Circle 2: Cybioses – life in the future imperfect

Summer Symposium 2025:

Creativity under surveillance: art, critique and technology

(for the Winter Symposium in early march 2025 scroll down)

Date: 20th July – 28th July,

Location: Jyväskylä, Finland

Deadline for abstracts: 1th of May (for grants 14th of April)

As part of the study circle/symposium series Cybioses – life in the future imperfect, organized as part of the Nordic Summer University (NSU), we are pleased to announce a call for abstracts and artistic submissions for our symposium on “Creativity under surveillance: art, critique and technology”

Invitation

We invite scholars, artists, students, technologists, and other professionals working or writing on future technologies to take part in the summer symposium of our study circle Cybioses – life in the future imperfect, part of the Nordic Summer University (NSU), a migratory non-hierarchical group of international researchers that has existed for over 70 years. Since its inception, the primary aim of NSU has been to provide a forum for experimentation and cross-disciplinary collaboration, welcoming members both from within and outside of universities and other institutions.

1. Cybioses – the future imperfect (what is it?)

The study circle has existed for seven years and its name ‘Cybiosis’ (pl. cybioses), is a neologism, based on ‘cybernetic’, ‘symbiosis’, and ‘bio’. It embodies the new technological modes of living that we aim to investigate. Cybioses is meant, from the start, as a speculative metaphor. The term is intended to support an imagination of the ambivalent relation between:

(cybernetic) systems of symbioses and inclusion, and the relentless drive to commodify life forms and extend the networks of technological control.

The commodification and control points to a future that will be imperfect (our circle’s subtitle). Also, this type of ‘ambivalence’ is central to our shared investigation of the status of the “future” in today’s technological world.

Indeed, the future that will be imperfect, because, of course, “it will be”, how could it be otherwise? There will be actions, or even a state of affairs, characterized by their continuity and yet it will remain incomplete and will not be defined by a precise start or sequence of events. It might be the case that in English, the tense form does not exist – there are no grammar rules for a “future imperfect” – but it is nonetheless advisable to acknowledge that it is challenging to think, investigate, and discuss our ability to make plans without knowing precisely what is the point that the future starts and without closing down what the future might hold.

2. Creativity under surveillance

The title of the summer symposium is again ambivalent and intended to be approached with some imagination. We seek to affirm the value of various kinds of creativity: whether in art and performance, in intellectual work and critique, along with exploration and discovery in technical fields. This is deliberately juxtaposed to the monitoring of behavior in the sense of mass surveillance, surveillance capitalism, government surveillance and various technological developments. Accordingly we are aiming to reflect, together, on new and old techniques that have automated the collection of personal data, but also on the changing status, role and potential of creativity as a key value, a kind of ethics and, perhaps, something distinctive about human beings.

Surveillance is often experienced and promoted as something desirable. For example a patient might have a disease or condition monitored by a medical specialist, the neighborhood police might check-in, and the water, air and biodiversity might be monitored with good reason. Additionally, surveillance is a popular design feature, coded into the functions of artifacts like smart devices, like health and safety bracelets, wireless trackers and so on. In this sense there are new frontiers on the horizon; surveillance technology will intensify its relation to the senses, emotions, memories, ideas, thoughts and behavior.

However, the dream of solving problems through collecting data, the real-time tracking of threats, the preemptive prevention of problems is accompanied by a wide variety of concerns and dystopic visions. Health, safety and convenience might be persuasive, they turn into sources of anxiety, reflecting underlying paradigms and sociotechnical systems. Accordingly surveillance can bring out a wide variety of personal and societal insecurities, entrenching who gets treated with suspicion and who is the subject of targeted intelligence gathering.

Simultaneously the process of gathering data and data interpretation is inherently imperfect. There are many biases that are not fixable easily, either in any strict technical sense or by formalized procedures. This includes art, which in its various forms is increasingly surveilled. For example, creative labor absorbed cloud-based music streaming and similar digital enclosures. This drastically changes the experience of art and performance and their role in contemporary life. Similarly surveillance is characterized by interpretive problems, in law, policy-making, governance and commercial relations, with as its extreme a mistrust in epistemic authorities, the circulation of misinformation and (re-)entrenched assumptions about race, gender and class.

We are particularly interested in the ambivalences that surround surveillance from the perspective of the future of creativity. This includes its history and sociological practice, as well as technological developments and artistic interpretation. For example, there are relevant examples of surveillance art and science fiction, as well as many empirical, conceptual, and theoretical observations on the topic. More broadly, we invite contributions that seek to challenge surveillance, as a form of (intellectual) resistance or by improvising, experimenting, seeking to cause surprise, or “play” around with ideas for their own sake.

Our symposia has always been about this type of collaboration, the search for a sensible shared response to powerful and technologically driven ideas about the future. This includes explorations of creativity in the context of surveillance technology but it also means an openness to ideas and narratives coming from different fields, explicitly including artistic practices, philosophical niche topics, natural scientists willing to share their experiences and so on.

The topic is defined broadly on purpose, as our working method is to seek to deepen and renew our collaboration with artists, hackers, designers, technologists, theorists, and others. This is the defining setup of the Cybioses workshops, which have been running for over 6 years, with various histories going back much further. We hope once again to find contributors with experimental approaches to presenting and collaborating.

In the past, there have been long and short presentations, textual (read out) and performative, theory-based, and practical, with artistic and aesthetic aims. Accordingly, this symposium, as is customary with Cybioses, seeks to explore its themes from a broad range of disciplinary and cross-disciplinary perspectives. We welcome contributions from the arts, the sciences, technology, the social sciences and the humanities, seeking a new conversation on this topic and deepening the thematic of the Cybioses study circle.

Topics that relate strongly to the key works of the symposium are encouraged, such as:

surveillance technologies
surveillance societies
surveillance and art
surveillance capitalism
surveillance and AI
surveillance and the mind
surveillance and time (future, present, history)
the ethics and law of surveillance
creative responses to surveillance
surveillance as a crisis of creativity

Other topics that fit the profile are welcome and perspectives that we welcome include (but are not limited to):

ethical and philosophical perspectives
science, technology, and engineering
science and technology studies
the arts and humanities
political economy and theoretical critique
sociological approaches
cybernetic thought and information theory
hard/soft/wetware experiments
critical examinations of neoliberal and authoritarian systems
a focus on alternatives, including failed experimentation
literature studies

Feel free to contact us if you are wondering how you would fit in, or if your topic is not on this list. The same applies to the type of contributions. We encourage participation from scholars, artists, students, technologists, and other professionals. Experimental approaches to presenting and collaborating are encouraged. There will be space for installations and performances.

Submission and contact

Please send a short letter about your contribution and a bio to eric.deibel@nsuweb.org, palle@chalmers.se and tdeibel@ucc.ie. The deadline for abstracts is the 1th of May. This should include:

A written proposal (max. 350 words) with a title and descriptive subtitle. This text should include your presentation proposal, its format, its duration, facilities you need (e.g., space, technical equipment), and an explanation of what motives you to join.
A short bio (max. 200 words)

Please send a single PDF file with your name in its title.

It might be possible to attend the symposium without presenting. In this case, please just e-mail us a short bio.

You will be sent an acknowledgment that your abstract has been received. You will be notified of whether it has been accepted within a week after the deadline. The preliminary program will be announced as soon as payments have been processed.

Grants

The NSU typically offers grants, and that includes Cybioses. Submission on 14th of April, and this requires the abstract, a bio (like above) and include a short reasoning on why you need to be supported by a grant. Note, we only have a few grants this year, so it is likely that there are many requests.

Registration fees

The registration fee includes the participation fee for the summer symposium. Included are thee meals per day (for the whole week).

– 450 EUR — scholarship receivers (stay in 4–5 people apartments)

– 850 EUR — single room

– 700 EUR — bed in a twin room

– 650 EUR — family room [per person]

– 1250 EUR — institutional price. Institutional price is intended for participants whose attendance is paid for by their institutions, e.g. trough research grants or similar dedicated funding

– 950 EUR — institutional price PhD

– 440 EUR — shared lodging (indoor camp rooms (shared accommodation))

– 400 EUR — camping

There will be 2 scholarships, more information will follow.

Important dates

Grant request deadline: April 14th

Submission of abstracts: 1th of may

Payment and registration deadline: May 15th.

The Nordic Summer University (NSU) (www.nsuweb.org) is a Nordic network for research and interdisciplinary studies. NSU is a nomadic, academic institution, which organizes workshop-seminars across disciplinary and national borders. Since it was established in 1950, Nordic Summer University has organized forums for cultural and intellectual debate in the Nordic and Baltic region, involving students, academics, politicians, and intellectuals from this region and beyond.

Decisions about the content and the organizational form of the NSU lay with its participants. The backbone of the activities in the NSU consists of its thematic study circles. In the study circles researchers, students, and professionals from different backgrounds collaborate in scholarly investigations distributed regularly in summer and winter symposia during a three-year period.

For more information and to sign up to the NSU newsletter go to: www.nsuweb.org

We look forward to your submissions.

Eric Deibel
PhD, Researcher with ADAPT centre & lecturer at the Sociology Department of Maynooth University, Ireland

Palle Dahlstedt
Professor of Interaction Design, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Gothenburg / Chalmers University of Technology

Talya Deibel
PhD, Researcher at the law faculty of University College Cork (UCC), associated with the project on Law and the Inner Self”.

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WINTER SYMPOSIUM MARCH 2025

Creative Machines and Minds Without Life: Critical Detachment and Disengaged Futures

Date: 5-8th of March 2025

Location: The “augmented performance lab” at Aalborg University Copenhagen. Copenhagen Campus, A.C. Meyers Vænge 15, Building A, Copenhagen.

Deadline for abstract the 15^th of January 2025.

Partial Grants: our grant program is limited and only covers part of the costs. However, there are 5 grants available. Deadline also the 15th.

Invitation

We invite scholars, artists, students, technologists, and other professionals working or writing on future technologies to take part in the winter symposium of our study circle Cybioses – life in the future imperfect, part of the Nordic Summer University (NSU), a migratory non-hierarchical group of international researchers that has existed for over 70 years. Since its inception, the primary aim of NSU has been to provide a forum for experimentation and cross-disciplinary collaboration, welcoming members both from within and outside of universities and other institutions.

1. Cybioses – the future imperfect (what is it?)

(cybernetic) systems of symbioses and inclusion, and the relentless drive to commodify life forms and extend the networks of technological control.

The commodification and control points to a future that will be imperfect. Also, this type of ‘ambivalence’ is central to our shared investigation of the status of the “future” in today’s technological world.

2. Creative machines and minds without life

The title of the winter symposium is again ambivalent, with the creativity of machines juxtaposed with the sensation that something might be lost. Losing our mind, and some part of life is the obvious answer, with as its immediate context AI and its impact on the creative process. In turn, the subtitle questions this perspective, asking whether the answer lies in detachment and disengagement, inviting different ideas about the future of creativity.

Clearly machines are part of creative processes. This much is obvious and applies to high tech examples, like robots or AI voice assistants, and to old fashioned mechanisms, either with solid parts or many moving parts. All can be put to good use, creatively and inspired. It could be the creativity of some original work that required the skill and talent of an accomplished artist. It could, however, also be about the basics; about any type of devices that is needed to play, as entertainment, experimentation for its own sake and open-ended exploration.

Regardless, there is the narrative about machines that are creative, as autonomous agents, singular and able to take decisions of their own. This is a variation on machines that are learning, AIs that can be trained and AI assistants that have personalities, like Claude, Siri and Alexa. Everywhere human characteristics are being applied to what is not human, or rather to what is complex and unstable configuration code, facts, data, artifacts, and more.

This is not new. Very few are around that might recall how Turing wrote about machines that think, in 1950, when natural language processing was new, and so was the language of the cybernetics movement that AI advocates have borrowed heavily from. At every point there were serious warnings and critique, including science fiction narratives about the merger of humans and machines. These normalized not only cyborgs that behave like monsters but gradually also the creative human-machine hybrids that struggle against oppression.

The creative machine exists in this sense, as a dream that is old and everywhere in popular culture as well as niche philosophies, artistic projects, unusual areas of invention, and on game computers. This has become a normalized part of everyday live, and part of how humans interact with machines constantly, ascribing subjectivity as a mundane reaction to functionality. Given that machines do tasks, why would they not speak, listen, understand, perform, entertain, and create?

Indeed, AI is an example of a creative machine by how it is able to cause surprise when generating text or editing voices, songs, imagines, videos, and so on. Yet, these creative machines illustrate what Cybioses refers to (e.g. symbioses), as they are examples of a global technological culture that is the result of having become deeply invested in the relation between information (e.g. cybernetics and AI) and life (e.g. evolutionary theory, nanotech, environment). Hence the anthropomorphism is not innocent, given its capacity to reach out, extend and redistribute our sensing capacities and, thereby, get under our skins: under the outer physical boundary of our bodies and embodied individuality that serves as the boundary site for inscribing new attributes, capacities, and dreams into our bodies.

One language from where to approach this juxtaposition of creativities is that of AI vs. the human. This might invoke human dignity, freedom, authenticity and the mind as the seat of reason. What is at stake is humanity itself, in how our sense are mediated through (AI) technology. Also this is a creative process, one that undermines and diminishes our sense of self, as artists, as inventors, as researchers as well as shrinking the space that is left for other experiences in the (natural) world around us.

In part ‘minds without life’ refers to this concern over our capacity to understand, communicate, and act in the brave new world of AI. It is an imperfect future of concerns over ownership, bodily integrity, privacy violations and the constant monitoring of information flows, surveillance of everything and everybody. Simultaneously, concerns over the status of the individual (its autonomy, dignity and reason) tends towards nostalgia about a past. The future is about detachment and disengagement as the corollary of a past that is remembered in terms of how life was real, and minds were sharp.

Perhaps there are still futures for creative engagement, and for being deeply (and critically) attached to what is at stake. What would be needed is a joining of forces, of unconventional types of agencies, critique, art, and invention, aiming for a more creative exploration of the many new terrains that have been opened up.

Our symposia has always been about this type of collaboration, as the sensible response to powerful and technologically driven ideas about growth that can continue indefinitely, about living with dwindling natural resources that fuel environmental collapse and extinction of countless species in the context of human-made climate change.

Its implication is a future wherein there will be conflicts, disagreement, irresponsibility, and a plethora of challenges to conventional (and convenient) boundaries between the natural and artificial, living and non-living, minds and machines, creativity and automation. Alongside indifference, detachment, and disengagement, it is important to keep exploring what new types of creativity, change, and renewal are becoming possible.

Accordingly, we are interested in reflecting on creative machines that are different, as ideas, events, or narratives coming from different fields, explicitly including artistic practices, philosophical niche topics, natural scientists willing to share their experiences and more. The topic is defined broadly on purpose, as our working method is to seek to deepen and renew our collaboration with artists, hackers, designers, technologists, theorists, and others.

This is the defining setup of the Cybioses workshops, which have been running for over 6 years, with various histories going back much further. We hope once again to find contributors with experimental approaches to presenting and collaborating.

Topics that relate strongly to the key works of the symposium are encouraged, such as:

creative machines (e.g. robots, AI, ‘biological’ machines)
creativity in art and machines
creativity and the human mind
the future of creativity
intellectual histories of creative machines and/or creativity
the political economies of creative machines
creative machines and surveillance
synergy with creative machines
rules for creative machines (e.g. ethics, law, policy, government)
creative vs. irresponsible machines (e.g. art vs. ethics).

Other topics that fit the profile are welcome and perspectives that we welcome include (but are not limited to):

ethical and philosophical perspectives
science, technology, and engineering
science and technology studies
the arts and humanities
political economy and theoretical critique
cybernetic thought and information theory
hard/soft/wetware experiments
critical examinations of neoliberal and authoritarian systems
a focus on alternatives, including failed experimentation
literature studies

Submission and contact

Please send a short letter about your contribution and a bio to eric.deibel@nsuweb.org, palle@chalmers.se and tdeibel@ucc.ie. The deadline for abstracts is the 15^th of January. This should include:

A written proposal (max. 350 words) with a title and descriptive subtitle. This text should include your presentation proposal, its format, its duration, facilities you need (e.g., space, technical equipment), and an explanation of what motives you to join.
A short bio (max. 200 words)

Please send a single PDF file with your name in its title.

It might be possible to attend the symposium without presenting. In this case, please just e-mail us a short bio.

Grants

The NSU typically offers grants, and that includes Cybioses. This Winter Session we have space for some (probably 5) partial grants. Submission on the same date (15-1). Please include a short reasoning in your submission.

Registration fees

The registration fee includes the participation fee for the winter symposium and one year’s membership to NSU (also valid for the summer session in Finland).

Students and independents: €50
Those associated with institutions or companies: €125
West Nordic & Baltic residents: €50

Important dates

Submission deadline: January 15^th for abstracts.

Payment deadline: the 31th of January

Arrival: on Wednesday the 5^th of march (before noon)
Departure: Saturday the 8^th of march (after lunch)

About NSU

The Nordic Summer University (NSU) (www.nsuweb.org) is a Nordic network for research and interdisciplinary studies. NSU is a nomadic, academic institution, which organizes workshop-seminars across disciplinary and national borders. Since it was established in 1950, Nordic Summer University has organized forums for cultural and intellectual debate in the Nordic and Baltic region, involving students, academics, politicians, and intellectuals from this region and beyond.

For more information and to sign up to the NSU newsletter go to: www.nsuweb.org

We look forward to your submissions.

Eric Deibel
PhD, Researcher with ADAPT centre & lecturer at the Sociology Department of Maynooth University, Ireland

Palle Dahlstedt
Professor of Interaction Design, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Gothenburg / Chalmers University of Technology

Talya Deibel
PhD, Researcher at the law faculty of University College Cork (UCC), associated with the project on Law and the Inner Self”.

Upcoming symposia

Summer session 2025, TBD. Finland (20th July – 28th July)

Our previous topics have been Speculative Technologies and Future Frictions (Summer 2024, Denmark), Information crisis (Winter 2024, Vilnius, What a waste (summer 2023, Lithuania), and Slow futures (winter 2023, Brussels). Previous years’ themes have included Human technology futures, Creativity and Technology, and Improvisation and Technology.