Synthetic Reality: Perception, Emotion, and Identity

Head of Institute for the Performing Arts and Film
Zurich University of the Arts

Anton Rey was born 1959 in Switzerland. He studied theater, German literature and philosophy in Zurich and Berlin. After and during these studies he worked as technician, assistant, director and artistic director in Zurich, Berlin, Paris, Munich, and Edinburgh. Since 2002 he teaches and researches in the fields of film, dance, and performative practice. In 2007 he founded the research Institute for the Performing Arts and Film (IPF) at the Zurich University of Arts (ZHdK). His research activities are closely related to the key research areas and methods of the IPF and include applied dramaturgies: modes of dramatic structures in social behaviorisms / staged minds: the convincing realities of fake emotions, and art as research.

Institute for Theory
Zurich University of the Arts

Dieter Mersch Prof. Dr. em., studied mathematics and philosophy in Cologne, Bochum and Darmstadt, Germany. Between 2004-2013 he was Full Professor of Media Theory and head of the PhD Training Program Visibility and Visualisation: Thinking with Images at the University of Potsdam; between 2013-2021 director of the Institute for Critical Theory at Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland. Recent publications: Epistemologies of Aesthetics, Zürich / Berlin 2015, Manifesto of Artistic Research. A Defense against its Advocates, Zürich / Berlin 2020 (together with Silvia Henke, Nicolaj van der Meulen, Thomas Strässle and Jörg Wiesel) and essays on Media-Philosophy, Art-Theory, Artistic Research, Image-theory, Musicology and Digital Criticism.

Head of Zurich Epilepsy Institute

Thomas Grunwald was born in 1956 in Germany. He studied phonetics and linguistics in Marburg, Edinburgh, and Cologne, as well as medicine in Bonn. As a neurologist specializing in epileptology and clinical neurophysiology, he worked at the Dept. of Epileptology of Bonn University Medical Centre, Germany. In 2002, he became Head of the Dept. of Clinical Neurophysiology and Presurgical Evaluations at the Swiss Epilepsy Center, Zurich, where he was Medical Director until 2021. In addition, he worked as a leading senior neurologist at the Dept. of Neurology, University Hospital Zurich and taught neurology at the Bonn University Medical Centre. He now heads the Zurich Epilepsy Institute.

Professional Leader of Digital Media Art MajorShanghai Institute of Visual Arts (SIVA)

Currently serving as the professional leader of the Digital Media Art major at Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts (SIVA). Mujin’s educational background is a graduation in the field of imaging and multimedia. Therefore, during the teaching and creative process, she has been trying to explore and study the multiple visual experiences and cross media perception of intertextuality brought by digital media and movies. In the creation of long-term art projects, the theme of Mujin has always focused on the flow and drift of “identity”. In this lecture, Mujin will share the theme of “identity” in her new creative project for 2023, studying how the identity of a movie character can be extended, translated, and evolved in virtual reality media.

Assistant Professor of Media Theory
Co-director of the Center for AI & Culture
NYU Shanghai

Bogna Konior is an Assistant Professor of Interactive Media Arts (IMA) at NYU Shanghai. She is also a Research Fellow in the Antikythera Program on Speculative Computation at the Berggruen Institute, and a mentor in the Synthetic Intelligence program at Medialab-Matadero Madrid. Her work on digital culture, philosophy of new media, and posthumanism has been presented internationally, recently including the Cambridge Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, ZKM | Center for Art and Media, e-flux, and the Ljubljana Biennale. She is currently working on two projects concerned with long-term trajectories of technological development. Her current academic project is on Polish science fiction writer and philosopher, Stanislaw Lem, and his neglected contribution to the theory of biotechnological evolution of autonomous reason. She is also conducting a multimedia research project on female Catholic mysticism as an early form of cybefeminism and a predictor of machine erotics, nonhuman personhood, and artificial reproduction. Together with Anna Greenspan and Benjamin Bratton, she is the editor of Machine Decision is not Final: China, and the History and Future of AI (Urbanomic, 2023).

School of Intermedia Art
China Academy of Art

Ziyang Wu is an artist based in New York and Hangzhou, currently teaching at the School of Intermedia Art at China Academy of Art, and is a former member of NEW INC at the New Museum. With an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, his video, AR, AI simulation and interactive video installation have exhibited internationally, including Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) Philadelphia, Rhizome at the New Museum, Walker Art Center, Rochester Art Center, SXSW, Art Dubai, Hek Basel, Annka Kultys Gallery, Medici Palace, UCCA, Long March Space, Today Art Museum, Song Art Museum, How Art Museum, K11, and Chengdu Biennale. His recent fellowships and residencies include “The Randall Chair” award at Alfred University; “Kai Wu” Interdisciplinary Studio residency at Times Museum; AACYF Top 30 under 30; Residency Unlimited; MacDowell fellowship; residency at Institute for Electronic Arts (IEA); Winner of The ROCI Road to Peace by Robert Rauschenberg Art Foundation.