleasant.”

“Organisations shaped by a risk mindset are naturally resistant to change.”

Organisations that want to remain innovative now and in the future need an uncertainty mindset according to Vaughn Tan. Most organisations are built on the conventional model of risk-taking that has clearly defined job roles, goals and milestones. Unfortunately, this model also makes it hard for organisations to learn, change and adapt which is ultimately necessary in our world characterised by uncertainty.

Risk and uncertainty differ in several ways. Risk takes a more mathematical approach being calculable while uncertainty has a lot of possible actions and outcomes. Some of them might be more desirable than others. Vaughn Tan suggests that organisations might benefit from learning to switch from a risk-assessment-focused mindset to an uncertainty mindset. We’re talking about holding roles open for people involved in solving a problem, setting goals with no defined end, and (re)learning the ability to learn.

Now, working with an uncertainty mindset, how might organisations more holistically understand what effects innovations can have? How might we create truly regenerative innovations?

Q&A – How to organise innovation

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 08:51:02 GMT

Q&A with Vaughn Tan (University Colledge London's School of Management) and Darja Isaksson (Vinnova).

Simone Rebaudengo – (Artificial) Intelligence

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 08:50:35 GMT

“Is 65% spoon-ness a spoon?”

“Something truly smart might rather do something unexpected.”

Simone Rebaudengo is exploring the way we are living and interacting with networked and autonomous things. In this talk he is showing us some of those experiments and explorations, challenging the mainstream perception of AI. He is humourising and democratising the understanding of, and relations to artificial (or other) intelligences.

oio.studio, or “The other intelligences operation” explore different kinds of intelligences. What is AI? Is it talking cylinders? What else? Is it possible to co-design a product together with an AI from scratch? Is there maybe something to learn in trying to create an object in the hardest way possible? By putting together AI and craftsmen with artisanal intelligence and exploring a continuous back and forth between human and machine, you start to get interesting results - things that no human would have designed themselves. How do we live with other intelligences? What if there is an actual ecosystem of intelligences, of connectivities. Can an object have an intelligence, a history, a future? Instead of focusing on the artificial, autonomous and anthropomorphic, we could rather look at artisanal, augmenting, adapting, acceptable (and many other) intelligences.

Nick Seaver – (Artificial) Intelligence

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 08:50:29 GMT

“Sticky websites are traps designed to capture people.”

Artisanal traps have two faces: where hunter and prey, two entities, meet. Computers are a kind of human trap. Can we see the image of the hunter and the prey in these computer-traps in the same way as the anthropologic traps? The interface is in fact the meeting point in between worlds.

Engagement is in the very structure of how our technical products work. This means that reimagining the relations between designers, coders, and users is the way to “get out of the trap”.

Nick Seaver is an anthropologist of technology who studies how people use technology to make sense of cultural things. In this talk he explores how we throughout history have created traps. We used to do it to capture animals, today we are capturing human minds through digital screens, a phenomenon called “addiction by design” and “sticky websites”.

Maya Indira Ganesh – (Artificial) Intelligence

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 08:50:21 GMT

“Lager networks might have a slight conscious.”

Maya Indira Ganesh is a cultural scientist who explores the poetics and policies of AI and metaphors, asking the question what do we mean when we say AI?

Language is metaphorical, bridging the gap between our feelings and the thing itself. Why are metaphors important in the language of AI? It allows us to understand and convey things that are complex. The person who controls the metaphors sets AI in motion, it lets us think about the future relationship and needs to be described with clarity and regulations. So, what do we actually want AI to do?

Joanne McNeil – Stories that shape the future

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 08:49:07 GMT

Do you want a robot president? Let’s talk about the potential power of science-fiction stories. Have you read Dune? Watched Bladerunner? How about the Parable of the Sower? The Earthsea series?

Cultural references as found in science-fiction novels have a huge impact on what the tech in the coming years might look and feel like. But most of all, on our collective expectations and imagination of a possible future. To exemplify this, Joanna McNeil (author of Lurking: How a Person Became a User and upcoming novel, Too Early For The Future) shares several examples from recent pop culture. The film Minority Report had a workshop in early production days that brought together a group of futurists to imagine the future that is both possible but also looks good in a Hollywood movie. Also Elon Musk has in a way inspired many to think about what mainstream space travel could be like. Jose Fernandez, a Hollywood costumer who created many iconic costumes and dresses in major blockbuster movies such as Batman and Marvel movies, contributed to shaping the general understanding of what the future might look like since movies are often connected to what people actually think and remember.

This talk stresses that science-fiction stories might not necessarily teach us about our future, but rather shape our present. Why are we attracted to some visualisations of human culture right now? How does the storytelling methods of science fiction allow us to feel where we do NOT want to go culturally? To conclude her talk, Joanna highlights the potential of science-fiction to inspire and to constructively criticize technology of the future.

Adrian Hon – Stories that shape the future

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 08:49:00 GMT

Consider an object near you right now. How big is it? How does it feel? Who made the object? How are people using it in unexpected ways? How does it end? Are you up for trying another experiment? Write about the object. Writing about objects forces you to be specific - it makes you think about a specific place, time, people and context of its use, thus it makes you think about the past, present and future of this object.

A History of the Future in 100 Objects is a fictitious novel set in the year 2100 that introduced 100 objects. By looking back, it describes our present and possible near future. A BBC series inspired Adrian Hon, CEO and Co-Founder of Six to Start, to write the novel.

Adrian urges you to be specific when you learn about things. Consider its materiality and qualities like size, weight and comfort when using it. Also other aspects like who physically made this object and how people are using it in unexpected ways. But why 100 objects?

Q&A Stories that shape the future

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 08:48:37 GMT

Q&A with Joanne McNeil (Author) and Adrian Hon (Six to Start).

Mikkel Malmberg – Get together with Web3

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 08:48:05 GMT

“With decentralised blockchains we get this thing back that we can actually own things on the internet - and I think that’s pretty neat.”

If you’re at an early stage of learning about Web3, Mikkel Malmberg’s talk provides the perfect introduction. He recounts his initial contact with Web3 and how he started off being sceptical of the space. His talk takes us on a journey of his experiences and experiments in Web3. Mikkel charts the progression from Web1, to Web2, and then discusses the differences and new possibilities emerging with Web3. He touches on topics like smart contracts, NFTs, cryptocurrencies, and different types of blockchains. Mikkel also highlights the importance of community within Web3 and explores how the way people share their identity online is shifting with blockchain technology. His attitude towards Web3 has become more positive and optimistic over time and he has created several successful projects in the space which he also presents during his talk.

Penny Rafferty – Get together with Web3

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 08:47:57 GMT

“What are the manifestos that we want to live under?”

Penny Rafferty believes that technology should be social, collaborative, and emergent, prioritising culture over structures. She has been applying DAO thinking to issues in the art world in Berlin since 2018. This led to the emergence of the Black Swan DAO which has the goal of channelling resources from established institutions to cultural practitioners. In the context of cultural labour becoming increasingly precarious, the Black Swan DAO model is a response which enables practitioners to collectively manage resources. Penny details her experiences with the Black Swan DAO and other Web3 initiatives she has worked on. The Black Swan DAO serves as a fascinating case study of applying Web3 principles and technology to bring positive change in the cultural and creative sector.

Kyle McDonald – Get together with Web3

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 08:47:49 GMT

“When tech moves fast and breaks things, who picks up the pieces after?”

Kyle McDonald is an artist working with code who has done a lot of work researching the ecological impact of the Ethereum network. He shows the findings of this research which he has also published as an in-depth report. Kyle reflects on how the amount of energy consumption will drop significantly once Ethereum transitions from proof-of-stake to proof-of-work - two different methods of validating transactions on the blockchain. That will improve things but Kyle’s research shows a lot of ecological damage has been created as a result of Ethereum so far which he believes need to be remedied. He has created an artistic response in the form of NFTs titled Amends, designed to capture all historical emissions from three major NFT marketplaces. The work is priced to fully fund carbon mitigation. He presents the full concept behind this project and muses on the signal that is sent if the NFTs are sold but also the larger significance if the work doesn’t sell.

Johanna Koljonen – Closing remarks 2022

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 08:45:43 GMT

Moderator Johanna Koljonen closes The Conference 2022.

Magnus Nilsson – Endings and new beginnings

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 08:39:06 GMT

“The conflict between emotions and conscious rationality is at the core of what it means to be a human in the 21st century.“

The conflict between emotional and rational thinking is perhaps the greatest dilemma of the present. Magnus Nilsson encourages us to use the gift that is a conscious mind to investigate our subconscious, our emotions. Rationalising can be the delay, making us wait until a crucial point to make a decision. Because, if you really think about it - didn't you already know?

Magnus walked us through the different stages of his career. He told us the story of Fäviken, how and why it led to the end. He discussed how we, as people, often rationalise our decisions after initially making them guided by emotions. But what if it’s also as rational and valid a decision as a completely conscious one? What if we re-learn how to act in the forms of sensations and emotions?