As chatbots become our newest social obsession, it is more important than ever to explore the practices, pleasures and pitfalls of falling in (love) with AI through the lens of the other AI: automated intimacies. Most discussions have tended to approach artificial intelligence from a cognitive perspective, as a tool to help with mental or menial tasks, even as users evolve from seeking information to seeking companionship. In The Other AI, we will concentrate on the ‘other’ side of so-called intelligent machines: the intimate, sensual, emotional appeal that these machines make to us as creatures of feeling.

Spread over two days at the V2 Lab for the Unstable Media and Het Nieuwe Instituut, the event will be divided along the lines of sex and love. On Day One @ the V2 Lab artists and academics will analyse ‘Desiring Machines: Sex and Robots’ to ask how sexual technologies are changing, or revealing, erotic practices. On Day Two @ het Nieuwe Instituut, performances, lectures and workshops will focus on ‘Virtual Love and Companionship – for Real’, asking after the utopian and dystopian possibilities of technologized love: how real does it feel?

MA students and PhD candidates from a Dutch institution can attend the event free of charge by enrolling to receive 2 ECTS through the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis (NICA). Registration before May 8th is mandatory: email Misha Kavka m.kavka@uva.nl to register. Include your name, institutional affiliation and programme, student number and institutional email address. 

SPEAKERS / PERFORMERS

• Nor Akelei (independent artist)
• Ilker Bahar (University of Amsterdam)
• Laura A. Dima (independent artist)
• Otti Ferraris (independent artist)
• Alicia Framis (artist and lecturer)
• Maaike van der Horst (University of Twente)
• Misha Kavka (University of Amsterdam)
• Lancel/Maat (independent artists)
• Delfina Martinez Pandiani (University of Amsterdam)
• Pulp Apparatus (artists collective)
• Christos Tombras (psychoanalyst and lecturer)

PROGRAMME: FRIDAY, 8 MAY @ V2_

Session One: academic presentations – 15:30-17:30 (doors open at 15:00)

Misha Kavka – “What Do We Desire When We Desire Machines?”

Ilker Bahar – “Glowing Tentacles and Glitching Penises: Rethinking Desire through Virtual Reality”

Maaike van der Horst – “Filling the Hole of (S)existential Anxiety? Sex Robots and their Phallic Promises”

Session Two: artistic presentations – 19:00-21:00 (doors open at 18:30)

Nor Akelei, “Protect Me from What I Want”

Laura A. Dima – “In Search of Ghost Affects”

Alicia Framis – “Hybrid Couple”

Drinks/bar: 21:00-23:00

PROGRAMME: SATURDAY, 9 MAY @ Nieuwe Instituut

Session One: academic presentations – 15:30-17:30 (doors open at 15:00)

Misha Kavka – Introduction

Delfina Martinez Pandiani – “(Un)Predictable Strangers”

Christos Tombras – “Love in the Time of TikTok”

Session Two: artistic presentations – 19:00-21:30 (doors open at 18:30)

Lancel/Maat – “Kissing Data and Embracing Angels”

Otti Ferraris – “Becoming Hypervisible: Upskirting, Drag, and Voluntary Surveillance as Self-Agency”

Pulp Apparatus – “Sentimental Tremors”

Closing roundtable: scholars & artists

Drinks/bar: 21:00-23:00