InScience – International Science Film Festival Nijmegen is much more than just film. In the Big Ideas series, leading scientists and artists take visitors to the frontiers of their fields. This year InScience welcomes Adriana Knouf, Ahnjili Zhuparris and Job van den Hurk as Big Idea speakers to the festival. In a performative lecture, Adriana Knouf takes us through a story about the future of queer and trans and the ultimate benefits of being xeno. Clinical data scientist and AI artist Ahnjili Zhuparris (Leiden University) explores how algorithms can detect and monitor mental and physical illness. In an experiment and lecture, she will discuss the good, the bad and the ugly of smartphone algorithms. Finally, InScience is also hosting a Junior Big Idea in which Job van den Hurk will talk about consciousness and health.
Adriana Knouf: Thriving as aliens on earth
Saturday, November 13 / 20:00 / 90 min / EN
As a young child, Adriana Knouf dreamed of being beamed up by aliens – away from earth where she often felt alienated. Today, her connection to all things extraterrestrial is still strong. Inspired by her own experience as a trans woman, Dr Knouf makes connections between alienated bodies on earth (such as queer and trans bodies) and beyond. Her work as an artist and researcher revolves around Xenology: the study of the strange, alien or other. In her Big Idea lecture, Adriana Knouf takes us through her search for how we can thrive as “aliens on earth. Moreover, Knouf asks how we can adapt our bodies to our identities. Join her performative reading, where she takes us through a story about estranged bodies and the ultimate benefits of being ‘xeno’.
Adriana Knouf is the Founding Facilitator of the tranxxeno lab, a nomadic artistic research laboratory that fosters entanglements between trans and xeno entities. She is also an artist-in-residence at De Waag and is currently based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Ahnjili Zhuparris: Does your smartphone know you’re depressed?
Sunday, November 14 / 16:00 / 60 min / EN
What do the places you visit, the music you listen to and your sleep patterns tell you about the state of your mental health? Nearly 50% of the world’s population uses smart technologies that collect this data, such as phones, wearables and computers. Despite the privacy concerns many users have, self-tracking and data collection can also be used as useful tools. Clinical data scientist and AI artist Ahnjili Zhuparris (Leiden University) is exploring how algorithms can detect and monitor mental and physical illness. During the Big Idea, Zhuparris will discuss the good, the bad and the ugly of these smartphone algorithms, how to use them as a tool for tracking your health and demonstrate how to analyze real-time data.
Ahnjili Zhuparris is a clinical data scientist and AI artist. Her PhD research focuses on building machine learning models that detect and predict a person’s physical and mental health status using their smartphone and wearables. Zhuparris is a recipient of the Mozilla Creative Media Awards.
Job van den Hurk: How does your consciousness work?
Sunday, November 7 / 14:00 / 60 min / NL / Library De Mariënburg
During the Junior Big Idea, Job van den Hurk, also known for the program Brainstorm on Zapp, will speak. During the children’s lecture, Van den Hurk will discuss consciousness. What is consciousness, how does it work in your brain and can you give a robot consciousness? Van den Hurk shows that with the latest techniques you can take a look into someone’s consciousness, and what is so useful about that.
The film Ron’s gone wrong (Sarah Smith, Jean-Philippe Vine & Octavio E. Rodriguez, 2021), which will be shown at InScience one week later, on November 14, is linked to the Junior Big Idea. This Junior Big Idea is organized in collaboration with the Gelderland Zuid Library.
Tickets
Ticket sales for InScience 2021 started on 21 October and the full program can be found on www.insciencefestival.nl. For Kadans tenants there is a discount code available. More information can be found on the narrowcasting.