2016-12-19

The First Sessions for #rp17 Are Online

We are so happy to announce the first sessions! By now several of 2017’s sessions and speakers from our Call for Participation are up on our website and many more will certainly be added within the next few weeks.

First of all we'd like to give a huge thank you to all of you for your exciting submissions. We are impressed by your creativity and your thrilling ideas and we are looking forward to receive many more of them. Hurry up, the next deadline is coming up on January, 8th 2017!

Have a look at the ones already up over here and the speakers here. To give you a taste of what to expect at re:publica 2017 find a selection we will be featuring:

How to make music from deep space, Wall Street or biofeedback
Is it possible to translate the old Greek idea of having no distinction between art and science (maths in particular) into a contemporary musical context? How can one, as an electronic musician, integrate recent advances in theoretical physics, such as the quantum gravity, in a critical approach towards our current Wall Street-driven economy or new evolutions in artificial intelligence in his or her artistic practice? The independent artist Valery Vermeulen will give an answer to these questions.

Welcome culture 2.0: fighting anti-collaborative behaviours
Having collaborated as wefugees.de with the "Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge" (BAMF) and other projects for the creation of a centralized “welcome platform” for newcomers, speaker Paolo Andre Piriello will focus on experiences and strategies for the management of networks, information and resources in civic tech projects designed for newcomers.

Digital technologies, environmental change, and public policy
Digital technologies and services affect the planet. Every line of code, every photo uploaded to ‘the cloud’, and every smartphone, computer, or ‘IoT’ device, has an environmental footprint. That footprint often takes the form of carbon dioxide emissions, ecosystem degradation, and resource depletion, each of which occurs to varying degrees throughout the production, use, and end-of-life disposal or recycling of our digital technologies. Researcher Vanessa Thomas will show that we have reached a critical point in the design and use of our digital technologies that demands action on a global scale.

Selfmade fine dust sensor - An easy construction set
OK Lab Stuttgart evolved a fine dust sensor which can be constructed easily by everyone. In a workshop they will show how build it. It is their main goal to bring the topic fine dust pollution more into focus, since it is huge problem in nearly every metropolitan area.

Lobbying for good
Alberto Alemanno, founder of "The Good Lobby", will give a guide on why and how citizens should become ‘citizen lobbyists’ to help revive our fragile civic life and restore their own citizen role in society. His presentation provides an accessible theoretical framework of a new form of active citizenship by providing inspirational illustrations and a how-to guide to new, unconventional forms of citizen engagement.

Radical change in how we connect to the environment
During this talk, artist Kat Austen will discuss how drawing together knowledge from multiple sources – DIY science, phenomenology, instinct, culture – can help to provide a bridge between ourselves and the outside world. She will illustrate the methodology with examples from two projects.

Re:Action? Software for political protest
NYU lecturer Pierre Depaz will give a talk about the possibilities for developing and using software in order to enable pro-active political actions. First he will focus on a historical account of how political actions have evolved during the past century and how they achieved success for their agendas, and then focus on what is being done today/what can be done in the future.

These sessions are just a taste of what we have in store! Come back regularly to our programme page for more updates and the soon-to-be-published full programme schedule.

Photo Credits: re:publica/Jan Zappner (CC BY 2.0)