The Uncertain Image

The technics of the second wave of network societies are accompanied by an exponential increase in the socio-technical production, circulation, and processing of images – images different in character. This development has challenged existing ontologies of the image as well as the paradigms of representation and forms of aesthetic realism.

Today, images are in different informational and analogico-digital ways. Images belong to and enact an expanded field of functions whose variability foster aesthetic uncertainties: spatial scales vary, eventual and durational realizations vary, just as the experiental potentials and actualizations of images vary.

This workshop discusses the aesthetic uncertainties that accompany the contemporary development of more and more graphic, photographic, and moving images and new kinds of images. In particular, this workshop seeks to address the question concerning the relation between the imagination and the contemporary uncertainties emerging in the existing techno-aesthetic regime of certainty.

The workshop is open to all interested but has a limited number of available seats (first come, first served). Please sign up no later than May 10 by sending an e-mail to Sayuri Alsman.

Speakers: Thomas Bjørnsten, Lene Hansen, Adam Harvey, Pepita Hesselberth, Sarah Kember, Max Liljefors, Lila Lee Morrison, Mette Mortensen, Gregor Noll, Kim Steenstrup Pedersen, Holger Schulze, Daniel Steuer, Mette Marie Zacher Sørensen, Kristoffer Ørum

Hosted by: Uncertain Archives and organized by Daniela Agostinho, Ulrik Ekman, Nanna Thylstrup and Kristin Veel

Programme

Day one

10:00 - 10:15  Introduction

10:15 - 11:45  Panel 1

Chair: Ulrik Ekman

  • Pepita Hesselberth: “Creative Control: Superimposition, Datafication, and the Image of Uncertainty”
  • Adam Harvey: “The Irrationality of Appearance: Computer Vision and Visual Information Asymmetries”

11:45 - 12:45  Lunch

12:45 - 14.15  Panel 2

Chair: Ulrik Ekman

  • Kim Steenstrup Pedersen: “The pros and cons of modern computer vision - when does a computer get confused while interpreting images”
  • Kristoffer Ørum: “Ambiguous physiognomy”

14:15 - 14:30  Coffee

14:15 - 15:45  Panel 3

Chair: Kristin Veel

  • Lila Lee-Morrison: “Eigenface and the composite portrait: an historical study into statistical ways of seeing”
  • Mette Marie Zacher Sørensen and Thomas Bjørnsten: “The Uncertainties of Facial Emotion Recognition Technologies and the Automation of Emotional Labour”

15:45 - 16:00  Coffee

16:00 - 17:15  Group Work for speakers - led by Ulrik Ekman

Day two

9:00 - 9:30  Coffee & Croissants

9:30 - 11:.45  Panel 4

Chair: Nanna Thylstrup

  • Max Liljefors: “Technovision as Omnivoyance and Blindness”
  • Daniel Steuer: “Blind Practice: On Uncertainty in The Emerging World of War”
  • Gregor Noll: "The Emergent Form of War and Its Law"

11:45 - 12:45  Lunch

12:45 - 14:00  Panel 5

Chair: Daniela Agostinho

  • Mette Mortensen: “Constructing, Confirming, and Contesting Icons: The Alan Kurdi Imagery appropriated by #humanitywashedashore, Ai Weiwei, and Charlie Hebdo”

  • Lene Hansen: “The Security Politics of the Uncertain Image: From Instant Icons to Daily Visual Flows”

14:00 - 14:15  Coffee

14:15 - 15:45  Panel 6

Chair: Daniela Agostinho

  • Sarah Kember: "After the Anthropocene: The Photographic For Earthly Survival?"
  • Holger Schulze: “The Precision of Sensibility: How to Deal With Epistemological Uncertainty?”

15:45 - 16:15  Final session