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GLOBAL ART FORUM 2018

GLOBAL ART FORUM: I AM NOT A ROBOT

20-23 SEPTEMBER 2018

ARTSCIENCE MUSEUM SINGAPORE


Global Art Forum: “I Am Not a Robot” is a series of events that explore the power, paranoia and potentials of automation. Previous iterations took place in Dubai in February, and at Art Dubai in March of this year. It has been programmed by Shumon Basar (Commissioner), with Noah Raford and Marlies Wirth (Co-directors). The Singapore edition was a partnership between Art Dubai and ArtScience Museum.


“I Am Not a Robot” at ArtScience Museum comprised of a performance (20 September), a three-day conference (21–22 September), and a screening programme (13 September onwards) that investigated the opportunities, complexities and trepidations of artificial intelligence, machine learning, networked systems and robotics.




Ania Soliman, Robots 2A and 2B, 2012, courtesy of Derek Liwanpo

The implications of automation run through our lives today and tomorrow: from algorithmic policy-making, social credit scores and gene editing. It is said that automation, more than any other factor, will fundamentally alter our working lives. We’ve already heard the first AI composed pop song and can read the first AI authored short story. Where does this all leave the fate of the human in a machine intelligent future? And what exactly are those machines saying about us behind our backs?


Singapore was an apt location to explore and extend the topics of “I Am Not a Robot”. Singapore has set itself the ambition to become the world’s first Smart Nation, intending to harness the power of networks, data and information technologies to improve living, create economic opportunities, and build closer communities. To do so, Singapore’s government and private sector is developing not only its technological capability, but also its sociological understanding of the ethics and governance issues raised by automation, big data and artificial intelligence. In July 2018, the Singapore government announced two key initiatives – an Advisory Council on the Ethical Use of AI and Data, and a new research programme on the Governance of AI and Data Use, which underscore Singapore’s commitment to understanding what AI and automation mean for society at large.


Against this backdrop, “I Am Not a Robot” invited audiences to reflect upon the true meaning of big data, automation and artificial intelligence in our current digital age.


Global Art Forum: Singapore has been developed in partnership between Art Dubai and ArtScience Museum. Global Art Forum is supported by the Office of Public & Cultural Diplomacy (OPCD) and UAE Embassy in Singapore.

GLOBAL ART FORUM: FULL PROGRAMME




ARTSCIENCE MUSEUM SINGAPORE


8:00pm

ARTSCIENCE LATE: SOUGWEN CHUNG

Drawing Operations Unit Generation 1×2 Performance


New York-based artist and researcher Sougwen Chung showcased the emerging process of human-robot collaboration as a performance. The performance pivoted around Sougwen and the Robot, Drawing Operations Unit: Generation 1×2 (D.O.U.G._1x2), drawing. It traced a narrative of human and machine synthesis through three chapters – beginning with Mimicry, continuing to Memory and onto Future Speculations. This work was a continuing evolution of Sougwen’s Drawing Operations projects which examine human and robotic interaction as an artistic collaboration.




ARTSCIENCE MUSEUM SINGAPORE


3:00pm

WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION

Welcome by Honor Harger and Introduction by Shumon Basar, which provided an overview to the Global Art Forum and introduction to the day’s programme.


3:15pm

IS THIS THE RIGHT AI?
SCENE SETTING


Chor Pharn Lee, Principal Strategist at Centre for Strategic Futures, Prime Minister’s Office, Singapore
Cheryl Chung, Co-Director of Executive Education and Deputy Director of Strategic Planning
Lee Kuan Yew, School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore


Two of Singapore’s leading futures practitioners set the scene with presentations that reflected on the perils and potentials of automation and artificial intelligence in our current moment. Cheryl Chung introduced Singapore’s specific and distinctive approach to technological innovation, examining the multiple and competing identities of government in an age of disruptive technology. Given its culture of embracing technology as part of nation building efforts, could Singapore’s trajectory provide lessons for governance and ethics in this still emerging environment? Chor Pharn Lee explored the promises and paranoia of AI, machine learning, networked systems and robotics. Touching on historical ideas of intelligence, power, and control, he asked what is it about AI that triggers such primal desires and fears?



3:45pm

ARE WE AN AI NATION?
PRESENTATIONS & DISCUSSION


Koo Sengmeng, Head of Alliances and Partnerships, AI Singapore and Deputy Director, Office of the Deputy President (Research and Technology), National University of Singapore

Lim Sun Sun, Professor of Communication & Technology and Head of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Singapore University of Technology and Design

Volker H. Schmidt, Professor of Sociology, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, National University of Singapore

Host: Cheryl Chung


Recently, the Singapore government announced its plan to establish a new Advisory Council on the Ethical Use of AI and Data. This responds both to the broader concerns of a technology that has the power to deviate into unintended ethical consequences, as well as Singapore’s ambition in becoming a smart city. Given its culture of embracing technology as part of nation building efforts, could Singapore’s trajectory provide lessons for governance and ethics in this still emerging environment?



5:20pm

I MAKE VALUE: AUTOMATED MARKETS AND THE FUTURE
PRESENTATION & DISCUSSION


Elie Ayache, Co-founder and CEO of ITO 33 and author of The Blank Swan: The End of Probability and of The Medium of Contingency: An Inverse View of the Market
Host: Shumon Basar


It is said up to 90% of trades on financial markets are now conducted by automated, algorithmic processes, operating at speeds exponentially faster than that of human traders. Elie Ayache gave a presentation that asked what are the long-term implications for global financial security and stability? What kind of philosophy of past, present and future does such an automated accelerated system produce? And if the market is as massive as history itself, what can we predict about the history of tomorrow?



5:55pm

AM I STILL EMPLOYED: JOBS, JOYS AND WHAT DO YOU DO
LECTURE & DISCUSSION


Jessica Bland, Head of Research at the Dubai Future Foundation, UAE
Host: Shumon Basar


For hundreds of years, new waves of technology have motivated fresh fears of automation of human labour. Some of this fear has been about loss of jobs. But that is wound together with worries about loss of personal identity. We now develop machines that can take on tasks deeply woven into our human identities – producing knowledge, decisions and, perhaps, intelligence. What kind of social order would remain in a world without economic status or knowledge work as hierarchy?



6:40pm

DAY 1 CLOSING REMARKS

Shumon Basar and Marlies Wirth





ARTSCIENCE MUSEUM SINGAPORE


10:30am

WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION: SHUMON BASAR

Welcome by Honor Harger and Introduction by Shumon Basar, Marlies Wirth and Noah Raford, providing an overview of the Global Art Forum and introduction to the day’s programme.


10:45am

I AM AI DIPLOMAT: ALIEN PROTOCOLS AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS OF THE MIND
POLEMIC


Noah Raford, Chief Operating Officer & Futurist-in-Chief of the Dubai Future Foundation and Co-Director of Global Art Forum, UAE


According to some, we are within a decade of the arrival of artificial general intelligence; machines so powerful that they can do anything a human being can, but faster, better, and more accurately. How will we handle the arrival of such a phenomena? How might this impact our world and what ways should we be thinking about possible responses? This whimsical talk explores serious issues through the lens of aliens, international relations, and medieval diplomacy to help us better understand the landscape we may face in the future.



11:15am

AM I EASTERN AI?
PRESENTATION & DISCUSSION


Wei Qing, Chief Technology Officer of Microsoft China

Host: Chor Pharn Lee


How have intelligence, cognition, and concepts of the self varied across cultures and species? Might this influence the development of AI? Wei Qing has been at the forefront of AI in China for over 25 years, both as a technologist, and as a public advocate. Here he shared his experiences and insights on working in China, who announced a national AI plan last year, and are investing more than anyone else in an AI future. Following his presentation, Noah Raford joined Wei Qing in conversation.



12:10pm

ARE WE ARTIFICIAL: TWO EXHIBITIONS
PRESENTATION


Marlies Wirth, Curator of Digital Culture & Design Collection at the Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna


Hello Robot and Artificial Tears were two recent exhibitions in Vienna which dealt with the complex issues around automatization. Hello Robot looked at how design shaped our relationship with technology and with each other. Artificial Tears took a science-fiction position: asking what makes us “human” in this day and age, or if we are “artificial” after all. Co-curator Marlies Wirth talked through both shows, and how these kinds of technologies are increasingly entering museum space in unexpected ways.



2:15pm

I AM DATA: TAKING PERSONALISATION PERSONALLY
LECTURE


Sara M. Watson, Writer, technology critic and an affiliate with the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, USA


Nearly every digital interface we interact with today has been personalized to our needs. Search results, recommendation systems, news feeds no longer offer an unfiltered, objectively neutral experience. Personalisation relies entirely on past behavior and draws out predictive assumptions about what we want and what’s best for us. But the line between personalisation and discrimination is a blurry one. Recommendation engines that offer up new songs we might enjoy seem innocuous, but the same automation tasks can lead to filter bubbles and have been exploited optimize for addictive behaviors and weaponized against us in form of hyper-targeted voter suppression campaigns. Too much of personalisation relies on assumptions about users’ needs rather than giving users opportunities to express their intent. Interfaces need to expose for controlling personalisation on our terms to give back control to users. More interactive approaches to personalisation will be necessary to rebuild consumers’ trust and account for the appropriate uses of their data. We need to start taking personalisation personally.



2:45pm

I MAKE CRITICAL DATA
LECTURE & DISCUSSION


Wesley Goatley, London-based sound artist and lecturer at Interaction Design at University of the Arts London, UK

Host: Honor Harger


Many of the data-driven processes we rely upon are often opaque, discrete, or occur distant or hidden to us; often only noticed when they malfunction or fail. This situation is made more complex when our aesthetic experience of data is commonly mediated through methods such as visualization and sonification, methods which introduce new layers of interpretation and bias between ourselves and data. By examining data’s presence in culture and its overt and covert impacts on our lives, artistic practice can produce works which expand our understanding of the many roles data has in contemporary life. This conversation started with a provocation by sound artist and researcher Wesley Goatley on what he refers to as ‘Critical Data Aesthetics’ and continued with a discussion on how art can re-shape how we think about and engage with data. Following his presentation, Sara M. Watson joined Wesley Goatley in conversation with Honor Harger.



4:15pm

THE EYE OF AI
PRESENTATION


Wong Tien Yin, Medical Director of Singapore National Eye Centre, Vice-Dean of Duke-NUS Medical School, National University of Singapore and Deputy Group CEO (Research and Training), SingHealth


An AI system that is being developed in Singapore is expected to screen and detect three major eye diseases with unprecedented speed and accuracy than existing tests, as it uses a machine learning technology that can recognise intricate structures and patterns which may not be visible to the human eye. As one of the early clinician scientists in Singapore, Professor Wong Tien Yin’s research has led to the development of advanced computing imaging software and diagnostic platforms allowing a patient’s cardiovascular health and diabetes risk to be assessed using retinal vascular imaging. In this talk, he shared about the accelerated growth of AI in the last decade that has given rise to opportunities and challenges in health care systems today, and considered whether technology will eliminate doctors in the future.



3:35pm

WE SEE YOU
LECTURES & DISCUSSION


Louis-Philippe Demers, robotic artist and Associate Professor, School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Gemma Roig, Assistant Professor, Information Systems Technology and Design Pillar, Singapore University of Technology and Design and research affiliate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Host: Noah Raford


The workings of the eye, and the act of seeing, have been central concerns for robotics researchers, and computer scientists, for decades. For robots, and other machines, to get around safely, they need to both see their surroundings and understand what they are seeing. But what does it really mean for a mean for a machine to ‘see’? The complex workings of vision, mean that machines have radically different views of the environment that we live in, than we do. This session explored the science of vision and the probes the philosophical meaning of sight. It included the work of computer scientist, Gemma Roig, who builds computational models of human vision to understand its underlying principles, and uses those models to build artificial intelligence applications. Singapore-based artist, Louis-Philippe Demers, introduced two of his robotic art installations that explored the uncanny role of sight in robot-human relations. Wong Tien Yin joined Gemma Roig and Louis-Philippe Demers in discussion.



5:40pm

WE ARE IN A ROBOTIC MOMENT
PRESENTATIONS & DISCUSSION


Wong Choon Yue, Research Fellow, School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, National University of Singapore and maker of the social robot, EDGAR

Sougwen Chung, Artist in Residence at Bell Labs, working with robotics

David Hsu, Professor at Department of Computing Science and Deputy Director of Advanced Robotics Centre, National University of Singapore

Host: Marlies Wirth


Relationships between humans and robots are a very real thing. Roboticists and artists alike are producing technological creations can mimic and simulate life. Advances in social robotics and artificial intelligence are creating uncanny new dialogues between humans and machines. Prominent social scientist, Sherry Turkle has noted that, “we are now at what I call the robotic moment. Not because we have built robots worthy of our company but because we are ready for theirs.” What is the impact of the increasing reach of robotics and artificial intelligence into our daily lives? These issues were addressed by Wong Choon Yue, the maker of the social robot, EDGAR, robotics artist, Sougwen Chung, and David Hsu, a pioneer of robotics in Singapore, joined by Marlies Wirth.



6:45pm

DAY 2 CLOSING REMARKS

Honor Harger





ARTSCIENCE MUSEUM SINGAPORE


2:00pm

INTRODUCTION

Nina Ernst


2:05pm

ALT-LIFES, ALT-FUTURES
SCREENING


This session featured a screening of three films, which form part of the screening programme for Global Art Forum: I Am Not A Robot. The films were: Seam (directed by Rajeev Dassani and Elan Dassani), Last Days of the Man of Tomorrow (directed by Fadi Baki Fdz) and Pumzi (directed by Wanuri Kahiu). Collectively, these films unthink Eurocentric depictions of imminent automation. They present different futures where emerging technologies impact on protoganists’ identities. Pumzi and Last Days of the Man of Tomorrow were first screened by Cinema Akil for Global Art Forum: “I Am Not A Robot” in Dubai, March 2018.



3:20pm

I AM OTHER
PRESENTATION


Nina Ernst, Associate Director of Programmes, ArtScience Museum


Nina Ernst reflected on how the films screened earlier question how we perceive ourselves in relation to the beings that may surround us in the future. Will we still feel a sense of belonging based on gender, religious, ethnic or social groupings? Or will we retune our perceptive systems to understand each other as belonging to the tribe of humans, automatons, or synthetic intelligent beings? Will we embrace these differences or will we still perceive a threat in the ‘other’- trapped in a paranoid state of distrust? And when the opportunity arises for a fertile future will we be able to act or will our fearful paralysis hold us back?



3:50pm

I AM SHE
PRESENTATION


Shumon Basar, writer, curator, cultural critic and Commissioner of Global Art Forum


Cinema — that 20th century mass art form — provides one of the most fertile settings for history’s enduring experiments with man-made women. They are often seductive, confused, vengeful, and usually in that order. Shumon Basar outlined a brief genealogy and draws upon examples from the films Metropolis, Alphaville, Blade Runner, Ex Machina and a few recent Scarlett Johansson-led titles. What are the cultural and psychological values invested in cinema’s female robots? And why are men so scared of them, again and again?



4:10pm

I AM A HUMAN ARTIST
PRESENTATIONS & DISCUSSION

Isabel Lewis, Berlin-based performance artist

Ania Soliman, Paris/New York-based interdisciplinary artist

Host: Shumon Basar


How are artists, performers and choreographers working with robotics and notions of automation within their practice? What new kinds of aesthetics, experiences and knowledge emerge when the performing body interacts with the performing machine? Ania Soliman’s artwork, Explaining Dance to a Machine questions what it means to programme a material entity to think. Isabel Lewis works on the aesthetics of the experiential, creating spaces of sociable encounter between human and nonhuman agents. In conversation with Shumon Basar, the artists discussed their ideas and how they combine humans and machines to provide metaphors for the condition of artificial intelligence.



5:25pm

DAY 3 CLOSING REMARKS

Honor Harger, Shumon Basar, Noah Raford and Marlies Wirth




GLOBAL ART FORUM 12: CONTRIBUTORS

COMMISSIONER


Shumon Basar is a writer, curator and cultural critic. He is Commissioner of the Global Art Forum in Dubai; Editor-at-large of Tank magazine; Contributing Editor at Bidoun magazine; Director of the Format programme at the AA School; part of Art Jameel’s Curatorial Council; and a member of Fondazione Prada’s Thought Council. His most recent book, co-authored with Douglas Coupland and Hans Ulrich Obrist, is The Age of Earthquakes: A Guide to the Extreme Present.

CO-DIRECTORS




Honor Harger is the Executive Director for ArtScience Museum at Marina Bay Sands. A curator from New Zealand, she has a strong interest in artistic uses of technologies and in science as part of culture. Honor brings with her over 15 years of experience of working at the intersection between art, science and technology. She is responsible for charting the overall direction and strategy for ArtScience Museum.






Noah Raford is the Chief Operating Officer and Futurist-in-Chief of the Dubai Future Foundation. He was also a former advisor on futures, foresight, and innovation for the UAE Prime Minister’s Office. He is currently leading the construction and curation of the Museum of the Future (opening in 2019), as well as various public sector transformation initiatives.






Marlies Wirth is a curator and art historian based in Vienna, Austria. With a background in contemporary art, she was appointed curator of the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles in 2009 and was recently named Curator of Digital Culture & Design Collection at the MAK – the Austrian Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art in Vienna. In addition to writing essays and texts for artists and publications, Wirth curates exhibitions, programmes and discursive events in the fields of art, design, architecture, media and technology, and had a key role in the programming of VIENNA BIENNALE 2017.



CONTRIBUTORS’ BIOGRAPHIES

Elie Ayache was trained as an engineer at l’École Polytechnique of Paris, he pursued a career of option market-maker on the floor of MATIF (1987-1990) and LIFFE (1990-1995). He then turned to the philosophy of probability (DEA at la Sorbonne) and to the technology of derivative pricing, and co-founded ITO 33, a financial software company, in 1999.

Today, ITO 33 is the leading specialist in the pricing of convertible bonds, in the equity-to-credit problem, and more generally in the calibration and recalibration of volatility surfaces.


Jessica Bland is Head of Research at the Dubai Future Foundation, previously head of the technology futures team at Nesta, a UK foundation.

She works on the governance of emerging technologies – particularly artificial intelligence, synthetic biology and open science. She has also worked at the Royal Society (the UK’s National Academy of Science) and written for the Guardian and the Economist.


Cheryl Chung is the Co-Director of the Executive Education department at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. She also heads the School’s Strategic Planning department and together with a team, is building the futures research and teaching capabilities at the School with the “Future Ready Singapore” project.

As part of her teaching responsibilities, she curates the Lee Kuan Yew School Course, a core module for new Masters students that asks the big questions of public policy, using Singapore as an illustrative case study.


Sougwen Chung is an artist and (re)searcher based in New York.

Sougwen’s work explores the mark-made-by-hand and the mark-made-by-machine as an approach to understanding the interaction between humans and computers. Her speculative critical practice spans installation, sculpture, still image, drawing, and performance. She is a former research fellow at MIT’s Media Lab and a pioneering E.A.T. Artist in Resident in partnership with New Museum and Bell Labs. She is an inaugural member of NEW INC, the first museum-led art and technology incubator.


Louis-Philippe Demers is a robotics artist based in Singapore, and an Associate Professor at the School of Art, Design and Media at Nanyang Technological University. His career spanning several decades including the conception and production of several large-scale interactive robotic installations, so far realizing more than 375 machines.

He has received six mentions and a distinction at the prestigious Prix Ars Electronica, three prizes at Artificial Life (VIDA), two Helpmann awards, the prize for Interactive Lighting at Lightforms festival, and two jury selections at the Japan Media Art Festival.


Nina Ernst is the Associate Director, Programmes for ArtScience Museum at Marina Bay Sands. Her work at the museum spans public engagement through tours, talks and workshops, performances, films and events, as well as schools programmes, interactive displays and outreach.

Since joining ArtScience Museum, her focus has been on growing the attendance and deepening the engagement for public programmes and visitation from schools.


Wesley Goatley is a sound artist and researcher in Critical Data Aesthetics. Through installations, software artworks, and performance, his work explores the politics and ideologies behind data and networked technologies, and how critical art practice can expand our understanding of them.

His work is exhibited internationally, with recent shows in East Asia, Continental Europe, and North America. He gives regular talks and workshops on the subject of Critical Data Aesthetics, a methodology for the practice of data aestheticisation that he is developing through a PhD scholarship from the University of Sussex Humanities Lab.


Honor Harger is the Executive Director for ArtScience Museum at Marina Bay Sands. A curator from New Zealand, she has a strong interest in artistic uses of technologies and in science as part of culture. Honor brings with her over 15 years of experience of working at the intersection between art, science and technology. She is responsible for charting the overall direction and strategy for ArtScience Museum.

Prior to joining Marina Bay Sands, she was the artistic director of Lighthouse in Brighton, United Kingdom, from 2010 to 2014 where she curated projects which showed the cultural impact of scientific ideas.


David Hsu is a professor of computer science at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and a member of NUS Graduate School for Integrative Sciences & Engineering. He received PhD in computer science from Stanford University. At NUS, he co-founded NUS Advanced Robotics Center and has been serving as the Deputy Director. He held visiting positions at MIT Aeronautics & Astronautics Department and CMU Robotics Institute. He is an IEEE Fellow. Professor Hsu’s research interests span robotics, AI, and computational structural biology. In recent years, he has been working on robot planning and learning under uncertainty and human-robot collaboration. He is currently serving on the editorial board of Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research.


Koo Sengmeng leads alliances and partnerships for AI Singapore and engineers collaborations with glocal entities to further Singapore’s AI ambitions. Prior to AI Singapore, Sengmeng has over a decade of experience in mobile communications and interactive digital media, launching first-of-its-kind solutions for companies such as Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Sony Music Entertainment. Sengmeng joined the Singapore Public Service in 2012, where his team helped shape the billion-dollar Asia Pacific games industry and also launch the IDA Lab On Wheels in 2014 – demystifying frontier technologies such as mixed reality, machine intelligence, and robotics to students and masses. Sengmeng graduated from the National University of Singapore with a bachelor degree in engineering.


Chor Pharn Lee is the Principal Strategist at Centre for Strategic Futures. He has extensive public service experience helming strategic and business development roles. In his current post as Principal Strategist, he supports and advises on CSF’s foresight research agenda, and translation into strategy at various government platforms.

He has also served in the Ministry of Trade and Industry, overseeing strategic foresight and futures thinking to support economic policy analysis, and in a business development role at the China office of the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore.


Isabel Lewis ( born 1981, Santo Domingo, DR) works on the aesthetics of the experiential creating spaces of sociable encounter between human and nonhuman agents in the format she’s named the hosted occasion. Lewis’ sensorial occasions have been presented internationally, recently at Tate Modern London, Ming Contemporary Art Museum in Shanghai, and Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin.


Lim Sun Sun is Professor of Communication and Technology and Head of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at the Singapore University of Technology and Design.

She has researched extensively on the social implications of technology domestication, authoring more than 70, articles, book chapters and books. She serves on the editorial boards of ten journals and has contributed actively to public bodies including the Media Literacy Council and the National Internet Advisory Committee. She has won eight awards for excellent teaching.


Gemma Roig is currently an Assistant Professor at Singapore University of Technology and Design and a research affiliate at MIT. She was postdoctoral fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Center for Brains Minds and Machines. Dr Gemma Roig was also affiliated at the Laboratory for Computational and Statistical Learning, which is a collaborative agreement between the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Her research aim is to build computational models of human vision to understand its underlying principles, and to use those models to build applications of artificial intelligence.


Volker H. Schmidt graduated from the Universities of Marburg, Birmingham and Bielefeld with a Master’s Degree in sociology in 1987. He received a PhD in 1995 at the University of Bremen and a habilitation in 2000 at the University of Mannheim. He spent 1997-1998 as a JFK Memorial Fellow at the Center for European Studies, Harvard University. Professor Schmidt joined the National University of Singapore in 2000. During 2008-2009, he was a Visiting Fellow at the Excellence Cluster “Religion and Politics in Modernity”, University of Münster, at whose Center for Advanced Study in Bioethics he held short-term fellowships. His work focuses on social justice and inequality, social policy, social theory, and globalisation.


Ania Soliman is an interdisciplinary artist and has a drawing-based research practice and is interested in readings of technology from a post-colonial perspective.

Her work was shown at the Drawing Center (NY), the 2010 Whitney Biennial, 15th Istanbul Biennial, the Museum of Modern Art in Salzburg, and Museum of Culture in Basel.


Sara M Watson is a writer and technology critic based in Singapore, and an affiliate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.

She writes and speaks about emerging issues in the intersection of technology, culture, and society. Her work appears in The Atlantic, Wired, The Washington Post, Slate, Motherboard, and other publications. She is based in Singapore and tweets @smwat


Qing Wei is currently the National Technology Officer in Microsoft China which allows him to evangelize Microsoft latest technology vision and innovation.

He is an ICT industry veteran who has been working in mobile communication, information technology and smart devices related business for over 25 years in Asia with Microsoft and Motorola. He is also an active public speaker and coach specialized in digital transformation.


Wong Tien Yin is Medical Director of Singapore National Eye Centre, Vice-Dean of Duke-NUS Medical School, National University of Singapore and Deputy Group CEO (Research and Training), SingHealth.

An internationally renowned ophthalmologist specialising in retinal diseases, Professor Wong’s academic and research work has been recognised with numerous awards. He is two-time recipient of the Singapore Translational Research Investigator Award in 2008 and 2014. In 2010, he received the National Outstanding Clinician Scientist Award and the President’s Science Award. He was selected for the 2013 USA Eisenhower Fellowship and received the President’s Technology Award in 2014.


Wong Choon Yue is a Research Fellow of the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Nanyang Technological University (NTU Singapore). He received a Master’s Degree in Smart Product Design in 2007 and PhD in Mechanical Engineering in 2013 from NTU. While pursuing his Master’s Degree, he was employed as an engineer at TECH Semiconductor (now Micron Semiconductor Asia).

Dr Wong’s research focuses on interface design and human-robot interaction. His passion lies in the design of innovative and aesthetic robotic systems, and enjoys realising his designs with his own hands and code. Most recently, he developed a humanoid for social robotics called EDGAR.

ABOUT THE GLOBAL ART FORUM



The Global Art Forum is an annual, transdisciplinary summit, which combines original thinking and contemporary themes in an intimate, live environment. Since 2007, the Forum has been a key part of Art Dubai’s extensive cultural programming. It has brought together over 450 global minds from pop culture to renowned academia: artists, curators, museum directors, filmmakers, novelists, historians, philosophers, technologists, entrepreneurs, musicians and performers, dialogue with one another across disciplines, reporting from every part of the world, painting a truly 21st century portrait of how the globalized world thinks.



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