Together with the curators, Impakt will organise a meeting of experts in the field of technology, art, design, media and film to discuss and expand upon the themes of the upcoming Impakt festival.

Among the topics that will be discussed are:

Post-truth – the question becomes not just about thinking what is true and false, but about the conditions of the possibility of what is true and false. What automated intelligence brings into the larger discussion of post-truth is exactly the basis on which the decisions are made: offloaded to an algorithm, a technological decisionism where taking a decision quickly is valued more than taking a correct one, takes over from the human operator. What else constitutes post-truth? What do post-truth narratives and algorithmic fiction mean to you? What forms of governmentality, ideas of truth and reality does post-truth create?

The algorithmic condition – how does machine learning, data analytics, telemetry and quantification enter the already-existing notions of truth, fact and fiction, and existing power relations between the individual, the state and corporations? What models and frameworks of governance does it propose? How do artists respond to this? How does media art articulate the spectrum between art as formal pursuit of elegant code and aesthetic problem-solving, art as a critical methodology for making visible the algorithmic governance, and art as fiction, or proposing alternative narratives?

How are new forms of visual epistemology / technical imagination reflected in information and knowledge design? How can we think of interfaces as essential tools for constructing the conditions of knowledge?

What are alternatives to seeing the communications field in post-truth era as warfare? (here we can think of recent keywords as ‘weaponised design’, memetic warfare, information warfare, ‘armies’ of trolls.

Impakt director Arjon Dunnewind and the Impakt Festival 2018 curators Luba Elliott, Alex Anikina and Yasemin Keskintepe will be present on both days.

On Friday 9 March the experts are: Coralie Vogelaar, Danielle Arets, Donna Verheijden, Ilga Minjon, Lauren Alexander, Dr. Marc Tuters and Viktor Wijnen.

On Saturday 10 March the experts are Dan Hassler-Forest, Imar de Vries, Ine Gevers, Olga Mink, Paulien Dresscher, Pim Verlaek and Ruben Paters.