This panel posed a series of questions related to mind control from several viewpoints (technological, political, personal, collective) overlaid with humanity’s nagging core question of whether we have free will? How much of our decision making, actions, reactions are conscious? With the advent of nano, biomedical applications, neuroscience, AI and other technologies, we are becoming more aware of inherent bias, surveillance, consumer manipulation and the emerging ‘consciousness’ of the machine. But is being informed enough? There is no dark without the light — the panel also turned to the blue skies and asked what are the positive sides of mind control?

Moderator: Victoria Vesna, PhD, media artist and Professor at UCLA Department of Design | Media Art

Guest Speakers:
Maša Jazbec, PhD, artist, researcher and the Head of DDTlab in Trbovlje, Slovenia
Cristina Albu, PhD, Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory at University of Missouri – Kansas City, USA
Marco Donnarumma, PhD, an artist, performer, stage director and scholar, Berlin, Germany
Siddharth Ramakrishnan, PhD, neuroscientist, Assistant Professor at the University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, USA
Rhea Klanšek, Project Manager at Blckb Applied Neurosciences, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Warren Neidich, artist, USA