9:30 – 10:15 am, Session I: In the Sky, Under the Sea, Through the Forest: Animals and Media
“Animating Shapeshifters: The Shadow of the Wolf in Myth and Media"
- Hannah Chen, 3rd-year, English
Abstract: From ancient myth to popular media, wolves have long captivated the human imagination. As immediately recognizable and iconic as wolves are, however, they have inhabited strikingly diverse, seemingly opposing roles in the many narratives that have shaped our images of them. Wolves are the protectors and guardians of feral children, but also stalkers and slaughterers of the innocent; the kin of domestic dogs, yet an iconic symbol of the untouched wild; a loner and a pack animal; dangerous predator, and victim of human interests. Twentieth century animated film brought wolves to life in a new medium, but they were often drawn in the mold of well-worn tropes. In my own animated piece, created using Synfig software, I explore the transforming figure of the wolf and the shadows of its many iterations through the uniquely transformative medium that is animation, highlighting both the artificiality and the potential for connection through mediated experiences of the animal.
“A Simple Sponge”
- Emily Lynch, 4th-year, English Language and Literature, Political Science
Abstract: “Gender blurs when wet,” Ben Brantley writes in his New York Times review of SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical. Indeed, in this theatrical adaptation of the highly successful animated children’s series, characters exhibit odd, even contradictory relationships to gender norms and sexual identity. While some read the SpongeBob television show and musical as an explicit subversion of heteronormative children’s media, I argue instead that the show conceives of gender and sexuality as children do—uncertain, pliable, capacious, and yet to be discovered. In my review of the musical, I assess the ways in which the show’s repurposed aesthetic and ethos of simplicity bolsters this childish gender play. I show, in the end, that SpongeBob utilizes everyday tools to radically reimagine gender and sexuality.
“The Hawk Knight Rises: Queering Chivalry in the Twelfth Century Lai ‘Yonec”
- Lauren Pankin, 4th-year, Global Studies, French Literature
Abstract: In the twelfth century, Marie de France composed the lai “Yonec,” a lyrical narrative poem which destabilizes the nature of chivalry through the ambiguous natures of women and animals in the text. In its ideal form, chivalry establishes a model of masculinity, both Christian and noble, that depends upon the subordination of women and beasts. I argue that in “Yonec,” the slippery natures of these chivalric Others undermine the monolithic stability of knighthood and introduce alternative perspectives on embodied love. Through a historical and literary analysis of contemporary discourses of natural history, original sin, and the fin’amor (courtly love) tradition, we can see how Marie de France queers chivalry by blurring gender, animality, and sexuality. Questioning the premises of chivalry allows us to deconstruct the anthropocentric and patriarchal structures which persist in contemporary Western heroic storytelling.
10:30 – 11:15 am, Session II: Anything You Can Do, AI Can Do Better: Living with Machines
“From Mary to AARON: Can Computers Be Artists?”
- Nicholas Ornstein, 3rd-year, Neuroscience
Abstract: As advances are made in artificial intelligence technology, the definition of ‘artist’ demands reevaluation. At first glance, artistic creativity would seem to be especially difficult to endow in a machine, given artistry’s subjective nature and apparent reliance on such deep behaviors as perceptual understanding, metaphor, analogy, and original composition. Computers have been used as tools for creative artists – but what sort of capability would a machine have to demonstrate to be considered an artist in its own right? To address this question, I employ Frank Jackson’s Knowledge Argument in the form of the “Mary The Color Scientist” thought experiment and the Ability Hypothesis reply from Lewis and Nemirow. Building off of the Ability Hypothesis, I show that the distinction between propositional knowledge (knowledge-that) and experiential knowledge (knowledge-how) finds a foothold in the functional architecture of the nervous system, but is not enforced in the architecture of today’s computers. While human art-makers must have honed their artistic knowledge through experience in order to be true artists, computers should not be held to the same experiential knowledge requirement for artistry. This is because computers may exhibit expertise through access to propositional knowledge alone. Given this, I show that the argument for artistry in the Harold Cohen’s AARON painting system carries weight. I conclude by pointing out that art-making systems that utilize machine learning algorithms gather their own artistic experience, providing an even clearer case for computer artists.
“Even Better than the Real Thing: Turing and the Sexbots”
- Abigail Henkin, 3rd-year, Theater, Cinema Studies
Abstract: The line between human and machine identity and thought is blurring. In 1950, Turing replaced the question of “do machines think?” with a test which a machine passes if it is indistinguishable from a human in a text-based conversation. My research investigates alternatives to and derivations of Turing’s Test that attempt to identify different aspects of machine intelligence. The Alternative Turing Test Catalog lists and evaluates these alternative Turing tests from scientific journals. It also analyzes several science fiction examples in which humanoid robots are difficult to discern from humans. Following a narrative tradition in which men mistakenly fall in love with dolls and women pretend to be them, and academic articles like those from the Second and Third International Conferences on Love and Sex with Robots, the screenplay Even Better than the Real Thing asks what happens when women and sex robots are indistinguishable, and utilizes several of the alternative Turing tests to determine how advanced the sex robots’ thinking is.
“Looking at Machines Looking at Humans Looking at Animals”
- Calvin Wang, 4th-year, English
Abstract: This project takes Pierre Huyghe’s UUmwelt as its object and places it within multiple contexts: art-historical, theoretical, and otherwise. I argue that the piece—an interdependent, self-generating work that brings together the human, animal, and technological—should be considered within the recent history of animals in art, as well as in relation to Jakob Von Uexhull’s concept of 'Umwelt', from which the work derives its title. Engaging Aloi and Baker, I place UUmwelt alongside other works of art involving animals while engaging with ideas of hybridity and otherness. I argue that Huyghe’s work both affirms Uexhull’s concept and challenges its limits by introducing AI technology into the established relationship of man and animal. Finally, I explore the ramifications of Huyghe’s incorporation of technology for the future of art involving animals and other forms of intelligences.
11:30 – 12:15, Session III: Minding Your Matters: Intersections of Cognition and Embodiment
“What Can an Anorexic Body Do?”
- Rebeka Pushkar, 4th-year, Russian & Eastern European Studies, Gender & Sexuality
Abstract: With phenomena such as hunger artists, pro-ana forums, #thinspiration, and “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”, there is a clear aesthetization and idealization of anorexia. Rather than writing these communities and approaches off as merely toxic and disregarding anorexia as nothing more than a medical disorder, I argue that anorexia can be more productively understood as a distorted expression of the potentiality of gender. I consider two opposing accounts of anorexia, both of which rely on Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of the anorexic body. One proposes viewing anorexia as a creative becoming while the other disregards it as merely unhealthy. I show that neither account accurately presents Deleuze and Guattari’s stance, with both misreading their articulation of the relationship between the anorexic body and the concept of a body without organs. I conclude by proposing a gender-reaffirming account of anorexia as a state that lies on the other side of a transgressive becoming but fails to be creative because of its tendency towards elimination.
“Silicon Gorgons: Calculational Antecedents to the Smart City’s Visual Episteme”
- Sam Clark, 3rd-year, Environmental and Urban Studies
Abstract: What does it mean for a “smart” city to see? The meteoric rise to prominence by the “smart city” concept over the past two decades urgently necessitates a critical-analytic response. In examining the nature and foundations of present narratives posing the smart city as a thinking and seeing object, I employ a theoretical foundation drawn from the work of Bruno Latour and Friedrich Kittler to situate historiographically and epistemologically a series of cross-pollinations: virtuality and artificial intelligence, urban planning and neoliberal experimentation, city-based combat and military mission control, and corporate action and disaster capitalism. Out of their chaotic cross-correspondence emerges a common through line between the events of 9/11 and the War on Terror, the move in the late 2000s towards a “post-theory” data economy, and the rise of the contemporary smart city.
“A Cartesian Charybdis: Vortex Theory and the Circulation of Knowledge”
- Annabella Archacki, 4th-year, History, Philosophy: HIPPS
Abstract: Hydrodynamic metaphors about the “stream of consciousness” or “circulation of knowledge” determine expectations about what information is and does. I argue that René Descartes laid the groundwork for such analogies. Unlike William Harvey, Descartes did not think that will flowed into knowledge; rather, knowledge flowed and became will. In his account of the circulation of the blood, Harvey relied on the paradigm of will flowing from divinity or royalty as if from a fountain. However, the fractious politics of the early seventeenth century confused this metaphor. It became increasingly difficult to decide whose will to follow. Social factions led people through cycles of hope and decline, consuming them in the process. Descartes’ vortex theory of matter mirrored this emergence of circulation as an emblem of materialism. People lived cyclical lives ruled by obscure forces, like automata powered by royal fountains. Imbuing the symbol of the vortex with structure and design, the Cartesian fountain metaphor reclaimed the passivity produced by such paralysis. Rather than viewing himself as an automaton, a mechanical marionette, Descartes cast himself as the puppeteer, whose movements — though subtle — resounded through the rest of the fountain.
1:15 – 2:00 pm, Session IV: How to Do Things With Animals: Ethics and Interpretation
“Frankenstein's Dog: Ethical Considerations for Creating Animals”
- Ryan Murphy, 3rd-year, Philosophy
Abstract: From pastoralism and petkeeping to cloning and climate change, what we do can alter future populations of animals. In particular, we can cause animals to exist that otherwise would not have. Because animals are of moral importance, it seems our choices in this regard should be subject to moral evaluation. However, the animals we might create do not exist yet, so ethical theories that address interactions between currently living things have difficulty explaining the nature and root of our obligations in creating animals, human or otherwise. I aim to show how prior theorizing on this subject has gone wrong and offer a better path forward for the ethics of creation. Instead of the current focus on the created animal, which runs into a difficulty called the non-identity problem, more attention should be given to how the animal will affect others.
“Visibility, Invisibility and Distortion: An Examination of Current Discourses Regarding Animals”
- Sarah Hough, 4th-year, Fundamentals
Abstract: Modern Anglo-American society is characterized by deeply contradictory beliefs and practices regarding animals, where animals receive dramatically different treatment based on their species and social context. In this paper, I use Melanie Joy’s framework of carnism, adopted after a literature review of critical animal studies. Carnism is the system of values that legitimizes the consumption of certain animals but not others, and I argue that it is deeply embedded within our culture. I explore children’s media as one example of carnism in practice, arguing that a subset of children’s books perpetuates an idealized conception of farming that contributes to a culture of denial regarding modern factory farming practices.
“Thinking Theories: A Literal Reading of On the Origin of Species and its Ramifications”
- Max Fennell-Chametzky, 4th-year, Linguistics, History
Abstract: Evolution via natural selection and descent with modification was not always the unthinking, purposeless process known to modern eyes and ears. In the first edition of On the Origin of Species published in 1859, Charles Darwin laid out a theory of species change filled with talk of aim, purpose and telos. In order to maintain internal theoretical consistency within this work, I argue for a “literalist” interpretation of the first edition of the Origin, insisting that we as readers must take seriously the metaphors of agency, action, and morality that Darwin used to describe the mechanism of natural selection. Only by appreciating this as a “thinking theory” can we fully comprehend the scope of the original proposal. The project then shifts gears and seeks to understand how, and maybe even why, these 1859 ideas seem so foreign to our modern ears.
2:15 – 3:00 pm, Session V: Demons and Divinity: Thinking Through Theology
“God’s Logic and Ours: On the Nature of the Laws of Logic”
- Natalie Leonard, 4th-year, Philosophy
Abstract: The laws of logic present a peculiar problem. The most fundamental principles of logic, on the one hand, lay out preconditions for thought that cannot be coherently rejected. On the other hand, the laws of logic act normatively on our own thinking; when an individual thinks illogically, she might actively bring her thought into realignment with logical principles. So, logic, insofar as it represents a set of principles or a system for thought, both constitutes the preconditions for thought and norms for thought. This project approaches this topic by bringing a theological debate about the relationship between God and logic into conversation with a modern debate about the laws of logic. This provides a context in which I evaluate different forms of a quietest response to the problem—‘the laws of logic simply are as they are’. I settle on a version of this response that rectifies the peculiar status of logic, but arguably only appears to contain a solution. Finally, I comment on the significance of the general tendency to posit ‘simple’ answers to philosophical problems.
“Brahman’s Lila as ‘The Exaltation of the Possible”
- Dominic DiCarlo, 4th-year, Psychology
Abstract: In the Advaita Vedanta school of Hinduism, the concept of Brahman signifies the ultimate reality and supreme self. This self is essentially identical with the self at the core of every living being: thus the maxim “Atman is Brahman”. This identification of the whole of reality with the individual self raises many philosophical questions. I focus on one: why would Brahman create a world where individuals suffer? I look at the concept of Lila, or divine play, as an explanation of the creation of the world and how it may be a solution to the problem of suffering. I consider an answer offered by Leibniz in addressing this problem in the context of the Christian tradition, and suggest it has strong applicability to the Advaitic conception of Brahman. Lastly, I consider the enjoyment of tragedy in consumption of literature and how it might frame Brahman’s enactment of an at-times tragic world. The solution I ultimately propose for the problem of suffering in the Advaita Vedanta school comes down to the contrastive nature of happiness as well as enjoyment of tragedy in storytelling.
“Thinking with Demons in Earliest Christianity”
- Samuel Mellins, 4th-year, History
Abstract: In the century following the birth of Christianity, Christian authors created a diverse body of text to explain the practices, laws, and beliefs of this new religion to its adherents. In these texts, demons play a prominent role in attempts to prove the truth of Christian belief, and in drawing boundaries between Christianity and the pagan culture that dominated the first-century Mediterranean. Paul of Tarsus, Christian missionary and the earliest Christian author equated demons with pagan gods in an attempt to dissuade his converts from participating in pagan religious rites. The anonymously-authored Gospels, written in the generation after Paul’s death, portrayed Jesus as an immensely powerful exorcist, able to expel demons from their human hosts with a word. And finally, in the mid-second century, a group of philosophically trained converts now known as the Apologists used their training in Greek philosophy to launch a full-blown attack on pagan religion, portraying it as the creation of wicked demons to pervert humans from worship of the true God. Understanding these authors’ writings on demons is essential to understanding how earliest Christianity sought to differentiate itself from pagan religion, and prove its superiority over the religious traditions from which most of its early adherents were drawn.