Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture (PACTAC)
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The Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture is a research institute of and for the future, combining streamed electronic seminars, print and net publications, digital resources, and a video archive of lectures, interviews, and panels hosted at the centre.
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Item Rethinking Technology: Art and Design(Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture, 2015-04-07) Hertz, GarnetGarnet Hertz, Canada Research Chair in Design and Media Arts in the Faculty of Design and Dynamic Media at (Emily Carr University of Art and Design), gives a presentation titled “Rethinking Technology: Art and Design.”Item The Digital Afterlife of This Bridge Called My Back: Woman of Color Theory and Activism on Social Media(Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture, 2015-03-04) Nakamura, LisaLisa Nakamura, Gwendolyn Calvert Baker Collegiate Professor in the Department of American Culture and the Department of Screen Arts and Cultures (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor), gives a presentation titled “The Digital Afterlife of This Bridge Called My Back: Woman of Color Theory and Activism on Social Media.”Item Cancer Knowledge in the Plural: Communicability of Presence, Trans/Media and the Queer Biopolitics of Prosthetic Mobilities(Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture, 2012-06-17) Bryson, MaryDr. Mary Bryson, Professor, Language and Literacy Education, Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia gives a presentation entitled, "Cancer Knowledge in the Plural: Communicability of Presence, Trans/Media and the Queer Biopolitics of Prosthetic Mobilities."Item Drone Warfare Seminar: Jackson 2bears(Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture, 2013-06-20) 2bears, JacksonJackson 2bears introduces his video art piece "After the Drones."Item Drone Warfare Seminar: Arthur Kroker(Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture, 2013-06-20) Kroker, ArthurArthur Kroker gives a presentation on Drone Warfare.Item Drone Warfare Seminar: Michael Dartnell(Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture, 2013-06-20) Dartnell, MichaelMichael Dartnell of Georgian College gives a presentation at the Drone Warfare Seminar.Item Drone Warfare Seminar: Anas Karzai(Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture, 2013-06-20) Karzai, AnasAnas Karzai of Laurentian University gives a presentation at the Drone Warfare Seminar.Item Governmentality in the Age of Neoliberalism(Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture, 2014-03-18) Brown, WendyProfessor Wendy Brown’s talk at PACTAC on governmentality in the age of neoliberalism.Item A Phantasmal Media Approach to Empowerment, Identity, and Computation(Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture, 2013-01-23) Harrell, D. FoxFocusing on questions of social identity, empowerment and computation, D. Fox Harrell explores the emerging world of “phantasmal identities,” that moment when the meaning of social identity is complicated by its intersection with computing technologies including social networking, gaming, virtual worlds and more. Here, social identities are not addressed only through persistent issues of class, gender, sex, race, and ethnicity, but also through dynamic construction of social categories, body language, discourse, metaphorical thought, gesture, fashion, and so on. When these “real” identities meet their counterparts in the virtual world, the results are identities that are a sudden blend of cultural ideas and sensory imagination, namely the increasing development of “phantasmal identities.” Dr. D. Fox Harrell, Associate Professor of Digital Media in the Comparative Media Studies Program and Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT.Item To Tremble the Zero: Art in the Age of Algorithmic Reproduction(Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture, 2009-06-06) Golding, Johnny; Kennedy, Steve‘To Tremble the Zero: Art in the Age of Algorithmic Reproduction’ is a philosophic, political and sensuous journey playing with (and against) Benjamin’s ‘Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’. In an age inundated by the ‘post-’: postmodernity, posthuman, post art, postsexual, post-feminist, post-society, post-nation, etc, ‘To Tremble the Zero’ sets out to re/present the nature of what it means to do or make ‘art’, as well as what it means to be or have ‘human/ity’ when the ground is nothing other than the fractal, and algorithmically infinite, combinations of zero and one. The work will address also the unfortunate way in which modern forms of metaphysics continue to creep ‘unsuspectingly’ into our understanding of contemporary media/electronic arts, despite (or perhaps even because of) the attempts by Latour, Badiou, or Agamben especially when addressing the zero/one as if a contradictory ‘binary’ rather than as a kind of ‘slice’ or (to use Deleuze and Guattari) an immanent plane of immanence. This work argues that by retrieving Benjamin, Einstein, Gödel, and Haraway, a rather different story of art can be told.Item Drone Warfare Seminar: Christopher Parsons and Adam Molnar(Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture, 2013-06-20) Molnar, Adam; Parsons, ChristopherChristopher Parsons and Adam Molnar give a presentation on drone warfare.Item Acting in an Uncertain World: Thinking Techno-Ecologically?(Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture, 2011-03-18) Girvan, AnitaBorrowing the title from an essay by Michael Callon and his colleagues working at the intersection of science and technology studies and politics, this presentation, “Acting in an Uncertain World”, attempts to think through questions of environment and technology in a time of proliferating ecological crises. These crises, no longer conceived of as ‘natural’ disasters, or ‘human’ problems but deep entanglements, suggest new forms of technologically enabled democracy, where both slowness (slowing down to institutionalize deliberative processes) and speed (especially in communicating to inform an engaged citizenry) may interact in novel ways.Item Atmospheric Alienation, Carbon Tracking and Geo-Techno Agency(Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture, 2010-03-12) Girvan, AnitaAnita Girvan is an interdisciplinary PhD student with a concentration in Cultural, Social, and Political Thought. Her PhD project focuses on the mediating role of the metaphor of the ‘carbon footprint’ in responses to climate change, and her broader interests are in the cultural and geo-material loops of language, narrative and ecology. She is also a Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions (PICS) Fellow at the University of Victoria.Item Werewolves, Magnetic Fields and Fingerprints of a Technological Imaginary(Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture, 2011-03-30) Hiebert, TedTed Hiebert’s talk is an exploration of the technological imaginary, with a particular focus on the area of overlap between digital culture and artistic practice. Bringing together Roland Barthes’ theory of technology as an extension of theatre and Nicolas Bourriaud’s formulation of relational art, the talk examines spaces where technology might be understood as relational, deeply embedded in discourses of aesthetics and performance, but equally invested in maintaining the creative possibilities of social living. Situated amidst questions of theatre, technology and art, this talk is also as a series of reflections on the possibilities of posthuman living. Using three art projects as catalysts for the discussion, a theory born of photographic practice will be expanded, as a visualization of technology and of the aesthetics of posthuman possibility. This is the imagination seen technologically; technology seen photographically; and, photography understood for its deep relationship to the paradoxes of representation and performance. These are the stories of werewolves, magnetic fields and fingerprints of a technological imaginary — a story of delirious subjectivity, a story of imagination fields and a story of the encounter with darkness.Item Technologies of Conveyance(Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture, 2011-03-23) Timney, MeaganIn this talk, Meagan Timney draws on McLuhan’s notions of the medium and the message to question how our interaction with the world around us changes through the use of the technologies that facilitate information transfer. Using examples from both past and present, she discusses how these technologies extend the human self through the creation of a virtual avatar.Item Digital Magic, Cybernetic Sorcery: On the Cultural Politics of Fascination and Fear(Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture, 2010-03-12) Pfohl, StephenStephen Pfohl is a Professor in the Sociology Department at Boston College where he teaches courses on social theory, deviance and social control, postmodernity, social psychoanalysis, and the sociology of technology, art, and culture. He is the author of numerous books and articles, including Images of Deviance and Social Control (McGraw Hill, 1994), Death at the Parasite Café (St. Martin’s Press, 1992), and Left Behind: Religion, Technology and Flight from the Flesh (NWP/CTheory Books, 2008). He is the co-editor of Culture, Power and History: Studies in Critical Sociology (Brill Publishers, 2006) and author of the forthcoming Venus in Video: Cybernetics and Ultramodern Power. Stephen is also a past president of the Society for the Study of Social Problems, a video maker and performing artist, member of the editorial board of the journal CTheory, and founding member of the Boston-based Sit-Com International.Item Introduction: Necropolis of Software(Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture, 2010-03-12) Kroker, ArthurArthur Kroker is Canada Research Chair in Technology, Culture and Theory, professor of political science, and the director of the Pacific Center for Technology and Culture at the University of Victoria. His most recent projects include the monograph Born Again Ideology: Religion, Technology and Terrorism (New World Perspectives, 2008), and Critical Digital Studies: A Reader, co-edited with Marilouise Kroker (University of Toronto, 2008). His books include, among others, The Will to Technology and the Culture of Nihilism: Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Marx (University of Toronto Press, 2004), The Possessed Individual (St Martin’s Press, 1992), Spasm (St Martin’s Press, 1993), and Data Trash: The Theory of the Virtual Class, with Michael A. Weinstein (St Martin’s Press, 1994). He is the co-editor of the Digital Futures book series for the University of Toronto Press, as well as the peer-reviewed, electronic journal CTheory.Item The Comatose, The Cadaver & The Chimera: Avatars Have No Organs(Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture, 2009-10-09) StelarcStelarc is a world renowned Australian-based performance artist whose work explores and extends the concept of the body and its relationship with technology. He has performed with a third hand, a virtual arm. a virtual body and a stomach sculpture. Recently he has had an ear surgically constructed on his arm. Stelarc discusses his work made by employing medical instruments, prosthetics, robotics, VR systems, the internet, and biotechnology.Item Androids: A Remarkable Approximation to the Organic(Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture, 2011-03-18) Walraven, AyaThis talk walks through a brief history of androids in the past and present. Citing Japan as a special case, Aya Walraven explores how androids, cyborgs, and humans alike fit into society with a growing need for robotic assistance and enhancement, and touches upon the cultural roots and psychology that affects how we receive our mechanical partners.Item Technology and Politics in Tunisia and Iran: Deep Packet Surveillance(Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture, 2011-03-23) Parsons, ChristopherFaced with growing unrest that is (at least in part) facilitated by digital communications, repressive nation-states have integrated powerful new surveillance systems into the depths of their nations’ communications infrastructures. In this presentation, Christopher Parsons first discusses the capabilities of a technology, deep packet inspection, which is used to survey, analyze, and modify communications in real-time. He then discusses the composition of the Iranian and Tunisian telecommunications infrastructure, outlining how deep packet inspection is used to monitor, block, and subvert encrypted and private communications. The presentation concludes with a brief reflection on how this same technology is deployed in the West, with a focus on how we might identify key actors, motivations, and drivers of the technology in our own network ecologies.