Conference in Los Angeles: The Politics of Parametricism Digital Technologies and the Future(s) of Sociality

With reports that an "anti-snitching" endeavor in Philadelphia was using Instagram as a platform ("Police probe website targeting crime witnesses" and "Source: Police eye teen as author of anti-snitching site," Philadelphia Inquirer) and that the Sacramento Police Department tracked down and arrested robbers who used a stolen credit to purchase $120 in food from Carls Jr. via a photo they posted to Instagram ("Instagram photo of $120 Carl's Jr. order leads to 4 burglary arrests," Sacramento Bee), this Friday's conference, "The Politics of Parametricism" at REDCAT (the Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater) in Los Angeles is definitely trenchant.

According to the conference description:

Parametric models enable digital designers to create complex structures and environments, as well as new understandings of space, both real and virtual. Whether as tools for democratic action or tyrannical spectacle; self- and community-building capabilities; a post-humanistic subject; or the mediatized politics of our desired futurisms—all these themes are figured and being assembled within the Parametricist discourse.

Two of the sessions on Saturday, "Parametricism, the commons and social representation," featuring
Peggy Deamer, Teddy Cruz and Laura Kurgan" and "Designing subjectivities, curating new models of sociality" featuring Benjamin Bratton and Andrés Jaque, look at intersection of the virtual and real worlds on architecture and society.

-- Guardian interview with Benjamin Bratton, Center for Design and Geopolitics, University of California, San Diego

I wonder if I would be cut out for the Master’s Program in Aesthetics & Politics at the California Institute of Arts.