2017-18: MsUnderstanding Media
McLuhan’s The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man acts as inspiration for this year’s investigation of machinic logics in culture. Evolving from last year’s considerations in MsUnderstanding Media, the series asked what it looks like if we don’t believe the hype.Delving into smart cities, data justice, robots + AI, hard + software, quantified selfhood, alternative sensory experiences, and militaristic media it raises questions: What is the consensual narrative of the “tech bro” today? What are the implications of this folklore on how we both understand and act in our day-to-day lives? What is the promise and where is it not being kept? How do we use technology to upend the machinic logics of the Mechanical Bro?
- 11 Monday Night Seminars
- 3 working groups
- 2 special events
Monday Night Seminars
The Monday Night Seminars carry on the tradition of the Centre for Culture and Technology's public seminars at the University of Toronto, first established by Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan. They are designed to challenge prevailing cultural notions about technology and provoke new insight on the possibilities for a more equitable technological future.
We Interrupt This Program: Indigenous Media Tactics in Canada
April 9, 2018
Join us as at the book launch and discussion forWe Interrupt This Program: Indigenous Media Tactics in Canada, with authors John M.H Kelly and Miranda Brady, along with special guest, Terril Calder.
Shame Shame Shame (refresh)
March 19, 2018
Join us as we discuss the media logics of shame with Wendy Hui Kyong Chun and Susanna Paasonen.
Glitching the Code of the Techno-Logic: The NO!!!BOT
March 12, 2018
With special guest Praba Pilar. The NO!!!BOT is a performance that glitches the dizzying code of the Cult of the Techno-Logic. It is impossible desire, a body bypassing the supersonic technological rail driving us deeper into a militarized neo-colonial hell. It opens up collective imaginaries for hacking destructive code makers, and generating our own deviant electric dreams.
Lurk Over Here: Digital Bystander Culture
February 26, 2018
Join us we discuss this digital culture of lurking - from technological solutions to technological challenges! We will touch upon revenge porn, the tension between surveillance and witnessing, privacy vs civic duty, the gendered poltiics of reporting and and information sharing.With special guests Carrie Rentschler (McGill University), Wendy Kiomotis (METRAC), and Andrea Slane (UOIT).
Of Mancaves and Basements: Mapping Gender in Meatspaces
February 5, 2018
Join us in exploring gender in popular culture and the gaming community. With special guests Florence M. Chee (Loyola University Chicago), in conversation with Nicholas Taylor (North Carolina State University) and Emily Flynn-Jones.
Media Labours of Love
January 22, 2018
With special guests Brooke Erin Duffy (Cornell University) featuring her new book "(Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love: Gender, Social Media, and Aspirational Work" (2017), in conversation with Jenna Jacobson (Ryerson University) and Leslie Shade (University of Toronto).
Data Justice Across Environmental Publics
November 27, 2017
How do we build decolonial futures into data infrastructures? This seminar addresses data justice as an emerging zone of creation and politics. We will discuss frame works of data justice in relation to modes of refusal, consent, and reparation. We speak to issues of environmental justice, open data, and smart city technology as critical contemporary sites of risk and opportunity. Key to this discussion are the politics of surveillance in relation to positions of precarity (racialized, gendered, community). Join us in prototyping a vision of data justice and strategies of resistance. As part of the seminar, we will use design charrette methods to workshop the concepts we develop. Come participate! With special guests Dr. Beth Coleman (University of Waterloo) and Michelle Murphy (University of Toronto) leading the Technoscience Salon.
Algorithmic Frictions
November 13, 2017
Join us for an evening as we discuss the frictions generated by the algorithmic power that underpins platform-based labourWith special guests Safiya Noble (USC) and Tero Karppi (UofT). The seminar will be moderated by Rianka Singh (UofT).
Automating Injustice
October 30, 2017
TSA Scanners/Data Mining Social Movements/Police Body-cams. Join us for an evening as we discuss the cultural and the technical aspects of how injustice gets embedded in our machines.With special guests Armond Towns (University of Denver) and Rachel Hall (Syracuse University) in conversation with U of T's Alex Hanna (Assistant Professor ICCIT) and Rhonda McEwen (Canada Research Chair in Tactile Interfaces, Communication and Cognition and Associate Professor ICCIT).
Spinning the Global with Textile Media
October 2, 2017
Join us as at the McLuhan Centre as we discuss: What is the relevance of textile as medium today? With guests Radhika Gajjala (Bowling Green State University), Ganaele Langlois (York University) and Dori Tunstall (OCAD)
How to MsUnderstand Media: Incubator, Gun, CRISPR and the Fearless Girl
September 18, 2017
With guests Anne Balsamo (University of Texas Dallas), Sarah Banet-Weiser (University of Southern California-Annenberg), Sara Martel (The Institute for Better Health) and Judith Nicholson (Wilfred Laurier University)
Working Groups
A primary mode of research is the support of interdisciplinary working groups whose novel approaches to culture and technology are appropriate to the challenges of the moment while drawing from the spirit of McLuhan’s attention to the medium. Working groups consist of faculty and graduate students across the University of Toronto and are funded for up to one year to engage symposia, performances, installations, lecture series, workshops, writing retreats, and other public events. The working groups also work in consultation with the Director, Professor Sarah Sharma, to run a Monday Night Seminar.
This year the Centre funded 3 working groups, each led by a faculty convener.
You're Deactivated - Alessandro Delfanti, Assistant Professor, ICCIT
Queer Digitality - Patrick Keilty, Associate Professor, Faculty of Information
Refusal and Repair: Decolonial Feminist Technoscience Tactics - Michelle Murphy (Professor, Women and Gender Studies and Technoscience Research Unit)
Special Events
