Ⓥ V.3 Virtual Panel
Tracks
Track 5
Track 6
Track 7
Monday, June 24, 2024 |
11:40 AM - 12:30 PM |
Virtual |
Overview
Towards a Culturally Safe Virtual Spaces for ALL
Details
Speaker
Dr Lisa So Young Park
Postdoc
School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong
P: Towards Culturally Safe Virtual Spaces for ALL
Abstract
Culturally safe spaces are crucial for unpacking and acting upon lived experiences of being marginalized for one’s culture, ethnicity, gender, or class. These spaces are carefully curated to shield interlocutors from bias, victim blaming, dismissal, or attacks often encountered in everyday contexts, while facilitating open dialogues between like- minded members to validate personal experiences for brainstorming and implementing strategies, old and new. By confiding in one another, it builds support networks and communities to act together, establishing a critical mass of individuals to push the agenda forward. However, when these spaces happen online, the traditional framework of safe space making faces previously unforeseen challenges such as sentiment polarization or in-group/out-group dynamics. Further, given the geopolitical skew of global infrastructures, discourses in certain regions become a de-facto referencing frame for the rest of the globe due to academic dependency. This panel, therefore, invites a media art scholar, a sound artist, an AI scientist, and a choreographer/scholar to reflect on these issues from their respective vantage points to discuss critical impediments and how we may create different types of safe spaces that are open to ALL by mitigating the limitations of digital sociality through new technological affordances.
Biography
Lisa Park SoYoung is a South-Korean-born and Hong Kong-based media artist and scholar, and a producer/curator who specializes in virtual/hybrid arts-tech happenings. Lisa’s medium agnostic experimentations with art-making, expanded curation, and academic research culminates in interdisciplinary action research geared towards expanding the ontological plurality in the media art-world. She is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong, where she chairs Leonardo LASER Hong Kong. Lisa has a BFA in Visual Arts from York University, and an MFA and PhD in Creative Media from City University of Hong Kong. www.lisapark.net
Dr Ken Ueno
Professor
UC Berkeley
Panelist
Biography
Ken Ueno is a composer, vocalist, sound artist, and author. His music and installations has been performed and installed around the world. He is known for inventing vocal techniques, composing “person-specific” music, instrumentalizing architecture, and for his activism in decolonizing classical music. As a vocalist, he has performed his concerto with orchestras in Boston, New York, Poland, Lithuania, Thailand, North Carolina, and California. Ueno’s writings have been published by the Oxford Handbook, the New York Times, Palgrave Macmillan, and Wiley & Sons. He holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University and his bio appears in The Grove Dictionary of American Music. kueno@berkeley.edu
Dr. De Kai
Professor
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Panelist
Biography
De Kai’s work in AI, language, music, creativity, and ethics urges cultures to interrelate. Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at HKUST and Distinguished Research Scholar at Berkeley's ICSI, he was named ACL Founding Fellow for pioneering contributions to machine learning of AIs like Google/Yahoo/Microsoft Translate. De Kai is also creator of one of Hong Kong’s best known world music collectives, ReOrientate, and was one of eight inaugural members of Google's AI ethics council. Debrett’s named him one of the 100 most influential people in Hong Kong, and he serves as independent director of the AI governance think tank The Future Society. Most recently De Kai’ has been featured by The New York Times and on the cover of Germany’s “Human” magazine, and his book about AI and humanity will appear this coming year from MIT Press.
Mr Sydney Skybetter
Deputy Dean of the College for Curriculum and Co-Curriculum
Brown University
Panelist
Biography
Sydney Skybetter is a choreographer. Hailed by the Financial Times as “One of the world’s foremost thinkers on the intersection of dance and emerging technologies,” Sydney’s choreography has been performed at such venues as The Kennedy Center and Jacob’s Pillow. His work has been supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, and a Creative Capital “Wild Futures” Award. He is a Senior Affiliate of metaLAB at Harvard University, a frequent contributor to WIRED and Dance Magazine, the Founder of the Conference for Research on Choreographic Interfaces and Host of the podcast, “Dances with Robots.” Sydney serves as the Deputy Dean of the College for Curriculum and Co-Curriculum, is an Associate Professor of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies, and was the first choreographer at Brown University to receive tenure. www.skybetter.org
Session chair
Lisa So Young Park
Postdoc
School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong
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