Event Details
Mon, October 01, 2018
19:30 – 20:30
VILLA SASSETTI
Villa La Pietra
Via Bolognese, 120
50139 Firenze, Italia
A Dialogue with Roopa Vasudevan, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania.
Can our digital footprints – both our own as well as the collective footprints of various demographics, communities, and cultures – reveal anything about human nature?
We have come to rely on technology for most of our day-to-day lives, often spending hours and hours in front of the computer posting to social media, Skyping using the webcams on our laptops, or searching for things on the Internet, all while leaving behind some kind of digital footprint. What can technology tell us about our own ingrained behaviors, belief systems, and views of others? Vasudevan will present work that algorithmically picks apart popular hip-hop lyrics, dissects the amount of hatred found on mainstream social media outlets, and examines the sentiments of the Twittersphere in the thick of the 2016 presidential primaries.
Workshop Signals From Noise: Data Representation on the Web
October 2, 12:00 pm, Villa Sassetti (NYU Florence students only)
This workshop serves as an introduction to data representation and creative web development. No experience or prior knowledge is required.
Featured Biographies
Roopa Vasudevan
ANNENBERG SCHOOL FOR COMMUNICATION, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
Roopa Vasudevan is an American visual artist, computer programmer, and researcher, currently based in Philadelphia. Roopa’s work explores the influence and impact that our increasingly digital and tech-reliant way of life has on culture, politics, and real world behaviors — and the ways in which technology can reveal patterns and biases in our real-life social systems. She utilizes publicly available data collected over long periods of time, ranging from social media posts to photos, audio and video, which is then run through a variety of algorithmic processes — some using computers, and some not — that extract similarities, differences, and potential underlying meaning. She has exhibited internationally in Belgium, China and the United States, and been featured on Reuters, Slate, Hyperallergic, Jezebel, Complex, PSFK, the FADER, PBS NewsHour, Public Radio International, and more, as well as on American, French and German television. Recently, she has been a participant in the SOHO20 Residency Lab (Brooklyn, NY); the Arctic Circle Residency (Svalbard); China Residencies’ #slowtrain digital residency (Trans-Siberian Railway); the SPACES World Artists Program (Cleveland, OH); and the Flux Factory artist collective (Queens, NY). Roopa received an MPS from the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts in 2013. Between 2016 and 2018, she was an Assistant Arts Professor of Interactive Media Arts at NYU Shanghai. She is currently pursuing a PhD at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania