On the brink of public release, technologies often debut through theatrical performance. CHI fellow Li Cornfeld presents her research on how these spectacles, staged at tech conferences for industry audiences, shape the emergence of technology under capitalism. Combining critical frames from media studies and performance studies, this work investigates the relationship between promotional practice, cultural production, and technological advancement.
Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint is the author of the lyric novel "The End of Peril, the End of Enmity, the End of Strife, A Haven", which Jenny Boully called “an amazingly beautiful changeling of a book,” and which won the 2019 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature. She also wrote the family history project Zat Lun, which won the 2018 Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize. Her work has appeared in Black Warrior Review, TriQuarterly, and Kenyon Review Online and has been translated into Burmese and Lithuanian. She is a visiting writer at Amherst College.
Nick Seaver draws on ethnographic fieldwork with developers of algorithmic music recommenders in the US to theorize “interpretability,” describing how engineers interpret supposedly uninterpretable systems. Engineers are not uniquely able to “see” inside algorithmic black boxes but rather learn to listen to them, and their practices of trained subjective judgment are integral to the supposedly rational and quantitative operations of algorithmic systems.
Campus photographer and photojournalist Maria Stenzel presented a film chronicling the scientific life aboard the icebreaker Nathaniel B. Palmer on a voyage to the western Antarctic Peninsula. Classical violinist Michi Wiancko composed an original film score to accompany this impressionistic 10-minute film, which she played live.
Using their original compositions as exemplars, Associate Professor of Music Darryl Harper and his jazz trio, The Onus, look at ways musicians interact with speech, image, and spectacle in the creation of new work.
A conversation with Claire Potter on the 2020 Democratic primary election results. Claire Potter is Co-executive Editor of Public Seminar and Professor of History at The New School for Social Research.