Tracing the intersections of AI and critical race theory, join us for a panel conversation on Thursday 20 Feb, 18:30-20:00, at Whitechapel Gallery. Ramon Amaro, Maya Indira Ganesh, and Maria Dada will use Donald Rodney’s Autoicon as a springboard, situating Rodney’s work in the social and political landscape of the time, and drawing connections to the historical legacies of AI up to the present day.
Organised by Digital x Data Research Centre in collaboration with Whitechapel Gallery. More details and booking here.
Dr. Ramon Amaro is Senior Researcher for Digital Culture and Lead Curator of -1, the testing ground and innovation hub for new tools, methods and public uses of digital culture at Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam. His writings, research and artistic practice emerge at the intersections of Black Study, digital culture, psychosocial study, and the critique of computational reason. Ramon holds a BSe in Mechanical Engineering, an MA in Sociology and a PhD in Philosophy of Technology. Before joining Nieuwe Instituut, Ramon worked as Lecturer (Assistant Prof.) in Art and Visual Cultures of the Global South at UCL (London), Lecturer in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London, Engineering Program Manager at the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and Quality Design Engineer at General Motors Corporation. His recent book, The Black Technical Object: On Machine Learning and the Aspiration of Black Being (Sternberg, 2023) contemplates the abstruse nature of programming and mathematics, and the deep incursion of racial hierarchy, to inspire alternative approaches to contemporary algorithmic practice.
Dr Maya Indira Ganesh is Associate Director (Research Culture and Partnerships), co-director of the Narratives and Justice Program, and a Senior Research Fellow at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge. From October 2021- July 2024 she was an assistant teaching professor co-directing the MSt in AI Ethics and Society at the university. Maya has degrees in Psychology, Media and Cultural Studies, and a Drphil in Cultural Studies. Her doctoral work took the case of the ‘ethics of autonomous driving’ to study the implications of ethical decision-making and governance by algorithmic/AI technologies for human social relations. Her monograph based on this thesis, Auto-Correct: The Fantasies and Failures of AI, Ethics, and the Driverless Car, will be available on March 10, 2025 and can be pre-ordered here. Maya’s most recent project, with Louise Hickman and others, is AI in the Street, a project about AI in public and AI’s marginalised and expert publics.
Maria Dada is the Course Leader for MA Interaction Design at London College of Communication. Her work is placed within the fields of design, continental philosophy and visual cultures. She examines the way in which computational modelling and the simulated image have become the aspirational standard, reshaping societal norms and institutional frameworks. She has degrees in both continental philosophy from the Centre for Research in European Philosophy and Computer Science from the Lebanese American University. Maria has exhibited and lectured widely, most recently as a Research Fellow in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths University, at the Transmediale Festival in Berlin, at Birkbeck’s Film, Language and Culture Studies department and at CRASSH in Cambridge.
Image credit: Donald Rodney, AutoIcon 1997-2000.