Image courtesy of O’Honey Collective

PANEL DISCUSSIONS Co-presented with Artscape Youngplace

Sunday May 31, 2015, 10am-3pm at Artscape Youngplace

180 Shaw Street, Flex Studio Silver (Rm 107)

10:00-1200 | Sounding/Surviving: the role of music in health, emotion and memory

Dipna Horra  Media artist
David Bobier  Founder & Director, VibraFusionLab
Jo Simalaya Alcampo  Interdisciplinary artist and writer

This panel will explore the ways in which music can be used as tool for therapy and rememberance. In an increasingly globalized world, migration and networked technologies have both diffused and enriched cultures through the fluid storage and transference of sound. What are the possibilities for personal and collective healing through the integration of audio technologies and aesthetic experiences?

1:00-3:00 | Instruments of Change: the politics of voice and voice recognition technology

Katherine Kennedy  Artist and Lecturer, Electroacoustics, Concordia University
David Cecchetto  Assistant Professor (Critical Digital Theory), Department of Humanities, York University 
Cosmin Munteanu  Assistant Professor at the Institute for Communication, Culture, Information, and Technology (University of Toronto, Mississauga) & Associate Director of the Technologies for Ageing Gracefully lab

Voice recognition technology has existed for decades, but despite advances in audio recording much of voice recognition software has remained crude and inaccurate. Recently, however, scientists have begun to experiment with ‘deep neural networks’ or building software that emulates processes in the human brain to recognize, predict and translate speech patterns. With the commercial tech market looking toward voice-activation as an attractive functionality for consumers, what does this move towards artificial intelligence in voice recognition mean for the future of our society, both practically and philosophically?