Dialog
A space for discourse between expert and aspiring creators, open to general audiences.
Previous Sessions:
TechArt & Climate :
Art.Science.Tech Encounters in the era of climate crisis
23r January’23 | 5:30 PM IST
What happens when deep science meets the arts? Why is transdisciplinary thinking needed for our future present lives?
Join us for an engaging discussion at our first BeFantastic Dialog for 2023.
We are joined by Mike Phillips, the Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts at the University of Plymouth in the UK). Monica Bello, the Curator and Head of Arts at CERN, Switzerland;
and Dr Mukund Thattai, Professor at National Centre for Biological Sciences (India).
TechArt & Society :
Bodies, Body Politics & Machines
10th November | 5:30 PM IST
The body has always been politicized, but it was not until more recently that we began to pay attention to how bodies could be used as political tools. Bodies, Body Politics, Machines explores this shift in thinking about the body and its relationship with technology. It looks at how these new relationships between humans and machines are changing our ideas about ourselves as human beings—and what this means for society at large.
Join the conversation with Sabine Himmelsbach & Fronte Vacuo
TechArt & Society :
Behind AI Systems
13th October | 5:30 PM IST
Artificial Intelligence, algorithmic systems and machine decision making are being embedded in many areas of society – policing, justice, finance, banking, shopping and navigation just to name a few. These systems are affecting people’s lives in ways we can’t often understand, and they are designed in ways that infinitely replicate or even augment human bias.
In this conversation, we are exploring how and by whom these systems are constructed and designed, who benefits and who is disadvantaged, how they impact society and what the ethical implications are.
Join us for an interactive session with Dr. Erinma Ochu and Dr. Urvashi Aneja.
Creating TechArt :
Intelligence in the Age of AI
15th September | 5:30 PM IST
As a number of artificial intelligence systems prove themselves progressively more capable of appearing “intelligent” in ways that might appear beyond the capacities of any individual human being, has there emerged a need in humanity’s vanity to reimagine intelligence? Or does “intelligence” signify deeper characteristics of what makes us “human”, such as the capacity for empathy and the ability towards deliberate abstraction, and will there come a time when machines might embody these features as well?
Join the conversation with Anna Ridler, Adrian Notz and Veeranganakumari Solanki.
TechArt + Climate
3rd June | 5:30 PM IST
BeFantastic is proud to present Swiss video artist, curator and art theorist Ursula Biemann & her artworks to our community. Acknowledging the need to understand the distant implications of immediate actions within the climate narrative, we screened three of her video essays as part of an ongoing series of “Climate Conversations” intended to expand our understanding of the ongoing Climate Emergency.
The video essays screened during this online event are Acoustic Ocean (2017), Subatlantic (2015) and Deep Weather (2013), followed by an interactive session with Ursula as she unpacks her motivations and her process. The conversation was moderated by Vasanthi Mariadass, faculty, researcher, and Dean for New Humanities and Design at Srishti Manipal Institute for Art Design and Technology, Bengaluru.
@India Art Fair, 2022
Neural Networking
30th April, 2022
Pooja Sood of Khoj International Artists Association, Adrian Notz of ETH AI Centre and Jonathan Kennedy of British Council discuss the new and emerging techart practices, followed by a luncheon conversation between invitees on the topic of humanising technologies like AI through art and its ability to creatively engage audiences on pressing global issues. The session concluded with the drop of RadBots, a preview of video bots available as NFTs with an aim to explore possibilities of owning interactive AI-based techart and its encounters with the art market.
@India Art Fair, 2022
NFTease
30th April, 2022
Renowned multimedia and NFT artist Raghava K.K., Aparajita Jain of the Indian NFT platform Terrain.art and Om Malviya of blockchain platform Tezos India demystify the complexities around NFTs, enabling more people to make informed decisions while navigating the field. The conversation was hosted by Kamya Ramachandran of techart platform BeFantastic and moderated by Radbot creator Vasundhara Das.
@India Art Fair, 2022
Open Source & Access
21 April | 1:30 PM CET | 5:00 pm IST
In C3’s first open Dialog session, we will be joined by Vaibhav Chabbra and Padmini Ray Murray who will be reflecting on the politics of access within the context of Open Source based on their personal experiences. Defining “access” for a philosophy that appears to necessitate opportunities for technological literacy can be fraught in a world plagued by various inequalities. Through this Dialog we hope to better understand what terms such as “Open Source” and “access” could mean in India, and other countries in the Global South.
Women Leadership & TechArt
9 December | 5.30pm IST
Taking a cue from Dr. Patricia Gestoso from the Kaspersky report saying “you can’t be what you can’t see” this Dialog seeks to discuss the trajectories of women leaders at various intersections of art and technology so as to make these paths visible to a new generation of women who might be drawn towards these fields.
Join Jahnavi Phalkey, Honor Harger, Natalie Kane, Giulia Bini and Rachel Uwa in discussion.
Sahil Thappa on Open Source
Open Source for creative practice? Open source beyond the world of Software? How open is Open? Is Open free? Sahil Thappa — A Maker, Tinkerer and an alumnus of the Product Design programme at National Institute of Design — was our guest speaker for the second session of C3(Codes, Creativity, Communities). Having worked with organisations and firms like Mozilla, Riverside School, Design Against Crime, University of Dundee, he is back at his alma mater and teaches making, open-source and systems thinking. During the session, he raised important questions about open source — its nature, utility and significance in today’s world.
Showcasing TechArt
14 October | 74.30pm IST
The digital frontier holds very different meanings for people, each tempered by individual experiences in a space that has seen unimagined development and proliferation in the past decade. Art events often have the capacity to introduce paradigms within these fledgling worlds that may have been hitherto unexplored by their audiences, but how might curators navigate these spaces to create experiences that can be cognizant of the latest technology and the cultural contexts of their exhibition?
Join us to catch Diane Drubay, Luba Elliott and Boris Magrini in conversation with Srinivas Aditya Mopidevi.
TechArt + Climate
23rd September | 4.30pm IST
“Code Red for Humanity” read the headlines about the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Those who want to maintain the status quo call this the work of alarmists. Science is proving the alarmists are indeed right.
Join us as we invite a set of diverse global climate activists to discuss and exchange ideas around how we can shift this narrative using innovative Tech+Art as a compelling medium.
Dialogs from 2020
BEFANTASTIC 