Tickets for each of Friday and Saturday evenings are $10, and are available at Flavour Hall (500 College St. Toronto 416-839-9943) or at the door, first come first served. Space is limited.
Following a noon speaker series, March 21 12:00pm-1:50pm, Prof. Ian Kerr, University of Ottawa, R. Owens, and Prof. Steve Mann for Speaker Series, in Flavelle Dining Room, University of Toronto, Speaking on Cyborg Law. Open to the public.
The McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto presents an evening's dialogue between Stelarc, an internationally recognized Australian performance artist and public intellectual in the area of new media and technology, and Steve Mann, the acclaimed inventor of the wearable computer and the world's first photographic cyborg. Stelarc and Mann have both probed the nature and workings of the body and mind through technological mediation. The dialogue will be a probe into a future of awareness, the nature of consciousness reacting to technological extensions, and the ensuing effects upon individuals, culture, and society. Audience questions and participation are encouraged, and a glogged transmission of the evening's event as seen through Steve Mann's wearable EyeTap system will be broadcast to the AD ASTRA 2003 science fiction & fantasy convention. This event follows the opening of Stelarc's "The Prosthetic Head" at Interaccess Gallery.
DECONcert in the Key of EEG: Regenerative Music An outgrowth of Toronto cyborg and PhD candidate James Fung's research into biofeedback, DECONcert presents the world's first regenerative soundscapes in which audience members actively (and unconsciously) choreograph a collective cyborg consciousness by contributing their own brainwave patterns. The resulting atmosphere is an open-ended and participatory experience incorporating leading-edge EEG (brainwave) technology. Regenerative Music places the human being into the feedback loop of a computational artistic process.
DECONcert Hertz: Wearable Brain Waves The conception of neuroscience researcher-cum-fashion designer Ariel Garten, "DECONcert Hertz" is a play on the popular music concert phenomenon, wherein one walks away from the performance with a t-shirt of the band. However, in DECONcert, the audience is the band so the concertgoer walks away with a print of his or her own band width, in Hertz, on an EEG shirt. As our recorded brain waves are continually emitted unbeknownst to us, they may constitute yet another form of communication or surveillance.
The History and Future of Wearable Computing This exhibit features selected highlights from the invention, research, design, and development of the wearable computer. The continuum between seminal art installations and Steve Mann's next-generation wearable computing prototypes will be presented in a rare public display. The exhibit condenses thirty years of design into an "executive summary" interval of time and space by using high-thoughtwidth demonstration media.
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Deconism events are presented in association with the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology, University of Toronto. Funding for this event is provided by Thought Technology Ltd.
Ongoing work is funded by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Toronto Arts Council.