The fourth edition of LASER Talks Brussels will take place on Tuesday 7 December at 7pm CET at iMAL – Center for Digital Cultures in Brussels with panelists Francis Brazier, Joost Rekveld and Frank Theys.

The recorded talk is available here.

LASER Talks Brussels are chaired by Alexandra Dementieva, moderated by Edith Doove and hosted by iMAL.

This talk discusses notions of out-of-control ness in a social and technical context that are at the core of the work of the three panelists: Prof. Dr. Frances BRAZIER who is a full professor in Engineering Systems Foundations at the Delft University of Technology and visual artists Joost REKVELD and Frank THEYS.Brazier approaches the subject through her research into social systems and connects out-of-control-ness with the notion of emergence and new possibilities, the empowerment of people in change management. For Rekveld the notion of out-of-control-ness is related to his research into analog computing, its history and culture, pushing the limits of its affordance. For Theys it’s related to the current state of affairs of the world and global warming which is the subject of his latest interactive multimedia installation ‘Chronicle of an Extinction Foretold’.

Featured image: Joost REKVELD, Film still.

Frances BRAZIER is a full professor in Engineering Systems Foundations at the Delft University of Technology, as of September 2009, before which she chaired the Intelligent Interactive Distributed Systems Group for 10 years within the Department of Computer Science at the VU University Amsterdam. She holds a MSc in Mathematics and a doctorate in Cognitive Ergonomics from the VU Amsterdam. Parallel to her academic career she co-founded the first ISP in the Netherlands: NLnet and later NLnet Labs. 

With a strong background in the design of  human computer interaction, multi-agents systems, and distributed systems, current research focuses on the design of socio-technical ecological systems that enable and support participation in today’s networked society: participatory systems!  The leading design principles include design for trust, design for empowerment and design for engagement. Areas of study and exploration include distributed energy management,  crisis management, dynamic supply chain management,  real-time safety management.

Joost REKVELD is an artist motivated by the question of what we can learn from a dialogue with machines. In his work, he explores the sensory consequences of systems of his own design, often inspired by forgotten corners in the history of science and technology. His films, installations and performances are composed documentaries of the worlds opened by such systems. His abstract films have been shown world-wide in a wide range of festivals and venues for experimental film, animation or other kinds of moving image. He has realized several installations and was involved in many collaborative projects involving composers, music ensembles, theatre companies, dance companies and artist’s labs. Since February 2017, he’s affiliated to the School of Arts, University College Ghent as an artistic researcher.

Frank Theys is a filmmaker and visual artist. His work is always accompanied by a thorough investigation in domains where social and technological factors become intertwined, which in turn influences the form of the work and the media used. His experimental films, performances, documentaries and new media installations were internationally awarded and acquired for the collections of a.o. SMAK (Ghent), the Museum for the Moving Image (New York) and the Centre National de la Cinématographie (Paris).

Frank Theys has taught at the film and the visual arts departments of LUCA Ghent and Brussels, at DAS Theater, Amsterdam (Masters degree performing arts), at the ArtScience Interfaculty of the Royal Academy in The Hague and has been a visiting teacher and lecturer at universities, film, art and theatre schools worldwide. He currently is a researcher at the University of Louvain and teaches video and performance at the Open Lab in PXL-MAD (Hasselt, Belgium), where he founded DigiMAD, a platform for art & science collaborations.

In collaboration with CYLAND.