Placing the Human

A roundtable discussion enquiry into the questions:

As increasingly sophisticated technologies give rise to visions of the posthuman and experiences of the virtual, what is the place of the human and the non-human?

As environmental and human pressures converge, can renewed attention to 'place' foster an ethics of care within human practices?

Featuring:

Philip Beesley is an Associate Professor in the School of Architecture, University of Waterloo, who creates immersive, responsive environments.  His current Hylozoic Ground project is an interactive artificial forest that explores qualities of contemporary wilderness and the boundaries of nature and technology.  This glass-like immersive environment will transform the Canadian pavilion at the 2010 Venice Biennale in Architecture.

Char Davies is internationally known for pioneering artworks in immersive virtual space.  She is now deeply engaged with the actual landscape that inspired those virtual environments.

Carol Gigliotti (Emily Carr University) is a writer, educator, and artist.  She teaches Environmental Ethics, Critical Animal Studies, and Digital Interactive Media, and she has been involved in new media, and writing about ethics and technology for the past seventeen years.

Jeff Malpas (University of Tasmania) is a philosopher of place.  Drawing on phenomenological and hermeneutic resources, his work in philosophical topography offers detailed conceptual analyses of topographical  and spatial notions linked with self and identity.

Sponsors:

The Jackman Humanities Institute, University of Toronto

The Reverie Foundation

Tickets:

Free and open to the public.  Please register as seating is limited.

Information:  www.humanities.utoronto.ca

If you are a person with a disability and require accommodation, please contact Kim Yates at jhi.associate@utoronto.ca or (416) 946-0313 to make appropriate arrangements.

If you are a person with a disability and require accommodation please contact Kim Yates at jhi.associate@utoronto.ca or (416) 946-0313 by 15 March 2010 to make appropriate arrangements.