THE MASK AND THE MIRROR
Virginia Lázaro (cultural critic and researcher)
Juan Martín Prada (teacher and researcher)
Moderator: Roc Herms (photographer and visual artist)

From the first Palaeolithic masks to military camouflage, from samples of makeup in ancient Egypt to contemporary plastic surgery, the human being has sought multiple ways of changing appearence using technology throughout his entire existence. However, what happened when, thanks to the emergence of the Internet, smartphones and social media, we have obtained the ultimate tool to self-represent ourselves?

During this session, Virginia Lázaro and Juan Martín Prada will discuss about the digital constructs that we make of ourselves. About their perils, problems and benefits. About all that we show and hide in the mirror, and all that unveils when we cover the mask.

 

JUGANDO CON IA Y LA CULTURA CINEMATOGRÁFICA
Jorge Caballero (filmmaker, teacher and researcher)
Anna Giralt Gris (filmmaker, teacher and researcher)
Moderator: Martí Sánchez-Fibla (teacher and researcher)

Latest progresses in artificial intelligence, particularly neural networks, do not cease to surprise us. In the previous edition of DONE, Joan Fontcuberta and Anna Ridler told us how they used generative adversarial networks (GANs) in their artworks to yield faces of fake illustrious characters (Prosopagnosia by Joan Fontcuberta, 2019) or grow tulips to the price of cryptocurrencies (Myriad (Tulips) by Anna Ridler, 2018). Since then, new neural networks based on the Transformer model have emerged, such as DALL-E, which is able to create images from textual descriptions showing a great semantic understanding of natural language.

In this session, we invite Anna Giralt and Jorge Caballero (Artificio, Gusano Films) once again, who are launching a series of applications of neural networks in audiovisual projects, to discuss how AI is currently being used to analyze and produce cinema.

 

ALL THE FEELS
Simone C. Niquille (designer and researcher)
Moderator: Jara Rocha (researcher and cultural mediator)

In an article published at e-flux under the title “Too Much Information”, Simone C. Niquille walks us through a number of operations on capture technology and polygonal remodeling of facial gestures, each providing an extra layer of definition, towards an analysis of emotions.The ambition to recognise emotion by computer vision technology contains an array of challenges and assumptions: By which parameters are happiness, tiredness, anxiety and/or perplexity detected and measured? How are these emotions translated into algorithmic rules?

‘Too Much Information’ discusses the face as an arena of dispute for attentive markets of so-called realist emotional profiling and dives into the history of computer generated imagery (CGI) technology, a space of simulation and speculation. This talk will be an occasion to dive deeper in those layered operations, wondering about the extent to which values of accuracy are valid when studying mediated emotions from an intersectional perspective.

Bio: http://technofle.sh/cv.php

 

THE MORE-THAN-HUMAN MASCARADE (open discussion)
Moderators: Roc Herms, Martí Sánchez Fibla y Jara Rocha

Activity led by Roc Herms, Martí Sánchez-Fibla and Jara Rocha, in which we discussed some of the issues raised in the three discussions conducted in the current edition of DONE.