Art Science Cocktails are a social event series initiated by i/o/lab and curator Hege Tapio, seeking to create an interdisciplinary mingling opportunity for researchers, artists, students and other interested. During these events, scientific and artistic inspirations are presented as short talks while you may enjoy the exquisite cocktail menu.
Date: Tuesday 21st September
Time: 19:30
Location: Salon du Nord, Hotel Victoria
No registration required
Art Science & Cocktails “Caring Futures edition” is a brainteaser to introduce the concept of how technology might aid, challenge or change our concepts of care and caring in the future. The event preludes the art exhibition “Caring Futures” that will be launched in the autumn of 2022 at Sølvberget Gallery, initiated by the CARING FUTURES research group at University of Stavanger and i/o/lab.
As machine technology, AI and robotics gets embedded into our society this might also affect our most human qualities – our empathy and need to be cared for – and care about. How will technology inflict our lives and health industry? Are machines smart and – do they really care?
Programme:
19:30 Welcome and introduction to Art Science & Cocktails: Caring Futures edition by curator, artist and founder of i/o/lab, Hege Tapio
19:45 “Will we stop caring? Healthcare in a technology-oriented future” Science Talk by Project Leader for Innovation, Stavanger University Hospital (SUS) Kenneth Austrått.
20:00 “Adapted worlds, Life on the border between the authentic and the inauthentic”. Artist Talk by Norwegian science fiction writer Cathrine Knudsen.
Cocktail break
20:30 «Imaginaries of the care robot “ Science Talk by associate professor in Centre for Gender Studies and the Caring Futures project, UiS, Ingvil Hellstrand
20:45 «Exploring haptic robots’ artificial empathy» Artist Talk by the artist and researcher Kaisu Koski
21:00 End Program
Kenneth Austrått
“Will we stop caring? Healthcare in a technology-oriented future”
Kenneth Austrått will introduce some of the technology development projects they’ve been working on, as well as some ongoing initiatives at Norwegian hospitals. Lastly, explore how we may change the way healthcare is served.
Cathrine Knudsen
“Adapted worlds, Life on the border between the authentic and the inauthentic”.
Knudsen will introduce us shortly to what has inspired her writing the novels Av menneskehånd (By Human Hand), Den siste hjelperen (Last Aid) and Kjærlighetsfragmentet (Fragment of Love). She will also share an excerpt from the novel Last Aid.
Ingvil Hellstrand
“Imaginaries of the care robot”
The very notion of a caring robot is often thought a an oxymoron: the attempt at bringing together humanness on the one hand, and technology on the other. In my talk, I explore how stories and imaginaries of care robots can give new insights to what is perceived as possibilities, challenges and solutions to the future welfare state. What is at stake for how we experience and understand care and compassion under new technological regimes?
Kaisu Koski
“Exploring haptic robots’ artificial empathy”
During this talk, Kaisu Koski will briefly introduce her upcoming project and sketches on Artificial Empathy. This project creates artistic translations of clinical empathy into robotic language and haptic interfaces in particular. It employs a performative-visual means to explore haptic robots’ artificial empathy: their capacity to comfort the patient’s mental–physiological distress.
Speakers
Kenneth Austrått, leading the innovation team at Stavanger University Hospital, and a project manager of several innovation project. These projects ranges from technology development and commercialization to service innovations, often through a close collaboration with clinicians, engineers and designers. He is interested in how we can exploit technology to individualize healthcare services, and use people to do more of what machines cannot.
Cathrine Knudsen is a Norwegian writer (b. 1970) with previously seven published novels. In 2017, Knudsen received Stig Sæterbakken’s Memorial Prize for an authorship with “convincing literary qualities, originality and courage to create her own projects». Her novels reflect contemporary society issues including the technological development and its implementation in our daily lives. Some of the reviews are reflecting her novels as «beautiful and deeply disturbing» and «thoughtprovocing, philosophical novel»
Ingvil Hellstrand is associate professor with the Centre for Gender Studies at the University of Stavanger, Norway (UiS). She holds a PhD in social sciences from UiS, and an MA in Women’s Studies from Lancaster University, UK. Her research interests are storytelling practices and knowledge production, science fiction as method and posthuman ethics. She is currently involved in the trans-disciplinary project Caring Futures, and is co-founder of the international platform The Monster Network.
Dr. Kaisu Koski is a cross-disciplinary artist and humanities scholar with a background in performance and screen-based media. She is an Associate Professor of Art and Design at Lab4Living at Sheffield Hallam University. Kaisu’s work explores climate crisis, human-nonhuman relationships, and empathy, and it involves collaboration with scientists, clinicians, and engineers.