The 4th European Culture and Technology Lab+ Annual Conference

The 4th Annual Conference hosted by the European University of Technology and organized by the European Culture and Technology Laboratory ‘ECT Lab+’ aims to bring together experts from the Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences, Technology, and other fields exploring ways of enquiry that enrich (non-)positivist ways of knowing as well as post-structuralist critique
towards them. The advent of Artificial Intelligence related technologies is transforming how we live, work and study. The EU is currently drafting the EU AI Act which attempts to put in
place a process of legislation for Artificial Intelligence. These changes won’t transform only the way of living but the built environment, both in terms of public space and urban form.

The current moment is characterized by competing extremes of techno utopianism and doomladen techno pessimism. The framing of the conference is to move beyond simplistic technophila and technophobia and to pose the questions about we can co-evolve with these new technologies which combine machine learning and large-scale calculations. Accordingly,
this conference seeks to avoid these extremes and instead critically assess the technical operations of AI in terms of Epistemology, Ethics and Aesthetics. Specifically, it will focus on
the limitations and material operation of AI technology from transdisciplinary perspectives.
The conference will raise questions about what AI (or bêtise as functional stupidity) cannot do, therefore to determine the relationship between incalculable and calculable between what cannot be measure as well as what can be measured. The inherent limitation of calculation and confusions between calculation, measurement and intelligence where the very process of thinking noesis is reduced to calculation.

Under these premises, we invite papers, panels, performances, workshops, seminars, poster presentations, artistic submissions, artist talks, installations, and interventions that address
the relationship between technology, epistemology, and design. The open call is directed to scholars, philosophers, scientists, artists, designers, and creative practitioners.

Please submit a 500-word description/ abstract (excluding references) for your proposed artistic intervention/ paper presentation etc. by June 10th 2024.

Please use the PDF-file format for submission and render your text completely anonymous (metadata included) to allow for blind refereeing. Please send your title and abstract to: ectlabconference2024@univ-tech.eu

The notification of acceptance will be June 20th 2024.

An edited volume of conference proceedings. Previous proceedings can be found here.

Possible interventions or responses could consider but are not restricted to:

• The changing definition of AI.
• The Impact of AI on knowledge construction and questions of judgement in different disciplines (Law, Medicine, Art, Education, Engineering etc.)
• The relationship between humans and technology.
• Issues of responsibility and AI such as copyright and ecological impact.
• Questions of policy (see the EU AI Act).
• The Future of Labour and Leisure.
• Artistic questions of authorship and interpretation (“digital hermeneutics”).
• Issues of diversification, homogenization in AI.
• Post-instrumentality, speculative design and Post-humanist reformulations of AI.
• Idiomatic, Aesthetics and poesis.
• Functional Stupidity.
• Questions of Natural Intelligence.
• The Impact of AI on Public Space and the Built Environment, Urban Management.
• Digital Twinning.
• Smart Cities and AI Infrastructures.
• The aesthetics of Minecraft and the Robotisation of life.

Keynote Speakers

• Anne ALOMBERT - University of Paris 8
• David BATES - University of California, Berkeley
• Adrian GROZA - Technical University of Cluj-Napoca
• Alberto ROMELE - Sorbonne Nouvelle University

For queries please contact connell.vaughan@tudublin.ie