Critical Climate Computing: Salon #1

An evening of talks, films, art, and performances about computational art in the age of technological and climate crises, hosted by UAL’s Critical Climate Computing group.

Please join us for a talk with Superflux’s Anab Jain, an installation by Shinji Toya, a film screening with Nella Piatek, and a performance from Sophie Huckfield, followed by a panel with the artists.

The evening will end with an afterparty in the space with refreshments and an opportunity to meet, discuss, and scheme with likeminded folks in our private patio space.

Bios:

Anab Jain:

Anab co-founded the award-winning studio Superflux with her partner Jon Ardern; one of the first studios to pioneer speculative design, critical foresight, design fiction and experiential futures for businesses. Clients include Google AI, the Cabinet Office, Sony, the government of UAE and the United Nations Development Program.

With 13 years' experience in contributing to the fields of speculative and futures design, Anab and her team built cautionary tales, super fictions, future archaeologies and immersive simulations. These materially-present opportunities to explore possible futures, be they living with urban floods or food shortages, allow the implementation of strategies today for this climate-altered present.

Shinji Toya:

Shinji Toya (1984) is an artist from Japan, based in London (UK) for over 15 years. His practice is process-driven and uses computer programming, the Internet, Artificial Intelligence, participation, video, image manipulation and painting.

Toya works in the domain of critical digital art and his work is based on the image-based visual art practice that utilises data and algorithms. The topics that his previous projects dealt with include the data economy of the post-digital era, digital memory, surveillance and the materiality of media.

Nella Piatek:

Nella Piatek is a Polish critical designer, researcher, academic and cyberwitch based in London. As a critical designer, Piatek considers ways to challenge the evolution of the human in conjunction with digital technology, by paying attention to the socio-political and eco-economic implications and values that this entanglement conjures. As a researcher, they test how eco-feminism, cyborg theory, post-humanist thought and media archaeology can aid in such practice.

Sophie Huckfield:

Sophie Huckfield (she/they) is a working class artist, designer and writer.

Their practice is collaborative, political and site-specific. Underpinned by the concept of polyphony and intersectional feminist practice, their work is concerned with platforming and reframing overlooked voices, histories, stories and experiences, which connect to themes around labour, technology, craft, social-class, and (de)industrialisation. When developing work she draws on archival and research materials to co-produce multidisciplinary artworks which move between video, sound, repurposed tools and sculpture, installations and writings.

About the Critical Climate Computing group:

We in the 3C group discuss the climate crisis as a hyperobject that intersects with many forms of disempowerment and injustice around the world, allowing for a wide range of social, racial, and economic justices to be understood in relation to the climatic. This facilitates an interdisciplinary approach to the research, tying it into other critical projects adjacent to climate and technology, such as decolonialism, critical technology studies, critical race studies, and algorithmic justice.

The work we undertake as a group focuses on carbon and technological literacy around computational systems and their uses, promoting uses of them in arts and design practice that modify, hack, or employ these tools in ways that reduce consumption, minimise waste, and engage with their hidden functionalities to propose mindful and critically reflexive engagements with them. We do this work in and outside of academia, with students, communities, publics, and arts and culture organisations.