This year, I had the immense privilege to be part of the whip-smart volunteer team that made the CODAME ART+TECH Festival happen this year. June 4-7, 2018 brought four full days of workshops, performances, talks, screenings and installation art to the Midway in San Francisco.
The 2018 ART+TECH Festival, codenamed #ARTOBOTS, examined the sphere of robotics, automation, and artificial intelligence. Through art, discussion, play and performance, CODAME probes these potentials and examines the ways in which robots have infiltrated so many aspects of our daily lives.
As part of this project, I interviewed and wrote about just a few of the incredible artists bringing their work to the festival, all organized by curator Vanessa Chang. The goal of these articles was to promote the festival, while helping attendees get more out of the experience by engaging more deeply with the artworks, the themes, and the presenting artists.
Data Bodies and Tech Activism, with VJ Um Amel
Professor Laila Shereen Sakr, also known as VJ Um Amel, is fascinated with culture. In conversation, she returns often to the subject of how ideas bubble up from the underground and coalesce, how individuals come together to create community online, and how to preserve and document that process. [Read the article]