Human Entitites 2025: Daniel Felstead

Human Entities 2025: culture in the age of artificial intelligenceNinth editionWed 14 May 2025, 6.30pmArtist Talk: Welcome to Jankspace, babesDaniel FelsteadContent producerJankspace is the leaking residual of the stack as it metabolises meatspace into hallucinogenic sludge. It’s the Uberdriver’s chaotically impressive multi-display setup of knotted cables, flashing screens and beeping notifications. It’s literally us and our gorgeously fucked-up, uncomputable bodies that we know aren’t quite programmed right and no amount of optimization is going to fix. In this artist talk Daniel will use the concept of jankspace to explore some of the central themes of his practice, namely, the aesthetic derangement of everyday digital culture, our unhinged mediated bodies, and the idiotic delusions of transhumanism.Daniel FelsteadDaniel Felstead is an academic and content producer whose practice focuses on the relationship between the body, technology, and culture. e is the course leader of MA Fashion Media & Communication at the London College of Fashion (UAL). Daniel has spoken and exhibited internationally including Architectural Association, Berlin Critics Week, Die Angewandte, Fundació Foto Colectania, Global Art Forum, MAPS, ICA, PAF, RCA, RISD, Shedhalle, Transmediale and V&A Museum. His PhD explored speculative modes of production, complex systems and the platform in relation to participatory art. Most recently Daniel has produced a series of critically acclaimed short film commissions that explore the myths, ideologies and realities of the metaverse, AI, biotech and neural media.https://www.instagram.com/felstead.danielCreditsOrganised by CADA in partnership with Lisbon Architecture Triennale and Faculty of Fine Arts, University of LisbonProgrammed by Jared Hawkey/Sofia Oliveira with guest programmers: Andrea Pavoni, Lavínia Pereira and Olivia Bina.CADA is funded by: República Portuguesa – Cultura / Direção-Geral das ArtesSupport: Câmara Municipal de Lisboa; Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia – NOVA LINCS; Instituto Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa; DINAMIA’CET (ISCTE-IUL) and Faculdade Belas Artes, Universidade de Lisboa, Departamentos de Design de Comunicação e Arte Multimédia.Art direction + graphic design: Emir KaryoPhotography: Renato ChorãoSound: Fernando Fadigas

Human Entities 2025: culture in the age of artificial intelligenceNinth editionThur 5 June 2025, 6.30pm; book-signing session at 6pmPlanta Sapiens: Rethinking Intelligence in the Living WorldPaco CalvoProfessor of Philosophy of Science, Principal Investigator of the Minimal Intelligence Laboratory (MINT Lab) at the University of Murcia (Spain)Our conventional understanding of intelligence has long been shaped by human and animal models, leaving little room to consider the cognitive potential of plants. However, emerging research challenges this perspective, revealing that plants engage with their surroundings in ways that suggest problem-solving, flexible adaptation, and even anticipatory forms of behavior.In this talk, I will present key findings, exploring how plants process information, respond to stimuli, and coordinate their actions through sophisticated signaling mechanisms. Beyond the scientific discoveries, these insights prompt deeper philosophical questions. Why do we struggle to conceive of plants as more than passive organisms? What assumptions shape our tendency to separate the human from the nonhuman, intelligence from instinct, or agency from environment? Our conceptual and linguistic frameworks are often ill-equipped to accommodate the possibility that plants, too, participate in the web of cognition. By questioning these biases, we open the door to a more expansive and inclusive view of life; one that recognizes intelligence as a broader, more distributed phenomenon across biological systems. This shift in perspective not only deepens our understanding of plants but also challenges us to rethink fundamental ideas about mind, perception, and the interconnected nature of all living beings.Paco CalvoProfessor of Philosophy of Science, Principal Investigator of the Minimal Intelligence Laboratory (MINT Lab) at the University of Murcia (Spain). His research interests range broadly within the cognitive sciences, with special emphasis on plant intelligence, ecological psychology and embodied cognitive science, robotics and AI. He uses time-lapse photography to explore perception-action and learning in plants. His scientific articles have appeared in Annals of Botany, Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications, Frontiers in Neurorobotics, Frontiers in Robotics and AI, Journal of the Royal Society, Plant, Cell & Environment, Plant Signaling & Behavior, Scientific Reports, and Trends in Plant Science, among other journals. He is author of the popular science book Planta Sapiens ( 2023; with Natalie Lawrence).https://www.um.es/mintlab/index.php/about/people/paco-calvoCreditsOrganised by ⁠CADA⁠ in partnership with ⁠Lisbon Architecture Triennale⁠Programmed by Jared Hawkey/Sofia Oliveira with guest programmers: Andrea Pavoni, Lavínia Pereira and Olivia Bina.CADA is funded by: República Portuguesa – Cultura / ⁠Direção-Geral das Artes⁠Support: ⁠Câmara Municipal de Lisboa⁠; Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia – ⁠NOVA LINCS⁠; ⁠Instituto Ciências Sociais⁠, Universidade de Lisboa; ⁠DINAMIA’CET⁠ (ISCTE-IUL) and ⁠Faculdade Belas Artes⁠, Universidade de LisboaArt direction + graphic design: ⁠Emir Karyo⁠Photography: ⁠Joana Linda⁠Sound: ⁠Diogo Melo

Human Entities 2025: culture in the age of artificial intelligenceNinth editionWed 28 May 2025, 6.30pmNotes on ‘Content’Caroline BustaWriter and editorAs one-point perspective gives way to collective forms of knowing, media proliferates with no end, text is increasingly scanned and sensed more than read, and the myth of the individual-creative-genius is dissolved by the logic of swarm-trained LLMs, we are undergoing an epochal shift in human expression and reception. Surveying this communicational climate change, New Models co-founder Caroline Busta will examine the role of ‘content’ therein and some emergent frameworks of adaptation.Caroline BustaCaroline Busta is a co-founder of the critical media channel New Models. She was previously EIC of Texte zur Kunst, and an Assoc. Editor of Artforum. She co-edited Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst’s survey catalogue, All Media is Training Data (2024, Serpentine/König) and her recent essay ‘Hallucinating sense in the era of infinity-content’ appears in the SS24 issue of Document journal.https://studio.newmodels.ioCreditsOrganised by CADA in partnership with Lisbon Architecture TriennaleProgrammed by Jared Hawkey/Sofia Oliveira with guest programmers: Andrea Pavoni, Lavínia Pereira and Olivia Bina.CADA is funded by: República Portuguesa – Cultura / Direção-Geral das ArtesSupport: Câmara Municipal de Lisboa; Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia – NOVA LINCS; Instituto Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa; DINAMIA’CET (ISCTE-IUL) and Faculdade Belas Artes, Universidade de LisboaArt direction + graphic design: Emir KaryoPhotography: Joana LindaSound: Diogo Melo

Human Entities 2023: culture in the age of artificial intelligenceSeventh edition, Wednesday 19 April 2023Artist talkMark LeckeyMark Leckey is one of the most influential artists working today. Since the late 1990s, his work has looked at the relationship between popular culture and technology as well as exploring the subjects of youth, class and nostalgia. He works with sculpture, film, sound and performance⁠ – and sometimes all four at once. In particular, he is known for Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore (1999) and Industrial Light and Magic (2008), for which he won the Turner Prize.His work has been widely exhibited internationally, including solo exhibitions at Tate Britain, in 2019, Serpentine Gallery, in 2011, Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne, in 2008 and at Le Consortium, Dijon, in 2007. His performances have been presented in New York City at the Museum of Modern Art, Abrons Arts Center; at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, both in 2009; and at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City, in 2008. His works are held in the collections of the Tate and the Centre Pompidou.https://markleckey.comhttps://www.cabinet.uk.com/mark-leckeyhttps://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/mark-leckey-6877/introducing-mark-leckeyhttps://www.youtube.com/@MrLeckeyhttps://www.instagram.com/mark.leckeyhttps://twitter.com/MarkLeckeyhttps://www.nts.live/shows/mark-leckey

Human Entities 2024: culture in the age of artificial intelligenceEighth edition, 15 May 2024 Plant consciousnessMonica GaglianoEvolutionary ecologist, Research Associate Professor (Adjunct) at Southern Cross University, Australia Monica Gagliano PhD is an internationally award-winning research scientist, selected by Biohabitats as one of the 24 most Inspiring Women of Ecology, together with Jane Goodall, Rachel Carson, Sylvia Earl, and Terry Tempest Williams. She has been an invited lecturer at the most prestigious universities, including UC Berkeley, Stanford, Harvard, Dartmouth and Georgetown. Monica’s pioneering work has been widely featured by prominent media, such as The New York Times, Forbes, The New Yorker, The Guardian, National Geographic, and many others. Monica is Research Associate Professor (Adjunct) of evolutionary ecology based in Australia. She is currently Chief Scientist at Kaiāulu|Coherence Lab in Hawaii, and Research Associate at the Takiwasi Centre in Perú. Monica has pioneered the brand-new research field of plant bioacoustics, which for the first time, experimentally demonstrates that plants emit voices and detect and respond to the sounds of their environments. Her work has extended the concept of cognition in plants. By demonstrating experimentally that learning and memory are not the exclusive province of animals, Monica has reignited the discourse of plant subjectivity, as well as ethical and legal standing. Inspired by encounters with nature and indigenous elders from around the world, Monica applies an innovative and holistic approach to science, one that is comfortable engaging at the interface between areas as diverse as ecology, physics, law, anthropology, philosophy, literature, music, the arts, and spirituality. By re-kindling a sense of wonder for the beautiful place we call home, she is helping to create a new ecology of mind that inspires the emergence of revolutionary solutions toward human interactions with the world we co-inhabit. Monica’s studies have led her to author numerous ground-breaking scientific articles and books, including Thus Spoke the Plant (2018) and The Mind of Plants (2021). https://www.monicagagliano.comhttps://www.instagram.com/_monicagagliano_https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monica_Gaglianohttps://researchportal.scu.edu.au/esploro/profile/monica_gagliano/overview CreditsOrganised by CADA in partnership with Lisbon Architecture Triennale and Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon Programmed by Jared Hawkey/Sofia Oliveira with guest programmers: Andrea Pavoni, Justin Jaeckle, Lavínia Pereira and Olivia Bina. Funded by: República Portuguesa – Cultura / Direção-Geral das ArtesSupport: Câmara Municipal de Lisboa; Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia – NOVA LINCS; Instituto Ciências Sociais, Urban Transitions Hub, Universidade de Lisboa; DINAMIA’CET (ISCTE-IUL) and Faculdade Belas Artes, Universidade de Lisboa, Departamentos de Design de Comunicação e Arte MultimédiaDesign: Pedro LoureiroPhotography: Joana LindaSound: Diogo Melo

Human Entities 2024: culture in the age of artificial intelligenceEighth edition, 5 June 2024 Solarpunk means dreaming greenJay SpringettStrategist and writer Solarpunk is a movement in speculative fiction, art, fashion, and activism that seeks to answer and embody the question “what does a sustainable civilization look like, and how can we get there?” In our current age of popular dystopia, climate grief, and biosphere collapse, Solarpunk has become a ‘creative container‘ for more fertile futures. Not one future singular, but many. Solarpunk encourages everyone to re-imagine what life might be like en-route to a better world. Our collective future will not be imposed upon us from above, but instead created bottom up by individuals in polyphony. A texture consisting of multiple simultaneous lines of independent melody. The future never passively arrives fully formed, instead, it must be dreamed. Solarpunk is one such dream. In this talk Jay will cover the story of how solarpunk came to be and its attempts at inspiring people to ‘remake our present and future history’. Jay SpringettJay Springett is a strategist and writer from London. He is known as a leading voice in the speculative genre of Solarpunk, which described in 2019 as a ‘memetic engine’ – a tool to power the ‘refuturing’ of our collective imagination. In 2020 his Solarpunk short story ‘In The Storm, A Fire’ was long listed for the BSFA Award for Short Fiction.  Jay is a Fellow of Royal Society of Arts in London and was selected as one of WeAreEurope’s 64 Faces of Europe in 2019. He is currently an instructor at The New Centre and speaks regularly about the future, technology and culture at events around the world. He currently hosts two podcasts: PermanentlyMoved.Online, a 301 second long personal journal and Experience.Computer, an interview show about aphantasia, creativity, and the imagination. Jay has been writing online at http://www.thejaymo.net since 2010. Credits Organised by ⁠CADA⁠ in partnership with ⁠Lisbon Architecture Triennale ⁠and ⁠Faculty of Fine Arts⁠, University of Lisbon Programmed by Jared Hawkey/Sofia Oliveira with guest programmers: Andrea Pavoni, Justin Jaeckle, Lavínia Pereira and Olivia Bina. Funded by: República Portuguesa – Cultura / ⁠Direção-Geral das Artes⁠Support: ⁠Câmara Municipal de Lisboa⁠; Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia – ⁠NOVA LINCS⁠; Instituto Ciências Sociais, ⁠Urban Transitions Hub⁠, Universidade de Lisboa; ⁠DINAMIA’CET⁠ (ISCTE-IUL) and ⁠Faculdade Belas Artes⁠, Universidade de Lisboa, Departamentos de Design de Comunicação e Arte Multimédia Design: ⁠Pedro Loureiro⁠ Photography: ⁠Joana Linda⁠ Sound: ⁠Diogo Melo⁠

Human Entities 2024: culture in the age of artificial intelligenceEighth edition, 29 May 2024 Artificial Intelligence Design and the Logic of Social CooperationMatteo PasquinelliAssociate Professor in Philosophy of Science, Ca’ Foscari University, Venice A conversation around the book “The Eye of the Master: A Social History of Artificial Intelligence” with the author Matteo Pasquinelli. What is AI? A dominant view describes it as the quest “to solve intelligence” – a solution supposedly to be found in the secret logic of the mind or in the deep physiology of the brain, such as in its complex neural networks. Pasquinelli’s book The Eye of the Master argues, to the contrary, that the inner code of AI is shaped not by the imitation of biological intelligence, but the intelligence of labour and social relations, as it is found in Babbage’s “calculating engines” of the industrial age as well as in the recent Large Language Models such as ChatGPT. Matteo PasquinelliAssociate Professor in Philosophy of Science at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage of Ca’ Foscari University in Venice where he is coordinating the ERC project AI MODELS. http://matteopasquinelli.comhttps://pric.unive.it/projects/ai-models/homehttps://www.versobooks.com/products/735-the-eye-of-the-master Credits Organised by ⁠CADA⁠ in partnership with ⁠Lisbon Architecture Triennale ⁠and ⁠Faculty of Fine Arts⁠, University of Lisbon Programmed by Jared Hawkey/Sofia Oliveira with guest programmers: Andrea Pavoni, Justin Jaeckle, Lavínia Pereira and Olivia Bina. Funded by: República Portuguesa – Cultura / ⁠Direção-Geral das Artes⁠ Support: ⁠Câmara Municipal de Lisboa⁠; Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia – ⁠NOVA LINCS⁠; Instituto Ciências Sociais, ⁠Urban Transitions Hub⁠, Universidade de Lisboa; ⁠DINAMIA’CET⁠ (ISCTE-IUL) and ⁠Faculdade Belas Artes⁠, Universidade de Lisboa, Departamentos de Design de Comunicação e Arte Multimédia Design: ⁠Pedro Loureiro⁠ Photography: ⁠Joana Linda⁠ Sound: ⁠Diogo Melo⁠

Human Entities 2024: culture in the age of artificial intelligenceEighth edition, 22 May 2024 Pluralizing psychedelic experiencesGiorgio GristinaPhD candidate, DANT (ICS-ULisboa), Systems Neuroscience Lab (Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown) Potential groundbreaking therapeutic applications are fuelling a resurgence of scientific and clinical interest towards psychedelic compounds. Growing media coverage is popularizing concepts such as “mystical experience” and “ego-dissolution”. Such terms are used in most scientific studies to describe the complex subjective experiences elicited by these substances, possibly playing a role in their therapeutic outcomes. But what’s the history behind these categories? And are there other ways of interpreting the peculiar effects of these substances? The mystical framework has been dominant in western scientific approaches to altered states of consciousness, and was thus adopted by psychedelic research since its inception. However, I argue that it is not the only possible interpretation of psychedelics’ effects. Ethnographic data and anecdotal evidence show that other communities have approached psychedelics through other epistemologies, and that their effects vary considerably across different settings. To widen our understanding of these substances’ effects and their therapeutic applications, scientific approaches to psychedelics should attempt to include a broader diversity of experiences, contexts and methods. Giorgio GristinaGiorgio Gristina holds a BA in Intercultural Communication and a MA in Social and Cultural Anthropology, both from the University of Torino (Italy). He also got a diploma in Sound Engineering from the school APM (Italy), having collaborated to numerous artistic / audiovisual projects along the years. He is currently PhD candidate in Medical Anthropology at the Institute of Social Sciences (ULisboa), with a research project co-hosted by the System Neuroscience Laboratory (Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown). His PhD investigation employs qualitative methods to unravel the historical and cultural frameworks underlying contemporary scientific research and clinical practice with psychedelic drugs, with focus on the Portuguese scenario and its role in the context of the “psychedelic renaissance”. His work explores the socialities emerging around the use and circulation of drugs, and the way scientific discourses shape western conceptions of self, mind and mental health. He has conducted fieldwork in Israel and in different sites in Europe. https://doutoramento.antropologia.ulisboa.pt/estudantes/giorgio-gristina Credits Organised by ⁠CADA⁠ in partnership with ⁠Lisbon Architecture Triennale ⁠and ⁠Faculty of Fine Arts⁠, University of Lisbon Programmed by Jared Hawkey/Sofia Oliveira with guest programmers: Andrea Pavoni, Justin Jaeckle, Lavínia Pereira and Olivia Bina. Funded by: República Portuguesa – Cultura / ⁠Direção-Geral das Artes⁠ Support: ⁠Câmara Municipal de Lisboa⁠; Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia – ⁠NOVA LINCS⁠; Instituto Ciências Sociais, ⁠Urban Transitions Hub⁠, Universidade de Lisboa; ⁠DINAMIA’CET⁠ (ISCTE-IUL) and ⁠Faculdade Belas Artes⁠, Universidade de Lisboa, Departamentos de Design de Comunicação e Arte Multimédia Design: ⁠Pedro Loureiro⁠ Photography: ⁠Joana Linda⁠ Sound: ⁠Diogo Melo⁠

Human Entities 2023: culture in the age of artificial intelligenceSeventh edition, Wednesday 17 May 2023 Authorship, Agency, and Moral ObligationJoanna BrysonProfessor of Ethics and Technology in the Centre for Digital Governance at Hertie School in Berlin How much of our individual human experience can we absorb into machine models when we use machine learning and a huge amount of data? Will AI become sentient? Sovereign? Ambitious? How will living with AI change our daily experience? This talk reflects natural, social, and computing sciences, describing both human and artificial intelligence, then governance, justice, and creativity. What we do matters, and we are obliged to ourselves and our planet to create and maintain good governance of all artefacts of our species. Joanna BrysonJoanna J Bryson, Professor of Ethics and Technology at Hertie School, is an academic recognised for broad expertise on intelligence, its nature, and its consequences. She advises governments, transnational agencies, and NGOs globally, particularly in AI policy. She holds two degrees each in psychology and AI (BA Chicago, MSc & MPhil Edinburgh, PhD MIT). Her work has appeared in venues ranging from reddit to the journal Science. She continues to research both the systems engineering of AI and the cognitive science of intelligence, with present focuses on the impact of technology on human cooperation, and new models of governance for AI and ICT. https://www.joannajbryson.orghttps://joanna-bryson.blogspot.comhttps://twitter.com/j2bryson Organised by ⁠CADA⁠ in partnership with ⁠Faculty of Fine Arts⁠, University of Lisbon

Human Entities 2023: culture in the age of artificial intelligenceSeventh edition, Wednesday 3 May 2023 Smart PowerOrit HalpernFull Professor and Chair of Digital Cultures and Societal Change at Technische Universität Dresden Today, growing concerns with climate change, energy scarcity, security, and economic volatility have turned the focus of urban planners, investors, scientists, and governments towards computational technologies as sites of potential salvation from a world consistently defined by catastrophes and ‘crisis’. From large scale computer simulations of the weather, to smart cities and infrastructures, to geo-engineering projects, to cryptocurrencies and blockchains, we have arguably transformed the planet into a test-bed and experiment for computational technologies. The penetration of almost every part of life by digital technologies has transformed how we understand nature, culture, and time. But what futures are we imagining, or foreclosing through these planetary ‘experiments’? How have we come to see human survival as fundamentally dependent on computational networks? This talk maps the rise of this ‘smartness mandate’. Tracing genealogies from artificial intelligence, finance, architecture, and art I will develop an account of how ubiquitous computing has become one of the dominant governing logics of our present (and possibly our future) and to what effects. Orit HalpernOrit Halpern is Full Professor and Chair of Digital Cultures and Societal Change at Technische Universität Dresden. Her work bridges the histories of science, computing, and cybernetics with design. She completed her Ph.D. at Harvard. She has held numerous visiting scholar positions including at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, IKKM Weimar, and at Duke University. She is currently working on two projects. The first is a history of intelligence and evolution; the second project examines extreme infrastructures and the history of experimentation at planetary scales in design, science, and engineering. She has also published widely in many venues including Critical Inquiry, Grey Room, Journal of Visual Culture, and E-Flux. Her first book Beautiful Data: A History of Vision and Reason (Duke UP 2015) investigates histories of big data, design, and governmentality. Her latest book with Robert Mitchell (MIT Press January 2023) The Smartness Mandate, is a theory and history of the concept of ‘smartness’, that interrogates the relationship between computation, population, economy, and governmentality. https://orithalpern.net https://governingthrough.design https://againstcatastrophe.net