The Hmm @ Real Feelings

It can often be difficult to reflect on a question as simple as ‘how are you feeling?’ If you’re someone who can’t express how you’re feeling, find it difficult to talk about feelings, or can’t seem to have strong emotional connections, then Felix might be just for you. Felix is a social robot, created by product/interaction designer Lola Gielen, that helps all kinds of people communicate about their feelings and mental well-being. Lola will be joining us to talk about Felix, why we need tools like ‘happy bots’, and what they mean to the people who use them. Link

How can we give form to the non-stop stream of filmed confessions online? Esther is an artist, lecturer and media designer who uses deconstruction and montage as basic elements in her work. She often mixes the real with the illusory world, creating new alienated realities. She’ll be joining us to talk about her video and sound piece Streamers, where she borrows the ‘feelings’ expressed in the nonstop stream of filmed confessions online on global networks and gives the language new bodies—hybrid alien-like beings that resemble rocks or stones. Link

Current artificial intelligence, including emotion recognition technology, is based on algorithms. Professor Bert Kappen is investigating if the learning ability of AI can no longer be dependent on algorithms via quantum mechanics. He is exploring ways to use the ‘quantum brain’ to build neural networks and learning algorithms at the atomic scale. Tonight, he will share his motivation to study this and tell us whether quantum physics can make science less rational.
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Can technology prevent skin hunger? Can a chair give you the feeling of intimacy? After taking a seat in the Skin-to-Skin sculpture, part of the Synthetic Seduction work in the Real Feelings exhibition, your answer will be ‘yes’. With this project, consisting of a video and a sculpture, artists Marie Munk and Stine Deja explore the meaning of love for robots and the influence of technology on our intimate experiences. Tonight Marie will join us for a talk about the project.
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Researcher Lisanne Pauw, currently working on her post doc at the University of Münster, is specialised in emotion regulation. She researched why we share our emotions so frequently with others and why it often does not help us in the long run. Tonight she’ll explore how technology may help or harm our emotional sharing. Does it matter whether we talk about our feelings over WhatsApp, Zoom, or face-to-face? Can avatars replace the human listening ear?
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(image: virtual therapist Ellie)

By having words to describe certain sensations, we are better able to understand and share them. But when it comes to digital culture, our language is limited. In their project Dictionary of Digital, Nadia Piet and Ocean Conijn explore their own and others’ emotional relationship with technology by mapping shared experiences and sentiments. Tonight, Nadia and Ocean will introduce us to the phenomenons of ‘phantom reply’, ‘window effect’, and many more words in their dictionary.
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Witchcraft and divination traditionally gave humans a sense of control over the elusive, enigmatic future. Today, Big Data seems to be the new power that predicts our future scenarios. With her project Digital Esoterism, artist Ginevra Petrozzi explores the role of magic and fate in our digital age by reading automated predictions as modern Tarot cards. Tonight she will analyse the message within a personalised, sponsored ad.
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Minha Lee is an assistant professor at the Eindhoven University of Technology. Her research explores how we can design interactions with conversational agents like robots or chatbots as our moral mirrors for exploring moral emotions and concepts like compassion or fairness. Tonight she will talk about people’s willingness to punish robots if they have no emotional expressions.
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