Talks

Keynote Speaker at PRIMER Conference on Speculative Futures

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PRIMER was created to prepare you for the future, and to equip you to help shape it. 

In 2018, we are inviting an even wider range of speakers from the design, strategy & futurist communities. We are still loyal to the core of our offering which is Speculative Design; so you can be sure to hear some amazing talks from Speculative & Critical Designers from around the world, as well as student work from top design schools in the US.

https://primerconference.com/2018/

Speaking at Dense Emptiness Symposium at UNC

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Organized by School of Architecture professor Rachel Dickey, Dense Emptiness is a symposium on the impacts of digital culture on design and architecture. Antoine Picon, the G. Ware Travelstead Professor of the History of Architecture and Technology and Director of Research at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, will deliver the keynote. 

Dense Emptiness is an event of experiential exhibitions, compelling performances, and radical speakers intended to excite, challenge, and evoke discussion about the impacts of digital culture on design and architecture. The title represents the density of information in a society driven by metrics and data, and the great threat of emptiness, which occurs when all meaning is lost in the absence of the qualitative and the immeasurable. Similar to Reynar Banham’s plea for a serious approach to technology, Dense Emptiness calls for an exploration of the potential impacts on the built world, which result from our fixed relationship with technology. It questions if a day might come “when we turn off our target ads, navigational prompts, Tinder match notifications, and status updates to find a world stripped bare, where nothing is left but scaffolds and screens” (Young). The symposium is intended to provoke ideas which address the challenges imposed by today’s digital culture.

Speaking at Beta-Real Symposium

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I am delighted to be part of a panel that tests the multilayered and superpositioned space between two states: fiction and reality. Drawing from literature, art, politics, technology and science, the panel looks for ways in which, as William Steward aptly framed it, “nothing is real...that isn’t a fiction.” This contradictory structure is precisely the structure of the inbetween, of the Beta-Real, we explored in the first panel. It is the structure of the doppelganger which is at once you and at once not you. It is not simply ambiguous, but rather ambivalent, a superposition: it is precisely both opposing things at the sametime. Just as in the first panel, the point is not to try to resolve these tensions and oppositions or even to explore their liminality, but rather to understand the superposition of their difference as constitutive elements of reality, and to see them as an invitation to dwell within the space of ambivalent impasse.

(From symposium organizer and Boghosian Fellow Linda Zhang:) Ani Liu amplifies while simultaneously undermining sensual experience. Her work explores the ways in which scientific and technological revolutions shift and shape the experiences of longing, nostalgia, and sexuality. She uses the tools of science and technology in her artistic practice to turn so-called objective truths on their heads by injecting biological impulse with affect.

Keynote Speaker at Campus Party Brasilia

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I will be giving a talk about my work as a keynote speaker in Brasilia, Brazil June 16th!  Come visit and say hi if you are in the area!  

Update: Images from the Talk!

I must admit this is the biggest selfie line that has ever assembled for me after a talk.  Thank you for all the warmth and energy Brasilia!

I must admit this is the biggest selfie line that has ever assembled for me after a talk.  Thank you for all the warmth and energy Brasilia!

Speaking at ArtTechPsyche, presented by Harvard Digital Arts and Humanities

Please to announce that I will be speaking at ArtTechPsyche at Harvard this April 20th.  

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ArtTechPsyche celebrates human expression at the intersection of technology and the arts. Harvard Digital Arts and Humanities (DARTH), in collaboration with the Harvard Library and the Digital Futures Consortium, invites you to participate in a day of immersive digital experiences, art exhibitions, technology demos, and visionary speakers on Thursday, April 20, 2017 at Arts @ 29 Garden.

Explore the creative process and its impact on emerging technologies. Discover the ways in which technology shapes us, and conversely, how the artist continually challenges and informs technological development. Interact with cutting edge art installations and software demos to experience the world in new ways. Meet like-minded faculty, staff, students, researchers, and colleagues of any skill level while exploring new projects and collaborations on and around campus.

My talk "Synthetic Biology for the Senses" is live on TED.com

https://www.ted.com/talks/ani_liu_smelfies_and_other_experiments_in_synthetic_biology/up-next

What if you could take a smell selfie, a smelfie? What if you had a lipstick that caused plants to grow where you kiss? Ani Liu explores the intersection of technology and sensory perception, and her work is wedged somewhere between science, design and art.

The talk was also featured on the front page of Ted.com today!

Speak the Small Truths

Speak the Small Truths:  Pleased to be speaking at Speak the Small Truths, presented by Food + Future CoLab in conjunction with IDEO and MIT Media Lab.  I will be talking about the emotional affordances of synthetic biology as it relates to olfaction.

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The Food + Future Salon Series is designed to provoke dialogue and inspire action. Salons should challenge your thinking and raise lots of small “t” truths that you may not have previously considered. They are an opportunity to confront each other’s diverse perspectives in respectful and generative ways. They are simultaneously big and intimate: large enough to feel the energy of the crowd around you, yet small enough to be approachable and welcoming. Food + Future quietly held its first Salon at MIT Media Lab in November 2016.

MIT Hacking Arts

MIT Hacking Arts: I am organizing a panel with Pip Mothersill on Biotech and Art.  Speakers include Joe Davis esteemed bioartist, David Kong of of the community BioHacking lab EMW, Christina Agapakis of GinkoBioworks, Julie Legault of Amino, and Dr. Natalie Kuldell, author of BioBuilders.

TEDX at MoMa- April 22nd

 TEDx with Estee Lauder at MoMa: Very excited to be giving a TEDx with Estee Lauder at MoMa.  I will be speaking about speculative design, olfaction, and the emotional affordances of biotechnology.  Edit: some photos from the event posted below!

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