Dr. Rasa Smite will talk about cognitive visualizations, the fragility of AI and intelligence of natural ecosystems. As today AI plays an important role in society – it also changes our relations with the environment. The integration of AI into the everyday lives raises important questions about the future of culture, ecology, and aesthetics.

Ecology and the relationship with nature plays an important role today in digital art practices, as it often uses ideas from the open cultures, about sharing resources and tackling social issues through participatory and social mechanisms, as well as addressing issues such as renewable energy, sustainability biodiversity, or interspecies relations. Dr Smite will discuss the emerging 'techno-ecological' aesthetics by analyzing her own artistic practice, that combines sonic, sensual and visual experiences, whereby creating poetics of green energy and revealing ecosystematic intelligence.

She also will talk about the main ideas behind "Un/Green", the forthcoming exhibition and RIXC festival (July 4-7, 2019, Riga) that aims at complicating the pervasively employed notion of “green” by providing a cross-disciplinary platform for the discussions and artistic interventions exploring one of the most paradoxical and broadest topics of our times.

Rasa Smite, guest professor in Media Art at HfG Karlsruhe, is artist and researcher, working with science and emerging technologies. She is co-founder of RIXC Center for New Media Culture in Riga, Latvia (http://rixc.org), curator of annual RIXC's Art and Science festivals (festival2019.rixc.org), and a chief-editor of Acoustic Space, peer-reviewed publication series (acousticspacejournal.com). She holds a PhD; her book (dissertation) – “Creative Networks. In the Rear-View Mirror of Eastern European History”, was published by Amsterdam Institute for Network Culture (2012). In her artistic practice, Rasa Smite works together with Raitis Smits creating networked, visionary, and innovative artworks. Their pioneering internet project – Xchange Net.Radio Network was awarded with PRIX Ars Electronica (1998). More recent artworks Talk to Me – on human plant communication, and Biotricity – exploring a poetics of green energy, have been exhibited in HeK, Ars Electronica Center, National Science and Technology Museum in Stockholm, Van Abbe Museum for Modern and Contemporary Arts, ZKM, Venice Architecture Biennial, and elsewhere.

http://smitesmits.com

The lecture will take place on 30.04.2019 (in English).

19.30 pm
room 101