Aboagora - Between Arts and Sciences
Turku, Finland, 13 - 15 August 2013
Registration is now open, and closes on May 31, 2013.
For full programme, online registration and conference tickets, please visit www.aboagora.fi.
"The Human Machine"
Aboagora is an event that promotes dialogue between the arts, humanities and sciences, and aims at challenging and breaking boundaries between arts and the scholarly world. The programme consists of workshops, keynote lectures and concerts. Aboagora is a joint effort by the Turku Music Festival, the Department of Cultural History at the University of Turku and the Donner Institute, Åbo Akademi University.
Aboagora 2013 discusses the complex relationships between man and machine. The human being itself can be viewed as a corporeal machine, an assemblage of forces, actions and mechanisms, from the optics of the eye to the processes of cognition. It is also possible to interpret the machine as an extension of human senses. The boundaries between man and machine can be blurred by using technological devices as integral parts of the human body.
The theme 'The Human Machine' can also pay attention on all those practices that create humanness in a machine: How we assume machines to feel and think? What kind of personal qualities do they have? Machines have also served as the vehicles of human creativity, as tools but also as the expressions of abstract thoughts. Aboagora wishes to address this fascinating area that has been a fertile ground for artistic and scientific explorations during recent decades.
Keynote speakers include Bruce Sterling (Science Fiction Author, USA), Kevin Warwick (Professor of Cybernetics, UK), Mia Consalvo (Research Chair of Game Studies and Design, Canada), Timo Airaksinen (Philosopher, Finland).
Among the workshop members are Tuomas Lukka (Zenrobotics Corporation), Timo Kaitaro (Philosophy & Neuropsychology), Kathleen Richardson (Social Anthropology), Mika Pantzar (Consumer Research Centre), Alf Rehn (Chair of Management and Organization), Jussi Parikka (Media Theory), John Armitage (Media Arts), Samuli Torssonen (Film director), Veijo Hietala (Media Studies), Mia Lövheim (Sociology of Religion), Susanna Paasonen (Media Studies), Johanna Sumiala (Media Studies), André Jansson (Media & Communication Studies), and Alice Della Penna (Biology).
The registration fee for the symposium is 45 € (for students and post-graduate students 25 €). It includes participation for all keynote lectures, admission to all workshops, three lunches and coffee/tea, and conference reception.
WELCOME!
Contact:
Coordinator Asko Nivala
Cultural History, University of Turku
asko.nivala(at)utu.fi
phone +358 (0)2 333 6294