Michigan Meeting Fall Symposium: Life with/in Digital Objects
Andre Brock (Georgia Tech), Carmen Aguilar y Wedge (HyphenLabs), Lionel Robert (U-M School of Information), Sophia Brueckner (U-M Art and Design)
Schedule of Events for Friday, 10/26
12:00-12:45 meet and greet lunch
12:45-2:15 Flash Talks by Panelists and facilitated conversation around key questions in digital objects
2:15-2:45 coffee and cake intermission
2:45-4:00: Bring Your Stuff activity around digital objects brought by participants and attendees.
4:00-5:00: Viz/VR lab open house
Everyone thinks they know what digital means. So pervasive are digital technologies in the 21st century that it is difficult to find critical distance from this immersive new world of ubiquitous connectivity, social media feeds, smartphones, mobile apps, responsive design, algorithmic recommendation systems, and voice-controlled home shopping assistants. While the question “what is the digital?” is compelling, the more pressing question might be instead: what does it mean to be alive in the digital age?
The 2019 Michigan Meetings will be a year-long event that critically engages with the big issues, urgent consequences, and radical possibilities for grappling with the meaning of life in this era of digital ubiquity. Whether defined as “animated corporeal existence,” “vitality,” or “to continue, to remain,” we see a profound opportunity to approach the digital world through a spectrum of the meaning of life-ness - alive, liveness, animated, lifelike, life-adjacent, consciousness, awareness, attention, awoke.
Digital culture reconfigures the way we know our bodies, our selves, our work, our objects and living spaces, our politics, and our sense of community. Like prior technologies, the digital gives rise to distinct new modes of experiencing time and space. Life is lived through constant network connectivity, GPS positioning, software databases, biotechnologies and wearable activity trackers, ‘smart’ buildings, cities, and homes, migrant digital labor, computational modeling, and the management of unfathomable streams of big data, and artificial intelligence. Subsequently, life is also lived through anxieties about identity theft, hacking, online harassment, piracy, surveillance and drone warfare.
Across campus, these questions will emerge in courses, colloquia, lectures, and informal conversations among students, faculty, staff, and peers. We aim to support meaningful and rewarding work in the technology industries or in academic research by giving students and faculty the history, critical perspective, and rigorous deep-dive into humanistic questions of “new” media life with this 2019 theme.
Panel Speakers:
Andre Brock, Georgia Tech
Carmen Aguilar y Wedge, HyphenLabs
Lionel Robert, U-M School of Information
Sophia Brueckner, U-M Art and Design
The 2019 Michigan Meeting is co-organized by:
Sarah Murray, University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts associate professor of film, television, and media
Lisa Nakamura, University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts associate professor of American Studies
Ellie Abrons, University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning associate professor of architecture
Megan Sapnar Ankerson, University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts associate professor of communication
McLain Clutter, University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning associate professor of architecture
Paul Conway, University of Michigan School of Information associate professor of information
Adam Fure, University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning associate professor of architecture
*Please note: the Main Michigan Meetings Summit is Thursday and Friday, May 9 and 10, 2019, Rackham Building
12:00-12:45 meet and greet lunch
12:45-2:15 Flash Talks by Panelists and facilitated conversation around key questions in digital objects
2:15-2:45 coffee and cake intermission
2:45-4:00: Bring Your Stuff activity around digital objects brought by participants and attendees.
4:00-5:00: Viz/VR lab open house
Everyone thinks they know what digital means. So pervasive are digital technologies in the 21st century that it is difficult to find critical distance from this immersive new world of ubiquitous connectivity, social media feeds, smartphones, mobile apps, responsive design, algorithmic recommendation systems, and voice-controlled home shopping assistants. While the question “what is the digital?” is compelling, the more pressing question might be instead: what does it mean to be alive in the digital age?
The 2019 Michigan Meetings will be a year-long event that critically engages with the big issues, urgent consequences, and radical possibilities for grappling with the meaning of life in this era of digital ubiquity. Whether defined as “animated corporeal existence,” “vitality,” or “to continue, to remain,” we see a profound opportunity to approach the digital world through a spectrum of the meaning of life-ness - alive, liveness, animated, lifelike, life-adjacent, consciousness, awareness, attention, awoke.
Digital culture reconfigures the way we know our bodies, our selves, our work, our objects and living spaces, our politics, and our sense of community. Like prior technologies, the digital gives rise to distinct new modes of experiencing time and space. Life is lived through constant network connectivity, GPS positioning, software databases, biotechnologies and wearable activity trackers, ‘smart’ buildings, cities, and homes, migrant digital labor, computational modeling, and the management of unfathomable streams of big data, and artificial intelligence. Subsequently, life is also lived through anxieties about identity theft, hacking, online harassment, piracy, surveillance and drone warfare.
Across campus, these questions will emerge in courses, colloquia, lectures, and informal conversations among students, faculty, staff, and peers. We aim to support meaningful and rewarding work in the technology industries or in academic research by giving students and faculty the history, critical perspective, and rigorous deep-dive into humanistic questions of “new” media life with this 2019 theme.
Panel Speakers:
Andre Brock, Georgia Tech
Carmen Aguilar y Wedge, HyphenLabs
Lionel Robert, U-M School of Information
Sophia Brueckner, U-M Art and Design
The 2019 Michigan Meeting is co-organized by:
Sarah Murray, University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts associate professor of film, television, and media
Lisa Nakamura, University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts associate professor of American Studies
Ellie Abrons, University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning associate professor of architecture
Megan Sapnar Ankerson, University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts associate professor of communication
McLain Clutter, University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning associate professor of architecture
Paul Conway, University of Michigan School of Information associate professor of information
Adam Fure, University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning associate professor of architecture
*Please note: the Main Michigan Meetings Summit is Thursday and Friday, May 9 and 10, 2019, Rackham Building
| Building: | Duderstadt Center |
|---|---|
| Event Type: | Conference / Symposium |
| Tags: | conference, Culture, Discussion, Diversity Equity and Inclusion, Food, Free, Graduate Students, Information and Technology, Interdisciplinary, Networking, Research, Undergraduate Students, Workshop |
| Source: | Happening @ Michigan from Digital Studies, A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning, School of Information, Department of Film, Television, and Media, Penny W Stamps School of Art & Design, Department of American Culture, Communication and Media |
