The Culture & Technology Podcast

Until recently, spatial experiences have been resolutely material, taking place within cities, buildings, and rooms. Over the past year, however, the pandemic has moved museums, performances, and gatherings online, into virtual environments from games and video calls to VR hubs.

To get the lowdown on how technology is rebuilding our notions of space, Episode 6 invites two architects and curators, Bika Rebek and Agustin Schang to share their take on the shifting form of architecture within our emerging hybrid reality.

GUESTS

Bika Rebek is an architect, curator and educator. As co-founder and partner of Some Place Studio, she has created physical and virtual spaces with institutions such as MoMA in New York and the MAK in Vienna. someplace.studio

Agustin Schang is an architect, curator and cultural producer. His work focuses on the intersection of architecture, culture, and the city which he most recently brought to life as the associate producer of The Mile-Long Opera, a public engagement project at the Highline in Manhattan. agustinschang.com

HOST

Severin Matusek is a writer, producer and editor who has spent the last decade researching how technology transforms culture, communities and society.

IDEAS AND PEOPLE IN CONTEXT

Some Place Studio is an architectural practice bringing to life physical and virtual spaces. Founded by Bika Rebek and Daniel Prost, the practice approaches contemporary issues through the lens of architectural discourse and photography. someplace.studio

Uncanny Values: Artificial Intelligence & You was an exhibition held at the MAK in Vienna as part of the Vienna Biennale for Change 2019. 100 years after Freud wrote “The Uncanny”, the exhibition delved into the impacts of artificial intelligence on every aspect of contemporary life. uncannyvalues.org

Susan Sellers is Senior Design Critic at the Yale School of Art, and founding partner and creative director of New York-based global design consultancy 2x4, where she leads a range of strategy and design projects across culture, commerce and urban life. 2x4.org

The Mile-Long Opera: A Biography of 7 O’Clock is a theatrical performing arts opera that was held at New York’s High Line in October 2018 co-created by architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro and composer David Lang, with words and lyrics by Anne Carson and Claudia Rankin. milelongopera.com

Hubs by Mozilla are open-source virtual reality (VR) chat rooms allowing people to come together to watch videos, chat, enjoy 3D objects, or simply spend time together. hubs.mozilla.com

Future Architecture Rooms is an experimental digital environment comprising online architecture museums, galleries, publishing houses, and labs, curated by designer and researcher Anastassia Smirnova, who also co-founded SVESMI, a Dutch-Russian office for architecture and urbanism. futurearchitectureplatform.org

TRANSCRIPT

Click here to download the full transcript as PDF.

CREDITS

The Vienna Business Agency supports businesses, the economy and the city in developing the Austrian capital’s creative industries and shaping its future trajectory. viennabusinessagency.at

Editorial Team: Paul Feigelfeld, Anna Dorothea Ker, Severin Matusek, Elisabeth Noever-Ginthör, Elisa Stockinger, Heinz Wolf.

Theme Music by Zanshin.

The topics of the Culture & Technology Podcast will be further discussed at Creative Days Vienna 2021 - part of Vienna UP'21

There’s a lot of hype around the word data these days. But what’s less clear is its exact meaning – and its relationship with culture.

For Episode 5 of the podcast, media theorist Paul Feigelfeld is joined by technologist and entrepreneur Dr. Sabine Seymour, who recently joined the Polypoly Cooperative to give people more control over their personal data. The two debunk the many myths swirling around this hot topic, from the history of computer science to AI’s black box and the future of equitable data development.

GUESTS

Dr. Sabine Seymour is a technologist, researcher and entrepreneur whose work channels the democratising potential of digital technologies. After many years in New York City, she recently returned to Europe where she joined the Polypoly Cooperative, an initiative giving citizens sovereignty over – and a share in the profits of – their data. moondial.com/sabine-seymour

Paul Feigefeld is a media theorist, curator and cultural scientist who researches how media and technology change the way we think and work and produce art. Listen to more of Paul in conversation with Shannon Mattern in Episode 1. twitter.com/paulfeigelfeld

HOST

Severin Matusek is a writer, producer and editor who has spent the last decade researching how technology transforms culture, communities and society.

IDEAS AND PEOPLE IN CONTEXT

François Viète (1540-1603) was a French amateur mathematician, astronomer and lawyer who made significant contributions to modern algebra through his unprecedented systematic notation system and theory of equations.

Claude Shannon (1916-2001) was an American mathematician, engineer and cryptographer widely known as “the father of information theory”.

Mosaic was an early web browser developed by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and released in 1993. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic(webbrowser)

Netscape Navigator was another early web browser that built on the success of Mosaic, built by Marc Andreessen who had co-created the latter. Eventually replaced by the Netscape Navigator, which became the launchpad for Mozilla Firefox in the late 1990s. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape_Navigator

TCP/IP is short for Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol, a series of codes enabling computers to communicate within a network. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TransmissionControlProtocol

Data commons are initiatives in which data is gathered and shared as a common resource, often guided by community ownership and a public good element. Wikipedia and OpenStreetMap are examples of data commons. foundation.mozilla.org/en/initiatives/data-futures/data-for-empowerment/what-is-a-data-commons

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a European Union law governing personal data protection and privacy. In force since 2018, it imposes a strict and comprehensive set of measures on organisations and individuals that process data collected from or targeted at European citizens. gdpr.eu/what-is-gdpr

Zebras Unite is a cooperatively-led global movement charting the way for a more ethical and inclusive approach to startup culture and venture capital investment. zebrasunite.coop

Polypoly Cooperative is a European Union data chaired by Dr. Sabine Seymour to give individuals sovereignty over their data by enabling them to trace and control its use, and share in the profits it generates. polypoly.coop

TRANSCRIPT

Click here to download the full transcript as PDF.

CREDITS

The Vienna Business Agency supports businesses, the economy and the city in developing the Austrian capital’s creative industries and shaping its future trajectory. viennabusinessagency.at

Editorial Team: Paul Feigelfeld, Anna Dorothea Ker, Severin Matusek, Elisabeth Noever-Ginthör, Elisa Stockinger, Heinz Wolf.

Theme Music by Zanshin.

The topics of the Culture & Technology Podcast will be further discussed at the Creative Days Vienna 2021 - part of Vienna UP'21

When we’re unable to gather in person, unable to experience the magic of encounters and exchange in physical proximity, what is lost?

For the bonus Episode 4 of the Culture and Technology Podcast – recorded in German – two friends and doyennes of theatre, actor Mavie Hörbiger and costume designer Aino Laberenz pick up the phone to consider how the pandemic’s restrictions have cast new light on their metier. By calling into question the relevance of art in times of crisis, they find its role to be of existential importance.

GUESTS

Mavie Hörbiger is an actor and a member of Vienna’s Burgtheater ensemble. twitter.com/hoerbigerm

Aino Laberenz is a costume designer, author, co-founder of Operndorf Afrika and the estate executor for her late husband and collaborator Christoph Schlingensief, whose work she continues today. instagram.com/ainolaberenz

HOST

Severin Matusek is a writer, producer and editor who has spent the last decade researching how technology transforms culture, communities and society.

WORKS AND PEOPLE IN CONTEXT

Christoph Schlingensief (1960–2010) was a German theatre director, filmmaker, performance artist and activist whose legacy was characterised by experimental and provocative works. In 2009, he initiated the art and education project Operndorf Afrika, an ‘opera village’ near Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Developed together with Burkina Faso architect and activist Diébédo Francis Kéré, the space intended as a meeting place for education, cultural encounters and exchange. Schlingensief died of lung cancer in 2010 at the age of 49. His estate is held and archived by the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. schlingensief.com

Kein Falsches Wort Jetzt is a 2020-published book of selected conversations with Christoph Schlingensief, compiled by his wife and collaborator Aino Laberenz to offer an insight into his beliefs, work, and life. In German. kiwi-verlag.de/buch/christoph-schlingensief-kein-falsches-wort-jetzt-9783462055085

Die Letzten Zeugen was a contemporary witness theatre project by Doron Rabinovici and Matthias Harmann performed at Vienna’s Burgtheater on the 75th anniversary of the 1938 November Pogrom, in which actors shared the stories of six Holocaust survivors seated behind a transparent partition, before they each stepped forward to share a few personal words. The work is available to watch in full: youtu.be/ju_NuLh2CF4

TRANSCRIPT

Click here to download the full transcript of the conversation as PDF.

CREDITS

The Vienna Business Agency supports businesses, the economy and the city in developing the Austrian capital’s creative industries and shaping its future trajectory. viennabusinessagency.at

Editorial Team: Paul Feigelfeld, Anna Dorothea Ker, Severin Matusek, Elisabeth Noever-Ginthör, Elisa Stockinger, Heinz Wolf.

Theme Music by Zanshin.

The topics of the Culture & Technology Podcast will be further discussed at the Creative Days Vienna 2021 - part of Vienna UP'21

When an object consists of bits instead of atoms, how do you preserve and display it for future generations?

For Episode 3 of the Culture and Technology Podcast, two pioneers of digital culture curation, Natalie Kane at London’s V&A and Marlies Wirth at Vienna’s MAK, discuss the digital objects and share the challenges and rewards of collecting art that tells the story of our current moment – from Amazon Echo to the Women’s March Pussyhat.

GUESTS

Natalie Kane is Curator of Digital Design at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. Ndkane.com

Marlies Wirth is Curator of Digital Culture and Head of the Design Collection at the Museum for Applied Arts in Vienna. instagram.com/marlieswirth

HOST

Severin Matusek is a writer, producer and editor who has spent the last decade researching how technology transforms culture, communities and society.

CONCEPTS, PROJECTS AND PEOPLE IN CONTEXT

The Pussyhat™ Project is a social movement centering on a pink handcrafted hat made and worn by participants in the 2017 Women’s March in Washington DC. Chosen for its statement of solidarity with women in a political climate of discrimination and problematic rhetoric, the design was chosen to reclaim a word often used in the context of sexual harrassment and transform it into a symbol of empowerment. pussyhatproject.com

Cointemporary was an online artist-run gallery that exclusively traded in Bitcoin, running from 2014-2015. twitter.com/cointemporary

Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshop) (1903–1932) was a cooperative of artisans, architects, artists and designers co-founded by architect Josef Hoffmann in 1903. wien.info/en/sightseeing/architecture-design/best-of-vienna-wiener-werkstaette

Adolf Loos (1870–1933) was an Austrian architect and counts among the most influential European Modernists. Loos took a highly divergent and often antagonistic aesthetic and theoretical position to Hoffmann and the Wiener Werkstätte movement. One of his best-known essays, and an insightful portal into his thinking, is the 1908 work ‘Ornament and Crime’. architectuul.com/architect/adolf-loos

Ivan Illich (1926–2002) was an Austrian Roman Catholic priest, philosopher, and social critic known for his prescient works on technology and society. His 1973 book Tools for Conviviality outlined a framework for thinking about technology that is still drawn on by many today. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Illich

The MAK – Museum of Applied Arts is an arts and crafts museum in Vienna with a focus on architecture and contemporary art alongside crafts and design, and, increasingly, digital culture – as represented through initiatives such as the MAK Design Lab, which was established as part of the Vienna Biennale 2019. mak.at

The Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) in London is a leading museum of art, design, and performance, housing over 2.3 million objects spanning 5000 years of history. vam.ac.uk

Valentin Ruhry’s ‘Grand Central’ exhibition at MAK brought to light the decentralisation of the digital world and its digital totems. The large-scale installation draws its name from the Apple Store at the New York train station. ruhry.at/en/work/items/grand-central.html

Andy Boot’s artistic practice occupies and blurs the boundaries between the digital and the physical. andyboot.com

Harm van den Dorpel’s ‘Event Listeners’ limited edition screensaver was the first work of art ever sold to a museum – the MAK – for Bitcoin in 2015. harm.work/work/event-listeners

Uncanny Values: Artificial Intelligence & You was an exhibition held at the MAK in Vienna as part of the Vienna Biennale for Change 2019. 100 years after Freud wrote “The Uncanny”, the exhibition delved into the impacts of artificial intelligence on every aspect of contemporary life. uncannyvalues.org

Process Studio’s AImoji project, one of the works exhibited as part of Uncanny Values: Artificial Intelligence & You, generated new emoji via Deep Learning, with unsettling results. process.studio/works/aimoji-ai-generated-emoji

Anatomy of an AI System is a 2018 art project by Kate Crawford, AI researcher and founder of AI Now Institute, and Vladan Joler, Share Foundation director and chair of New Media at the University of Novi Sad that considers the Amazon Echo as an anatomical map of labour, data and resources. anatomyof.ai

TRANSCRIPT

Click here to download the full transcript of the conversation as PDF.

CREDITS

The Vienna Business Agency supports businesses, the economy and the city in developing the Austrian capital’s creative industries and shaping its future trajectory. viennabusinessagency.at

Editorial Team: Paul Feigelfeld, Anna Dorothea Ker, Severin Matusek, Elisabeth Noever-Ginthör, Elisa Stockinger, Heinz Wolf.

Theme Music by Zanshin.

The topics of the Culture & Technology Podcast will be further discussed at the Creative Days Vienna 2021 - part of Vienna UP'21

What if technology could help us transcend the limits of our own brains and bodies, and connect us to the experiences of other living beings? That’s precisely what artist Barnaby Steel and his studio Marshmallow Laser Feast invite you to do through their multisensory installations and virtual reality interfaces.

For Episode 2 of the Culture and Technology Podcast, Eva Fischer, curator and initiator of CIVA Vienna’s new media art festival, talks to Barney about how VR can help us to reconnect with the world beyond our filter bubbles.

GUESTS

Eva Fischer is an independent curator, cultural manager and lecturer. She’s also the initiator of CIVA, Vienna’s new media art festival, and has been curating and teaching immersive art and experimental media for the past 15 years. evafischerav.co

Barnaby Steel is a London-based artist who creates immersive virtual experiences. As a co-founder of Marshmallow Laser Feast, Barney and his team are one of the world’s leading art collectives that explore our connection with the natural world through extended reality experiences. instagram.com/barnaby.steel

HOST

Severin Matusek is a writer, producer and editor who has spent the last decade researching how technology transforms culture, communities and society.

IDEAS AND PEOPLE IN CONTEXT

Marshmallow Laser Feast is a London art collective connecting people to the natural world and challenging the notion of individual perception via multi-sensory immersive installations that combine projections, performances, and VR experiences. Notable works include We Live in an Ocean of Air (2018) and Tree Hugger (2019). marshmallowlaserfeast.com

Forward Festival is a series of events and a platform for creativity, design, and communication. The next iteration, scheduled to be held in Vienna on 7-8 October 2021, brings into focus the digitalisation of the creative scene, questioning the boundaries of the so-called ‘new normal’. forward-festival.com

Contemporary Immersive Virtual Art (CIVA)’s inaugural edition debuted virtually (on Discord, Mozilla Hubs and social media) over nine days in late February 2021 under the banner “Social Distancing – Virtual Bonding” in exploration of the possibilities of virtual ties within a context of physical distance. CIVA was co-curated by Eva Fischer and supported by Vienna Business Agency. civa.at

Rupert Spira is an English spiritual teacher, author, and potter known for his Non-Duality philosophy and “direct path” method of self-enquiry. non-duality. rupertspira.com

Mozilla Hubs, VRChat, Virbela are all forms of virtual spaces or worlds that allow people to connect remotely, chat, play games, and hang out. For more on how these platforms are reframing our understanding of spatial experiences, keep an ear out for Episode 6 of this podcast, where two architects and curators deep dive into the ever-blurring virtual-physical divide. hubs.mozilla.com, virbela.com, hello.vrchat.com

TRANSCRIPT

Click here to download the full transcript of the conversation as PDF.

CREDITS

The Vienna Business Agency supports businesses, the economy and the city in developing the Austrian capital’s creative industries and shaping its future trajectory. viennabusinessagency.at

Editorial Team: Paul Feigelfeld, Anna Dorothea Ker, Severin Matusek, Elisabeth Noever-Ginthör, Elisa Stockinger, Heinz Wolf.

Theme Music by Zanshin.

The topics of the Culture & Technology Podcast will be further discussed at the Creative Days Vienna 2021 - part of Vienna UP'21

What feelings does technology evoke? Thanks to pop culture, Hollywood, and the media, technological narratives tend to swing between the utopic or dystopic – the glorious or the terrifying.

For Episode 1 of The Culture and Technology Podcast, we invite Professor of Anthropology Shannon Mattern and media theorist and curator Paul Feigelfeld to deconstruct the concept and explore its intersections with culture.

GUESTS

Shannon Mattern is Professor of Anthropology at The New School for Social Research in New York City. She teaches and writes about the infrastructure, spaces and architecture of media, and examines the changing role of essential cultural tools and technologies such as libraries, maps and cities. newschool.edu/nssr/faculty/shannon-mattern

Paul Feigelfeld is a media theorist, curator and cultural scientist who researches how media and technology change the way we think and work and produce art. twitter.com/paulfeigelfeld

HOST

Severin Matusek is a writer, producer and editor who has spent the last decade researching how technology transforms culture, communities and society.

IDEAS AND PEOPLE IN CONTEXT

Deus ex machina is a Latin phrase describing a plot device in Greek and Roman tragedy. Its meaning carries through to contemporary theatre, where it refers to a thing or person that is unexpectedly introduced into a situation and devises an artificial solution.

The Singularity is a hypothetical future moment at which artificial intelligence will surpass that of humans. Popularised by futurist Ray Kurzweil in his book 2005 The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, the concept is generally regarded within the computer science community as strictly in the realm of fiction.

Slime mold describes unrelated organisms that live independently as singular cells but can come together to create a multicellular amoebic form. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slime_mold

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) was a Canadian philosopher and media theorist best known for coining the expression, “The medium is the message”. wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan

Langdon Winner is a political theorist, and educator who has written extensively on science, technology, and society. langdonwinner.com

Tristan Harris is an American computer scientist and entrepreneur and former Google Design Ethicist who co-founded the Center for Humane Technology, which works towards catalyzing technology towards the common good. tristanharris.com

TRANSCRIPT

Click here to download the full transcript of the conversation as PDF

CREDITS

The Vienna Business Agency supports businesses, the economy and the city in developing the Austrian capital’s creative industries and shaping its future trajectory. viennabusinessagency.at

Editorial Team: Paul Feigelfeld, Anna Dorothea Ker, Severin Matusek, Elisabeth Noever-Ginthör, Elisa Stockinger, Heinz Wolf.

Theme Music by Zanshin.

The topics of the Culture & Technology Podcast will be further discussed at the Creative Days Vienna 2021 - part of Vienna UP'21

The Culture and Technology Podcast explores how technology is rewiring the future of cultural production and experiences.

Host Severin Matusek has spent the last decade researching how technology transforms culture, communities and society. In this virtual salon, together with Vienna's Business Agency, he brings together Vienna’s creative thinkers with international experts to offer insights into the way culture is changing – and the new communities, spaces and experiences emerging along the way.

The Vienna Business Agency supports businesses, the economy and the city in developing the Austrian capital’s creative industries and shaping its future trajectory. viennabusinessagency.at