Friday, October 2, 2026, 11 AM – 6 PM
Smith Warehouse Bay 4, Room C105 – Ahmadieh Family Lecture Hall
Enter Though Bay 6 Doors on the South Side of the Building
Parking in the South Visitor Lot
The Duke-DKU Presence Lab (2025-) draws from media arts, digital media, and humanities, in context of theory, history, critical practice, and global conversations, to explore pressing topics at the intersection of computation, media, and culture. We are interested in the future of reality in a digitally hybrid world, and how embodied, engaged communities can flourish across space and time. The question we are raising is whether we can create a deeper sense of connection across our campuses through meaningful, sustained and creative synchronous and asynchronous exchanges. In our initial cycle, the group will pay special attention to questions of presence, virtuality, artificial intelligence / agency, and materiality.
The Presence Lab Fall Symposium will provide an opportunity for Duke and DKU faculty, staff, and students, along iwth distinguished invited guests, to come together and share their related work. This Symposium is supported by our IGHE Grant Project (2026-28).
tentative schedule:
IGHE DUKE-DKU PRESENCE LAB SYMPOSIUM |
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| 9-10:50 AM | Bass Connections Presence Lab Students + Speakers ONLY |
| 11:00-11:15 AM | IGHE DUKE-DKU SYMPOSIUM BEGINS Welcome and Introductions Benjamin Bacon, Duke Kunshan University and Victoria Szabo, Duke University Co-Directors, Duke-DKU Presence Lab |
| 11:15-12:15 pm | Keynote #1: Ionat Zurr, University of Western Australia and Co-Director, The Datafication of Life Removed from Context Bio: Associate Professor Ionat Zurr is an artist, researcher, and Chair of the Fine Arts Discipline at the School of Design at The University of Western Australia. In 1996, Ionatco-founded the Tissue Culture & Art Project, which led to the establishment of SymbioticA, the Centre of Excellence in Biological Arts at The University of Western Australia, in 2000. Ionat was a Visiting Professor at Biofilia – Base for Biological Arts, Aalto University; a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Arts and Art History at Stanford University; and a Research Fellow at the Tissue Engineering & Organ Fabrication Laboratory at Harvard Medical School. She often works in collaboration with other artists and scientists and has developed a body of work and projects that reach beyond the confines of art to explore diverse fields, including new materials, textiles, design, architecture, ethics, fiction, and food. Ionat publishes and exhibits internationally. Her work has been exhibited at the Centre Pompidou, MoMA in New York, Mori Art Museum, Ars Electronica, National Art Museum of China, and many other institutions. Respondent: Mark Olson, Duke University, Presence Lab Associate Director |
| 12:15-1:15 pm | Lunch Buffet |
| 1:15- 2:45 pm | Session #1: Lab Fellows Research Presentations Introduction and Moderator, Vivian Xu, DKU, Presence Lab Associate Director Rui Hu, DKU + John Supko, Duke: Dharmaplex Ziv Zeev Cohen, DKU + Augustus Wendell, Duke: Resonant Fields Open Discussion |
| 2:45 – 3:00 pm | Break |
| 3:00-4:00 | Keynote #2: Boris Debackere, V2 Lab for the Unstable Media, "45 Years of V2_ Still Unstable" Bio: Boris Debackere is an artist and researcher lecturing at LUCA School of Arts. He serves as head of production at V2_ Lab in Rotterdam, instigating artistic projects that interrogate and illuminate contemporary issues in art, science, technology, and society. His interdisciplinary practice centres on the experiential impact of new media that shape our information society. He received the Liedts-Meesen new media nomination, won the Georges Delete Prize for Best Original Music and Sound Design and received the Ensor Sound Design Award. Respondent: Victoria Szabo, Duke University. Building across more communities and networks - ACM SIGGRAPH and Expanded Networks. |
| 4:00-5:15 pm | Session #2: Thematic Meeting/Roundtable – “Model + Collapse” Moderators: Vivian Xu, DKU + Benjamin Bacon, DKU Model/Collapse is a research project that aims to bring together artists, researchers, and scholars from around the world to engage in a multi-disciplinary, multi-location collaborative exploration around this hybrid topic. We propose an etymological and conceptual disassembly and subsequent reconstitution of this machine-learning term as provocation that converts an over-determined technical notion into a generative framework, a set of moveable parts available for redeployment across contexts. It is worth noting here, this deployment is not a claim of equivalence. An algorithmic model retrained on its own synthetic output and a civilization retrained on its own myths and rituals are not the same process. To conflate the two would overstate what the analogy could responsibly support. Instead, value lies in what emerges when model collapse is set against disciplinary discourse that may open up new pathways of thinking to old problems. Can algorithmic bias be read as the visible trace of a collapse already underway in the world the model represents? When canon reproduces itself, how does that then affect the potential of knowledge systems? Does disaster narratives of rupture and catastrophic fall constrain our capacity to recognize slow collapse phenomena? Is adaptation as a cultural method collapsing human creativity or is it the essence of creativity itself? Aaron Kutnick, Mark Hansen, Mark Olson,Bill Seaman, John Supko, Victoria Szabo, Duke Audience Discussion |
| 5:15-5:30 | Closing Discussion |
| 5:30 - 6:00 pm | Reception |
