Despina Papadopous: Wearable Expression and the Unruliness of Matter

Please join us for the second event of our IDM X Onassis ONX fall speaker series FLESH FEEDBACK: DESIGNING WEARABLE SENSATIONS with Despina Papadopolous, Friday 10/25 3-4:30 PM in Room 325 at 370 Jay Street Brooklyn, NY. In Wearable Expression and the Unruliness of Matter, Despina will talk about her three decades long experience in developing wearable environments and how they participate in the making of an affective self. Moving from the poetic to the algorithmic Despina will discuss the evolution of wearables  and the opportunities and pitfalls laden in new interfaces and in the entanglement with algorithmic systems.

Event specifics: RSVP required for non-NYU guests through Eventbrite! Every outside visitor must be registered and provide a unique non-NYU email address. On the day of the event, you'll receive an email pass, bring identification and the pass (you do not need to print it out) for security.

Bio: Despina Papadopoulos is a researcher and artist whose pioneering work in wearable technologies asks important questions about intimacy, desire and gesture. She holds a Master’s in Philosophy from KU University in Leuven and a MPS from NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program.

Her work is focused on finding the human edge of emerging technologies and imagining ways to make technology make sense to humans instead of making humans make sense to technology and has led multiple winning research projects with industry in order to promote this vision.

Despina is currently working on The Unruliness of Matter, turning the conceptual and the abstract into the tangible and sensory, as part of her practice-led research PhD at the School of Arts and Humanities at the Royal College of Art, on a TECHNE Fellowship from the National Productivity and Innovation Fund in the UK.

About the Fall ‘24 Speaker Series: FLESH FEEDBACK: DESIGNING WEARABLE SENSATIONS

With the ubiquitous adoption and domestication of wearable devices that continually feed us streams and bursts of data relayed through touch, we’ve already become acclimated to practices of remote haptic sensing, knowing, communicating, and socializing. An emerging generation of wearables, with varying degrees of success, attempt to route more complex, engaging, and affectively compelling forms of touch through these contacts opened up between flesh and technology. At the same time, these new material intimacies with data expose us to a range of vulnerabilities, as our bodies can be monitored and remotely stimulated, often without our consent. Often ideated as our most ‘ancient’ sense–or alternatively as a ‘neglected’ sense–touch takes center stage in this year’s IDM X Onassis speaker series, as a compelling mix of artists, designers, industry professionals, and academics each take up questions about our changing embodied relationships with digital technologies.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

370 Jay St Room 325, 370 Jay Street, Brooklyn, United States