**WORKSHOP | speech-to-derive: the myth of natural language with Federico Poni and Francesco Luzzana**
Thursday, October 7th
18:00 – 22:00 hours
Tickets at 10 euro’s available here: https://roodkapje.stager.nl/Cybernetic%20Dreams/tickets
**Please note:** to participate you will need to bring your laptop, preferably with headphones for the microphone.
During the course of this workshop, we are going on a quest to find the meaning of natural language between humans and machines (who knows, maybe also other entities…). Does a natural language exist? How can we communicate with computers? It’s a slalom of symbolic, semantic, formal differences. We will try to give some answers together, building a collective dataset to then play with using speech-to-text tools. Since languages are relational tools, we will try to communicate with computers, using our voice as a starting point.
Biographies:
Francesco Luzzana (IT, 1996) develops custom pieces of software that address digital complexity in a visual and performative way. He likes collaborative projects, in order to face contemporary issues with a plural approach. His research aims to stress the borders of a post-digital landscape, inhabiting its contradictions and possibilities.
He has a BA in New Media at Brera Academy of Fine Arts – Milan, and currently studies Experimental Publishing at Piet Zwart Institute – Rotterdam. He is a member of un * salta collective, and works as a freelance designer and developer with Ariella Vidach Aiep and Non-Linear studio.
instagram: @kamomomomomomo
Federico Poni (IT, 1996) attempts to be a cyborg but at the moment he’s just an artist and designer who works closely with machines. He’s a good friend of the Internet as well. His practice is a slalom between performance, coding, games, post-photography, and writing with the main focus on speculative disciplines and semiotic reflections. Always interested in the relations between humans and technologies, he tries to imagine new ecosystems to dwell together and detourn the meaning of acceleration and deceleration.
Poni’s works have been shown at/for, among others, The Photographers’ Gallery, London; Post-Screen; Centrale Festival, Fano; Szene Zeigen, Laucha (DE); Anteo Palazzo del Cinema, Milano. He’s a co-founder of the collective un * salta. He currently studies Experimental Publishing at Piet Zwart Institute.
instagram: @poni_funix
portfolio: funix.xyz, federicoponi.it
Schedule:
17:30: Doors open
18:00: Workshop starts
22:00: Workshop ends
Cybernetic Dreams is a workshop marathon focussing on interactive and generative tools, organized by HCL resident Louisa Teichmann. Over the course of a week, we will breathe life into metal and wires, flooding electricity into cybernetic pathways. Starting with a workshop on sensors and servo-motors, Dennis de Bel lays out the creature’s nervous system. Now it is already time for its first words, as a workshop on speech-to-text tools by Federico Poni and Francesco Luzzana gives the beast its voice. With the help of roboticist Edwin Dertien, the disconnected pieces of its bare existence are becoming grounded into a robust body. After its journey of creation, all that is left for the entity to come to life is a soul. Telemagic awakens the creature’s spirit by giving it the gift of choice.
Sign up for the workshops individually, or watch the entire birth of the creature by joining the whole program. Sweet cybernetic dreams!