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The Imaging Futures Lab at RMIT University presents a symposium on expanded photography and the future of the image.  Involving academics, post graduate students and industry professionals, this one day symposium seeks to explore and critique new directions in the creative application of photography.

​About the Symposium

In the context of ubiquitous photography, machine learning, computational imaging and mixed reality, new possibilities exist for how photographic imaging is being used and critiqued in society. 

The Generator 2021 symposium seeks to provide a platform for artists, photographers, academics and industry to critique and generate shared encounters, experiences and creative outcomes.

Topics and provocations for the symposium include but are not limited to the following:

• Creative applications for new imaging technologies, including virtual/augmented and the design of mixed realities
• The social impact and effects of imaging technologies, including surveillance and facial recognition, privacy, territories and geomapping, gender identification, and health
• Ubiquitous computing including practical applications and theoretical insights​

Presented through a series of discussions situated within contemporary photography and creative practices, the symposium aims to explore new ways of working with photography, and the complex social and cultural implications of emerging technological applications in the field of imaging futures.

Research topics and keywords

#artificial intelligence, #computer vision, #machine learning, #expanded photography, #privacy, #augmented reality, #photogrammetry, #virtual reality, #technology, #geomapping #computational photography, #digital humanities, #new materialism, #post human, #ethics, #human-machine interaction

Schedule

​Speakers & Presentations

Associate Professor Adrian Dyer
Face recognition, forensic data validation and information access

Who controls the narrative? When Steven Sasson invented the digital camera at Kodak in 1975, few people could have envisaged the possibility of mobile phones with high resolution cameras that could instantly transmit images around the world. At that time photographic evidence chain protocols for law enforcement were embedded in work practice where only authorised persons were permitted to collect and manage images in a formal way. Now, widespread camera deployment, for example Police Body cameras, has jumped ahead of legal considerations of what is legitimate evidence. This is important for who can supply and subsequently access multiple sources of visual evidence, and what is potentially admissible in a given court jurisdiction. When such information can be networked with powerful deep learning face recognition AI we have a dangerous cocktail that even dystopian authors fell short on envisaging.

Dr Alison Bennett, Lynda Roberts & Dr Yazid Ninsalam
Bowen Street Point Cloud Project

Lynda Roberts (RMIT Creative Student Life) and Dr Yazid Ninsalam (RMIT Landscape Architecture) would like to talk about the Bowen Street Point Cloud project​. The project engagers with expanded photographic applications, 3D scanning and social encounters via webXR​

Dr Troy Innocent
64 Ways of Being

Design and cities are connected in complex and multiple ways, shaping our collective experience of the world. We experience this every day through our ways of being in public spaces – streets and laneways, gardens and parks, arcades and public squares, and many other unnamed, intangible and temporary forms of public space that arise from our collective being in the world. In 64 Ways of Being, Melbourne is transformed into a playable city through an inventive blend of live art, game design and public art. People and place are connected at 64 locations across the city via augmented reality encounters capturing different ways of being. These experiences reimagine Melbourne’s identity as expressed through its creative, linguistic, cultural, social and urban diversity. This in turn transforms our mediated experience of public space through the screen of the mobile, transforming it into a site of digital-material poetics, imaginative urban play – experience and reflection over data and information.

J Rosenbaum
AI & the perceptions of Gender

Through my PhD at RMIT, I am exploring computer perceptions of gender and the way AI creates and interprets gendered images. By highlighting the problems in AI through art I am hoping to encourage meaningful discourse about the way we interact with artificial intelligence. Bias is a particularly large issue that affects gender and sexual minorities, people of color and people with disabilities. I create art with neural networks and subvert biased datasets by introducing new data to show that Artificial Intelligence is capable of change and updating trained biases. I will be discussing my research and the major projects that have emerged through my time at RMIT and how I use art to highlight the lack of awareness of gender minorities in AI. Through my work I explore how bias can impact and harm, and show that it is a problem that can be remedied.​

Dr Jair Garcia
What does a machine see? 

We increasingly trust in algorithms to make decisions about everyday issues. Applications go from sorting images based on content and relevance to the adjustment of speed by driverless vehicles based on traffic levels. However, we question on how these algorithms use digital images to inform their decisions, particularly, when images are recorded without human intervention. Which are the visual constructs from an image coded by the learning machine ? This question links to ideas posed to photography during its infancy when cameras began capturing reality without humans, when Nature was depicting itself, as pointed out in 1839 a correspondent for Le Commerce observing one of the first daguerreotypes ever produced. Surprisingly, there is a bridge between the photographic aesthetic and its interpretation by computer algorithms, which perhaps surprisingly, is inspired by the way information is coded by the visual system of humans and other animals.​

Nirma Madhoo
Obsidian XR Collaborative Project

“OBSIDIAN. A minor planet. A rogue planet captured by AXP 1e-11’s gravitational well. Basaltic. Melanated. Noir. A virtual world inhabited by symbiont and avatar, the I.N.A, homage to Octavia Butler’s protagonist in Fledgeling.” Obsidian XR collaborative project launched at Melbourne Fashion Festival and was showcased at MARS Gallery, Windsor from 11-27 March 2021 as part of my creative practice research. The proposed paper for ‘Generator’ will first outline the hybrid and collaborative processes that were required in order to create and embed full-scale fashioned bodies to social VR platform VRChat. Obsidian XR supersedes representational practices in the understanding of fashion film (and fashion media) in order to explore real-time VR as embodied mode of viewing. The paper will propose a posthumanist and diffractive reading of this output.​​

Assoc. Prof. Pablo Garcia
NFT’s and the Conquest of Ubiquity

Pablo is an Associate Professor in the Department of Contemporary Practices at the School of Art Institute of Chicago.​

Maybe the sudden rise of Nonfungible Tokens (NFTs) was inevitable. After a century of art and technology eroding concepts of real, fake, original, and reproduction, perhaps we need NFTs to calm “authenticity panic”? Creating uniqueness in an ocean of ubiquity has implications for art history, image consumption, and new frontiers of digitality. Instead of asking if NFTs are good or bad, let’s consider alternative questions: How does NFT technology relate to fake Louis Vuitton handbags? How is it like the selfie? Why is Marcel Duchamp laughing his head off right now?  

Black Box Multimedia Space
Building 12, Level 2 Room 103
RMIT City Campus
Bowen Street, Melbourne

Dr David Chesworth and Associate Professor Philip Samartzis are happy to announce the launch of the Sound Art and Auditory Culture lab.

Sound is a curious omnipresence. It is an invisible force with many sources that physically impacts on our lived experience, but then, simultaneously, it is a carrier medium for all kinds of semiotic signals and aesthetic manifestations.

The Sound Art and Auditory Culture lab (SAAC) is a new interdisciplinary lab that will provide opportunities to discuss, develop and engage with the creative uses of sound and auditory research in art, society and the environment.

The Sound Art and Auditory Culture lab will investigate how sounding and listening can be re-thought by artists, researchers and students. The lab will draw on a range of makers and thinkers who are working with sound, both from the College and across the wider community. 

The Sound Art and Auditory Culture Lab launch will include introductory comments by Postdoctoral Fellow, Dr David Chesworth. David has also agreed to briefly introduce his current research and present excerpts of recent projects made in collaboration with Senior Industry Fellow and SAAC participant Sonia Leber. 

Black Box Multimedia Space

Register via Eventbrite

Image credit: Sonia Leber and David Chesworth, What Listening Knows (video still), 2020.
3-channel 4K UHD video, multi-channel audio, 11:30 minutes.

TBC

Where: RMIT City Campus, Alumni Court by the Old Melbourne Gaol
Boon Wurrung Elder Steve Parker will host a Smoking Ceremony and Welcome to Country to launch the event.

Registration will be essential via Eventbrite.

Artists are commonly inspired by how food plays meaningful aesthetic, social and cultural role in our everyday lives. School of Art students and staff are invited to a participatory art picnic on campus on Wednesday 14 April. Bring your own (BYO) lunch representing your comfort food. This could be a favourite family recipe or the food which nurtured you through the trials of 2020.  

Together we will lunch on picnic blankets to have conversations about why your meal is meaningful to you. Recipes will be collected at the event and the lunch spectacle will be documented — both contributing to a collective art project.  

We will also hold an online version ‘The Big Digital Dinner Party’ in coming weeks for students and staff unable to join us in person. Details to be announced soon.

Image: JR, Migrants picnic across the border wall, Tecate, Mexico and USA, 2017
Source: https://www.jr-art.net/projects/migrants-picnic-across-the-border

Art and Photography, Honours and Coursework Masters

Thursday 10 June 2021
6.00–7.30pm

RMIT University, Building 6, Level 2, Room 4
Bowen Street off La Trobe Street, Melbourne

124 La Trobe Street, Melbourne

Explore study options at RMIT University to take your art and photography to the next level at our information session.

Take the opportunity to discuss your study interests and ambitions within the setting of our world-class facilities and studio spaces in the top ranked Art and Design University in Australia and Asia (2021 QS World Rankings).

Join us on Thursday 10 June at 6pm to hear about our postgraduate programs.

Welcome and Acknowledgment of Country by Professor Kit Wise, Dean of School.

Presented by Associate Professor Shane Hulbert, Associate Dean, Photography and Dr Kristen Sharp, Associate Dean, Art, you’ll gain ideas on how to future-proof your career through RMIT’s postgraduate courses and have the opportunity to hear from expert staff connected to a selection of our world leading Masters degrees:
Master of Photography — Dr Alison Bennett
Master of Arts (Arts Management) — Professor David Forrest
Master of Arts (Art in Public Space) — Fiona Hillary
Master of Fine Art (Coursework) — Dr Michael Graeve

This is a free event. Refreshments available on the night.

If you’re ready to study with us, applications are now open for Midyear.

Register via Eventbrite
Facebook event

Image credit: Max Wang (Master of Photography), Untitled 3, Lucid Dream, 2020

Thursday 11 February 2021
5.00–6.30pm

Online: Collaborate Ultra

Explore study options at RMIT University and take your art and photography to the next level at our online information session.

Hear from expert staff connected to a selection of our world leading degrees:
Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art) (Honours)
Bachelor of Arts (Photography) (Honours)
Master of Photography
Master of Arts (Arts Management)
Master of Arts (Art in Public Space)
Master of Fine Art (Coursework)

You’ll learn why RMIT University is ranked 11th for Art and Design in the 2020 QS World University rankings (1st in Australia and Asia), placing the School of Art in the top echelon of the world’s art education institutions.

If you’re ready to study with us, applications are now open for 2021.

Join us on Thursday 11 February at 5pm to hear about our postgraduate programs. Presented by Associate Professor Shane Hulbert, Associate Dean, Photography and Dr Kristen Sharp, Associate Dean, Art, you’ll gain ideas on how to future-proof your career through RMIT’s postgraduate courses and have the opportunity to hear from expert staff connected to a selection of our world leading degrees:

Associate Professor Mikala Dwyer, Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art) (Honours)
Dr Ray Cook, Bachelor of Arts (Photography) (Honours)
Dr Alison Bennett, Master of Photography
Professor David Forrest, Master of Arts (Arts Management)
Dr Michael Graeve, Master of Fine Art (Coursework)

All attendees must register for this event. Once you register, you will receive confirmation from Eventbrite with your tickets and access to the live stream link. RMIT will send you a reminder email at least 48–72 hours before the event starts.
Register via Eventbrite
Facebook event

Image credit: Master of Fine Art: Pattie Beerens, am I listening? at Assembly Point, 2020. Performance, installation and mattering. Photographed by Thomas Feng.

Wednesday 27 May 2020
4.30–6.30pm

Online: Collaborate Ultra

Explore study options at RMIT University and take your art and photography to the next level at our online information session.

Hear from expert staff connected to a selection of our world leading degrees:
Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art) (Honours)
Bachelor of Arts (Photography) (Honours)
Master of Photography
Master of Arts (Arts Management)
Master of Arts (Art in Public Space)
Master of Fine Art (Coursework)

Learn why RMIT University is ranked 11th for Art and Design in the 2020 QS World University rankings (1st in Australia and Asia), placing the School of Art in the top echelon of the world’s art education institutions.

If you’re ready to study with us, applications are now open for 2020 mid-year commencement*.

Current students or prospective applicants can submit an administrative query via Study@RMIT.


* Mid-year intake not available for Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art) (Honours) and Bachelor of Arts (Photography) (Honours) however Program Managers will be taking questions about admission in 2021


Image: Lily Alssen (Master of Photography), ISO-SPECTIVE (detail), 2020

https://wsimag.com/art/22394-ross-coulters-audience