Lecture by Dr. Richard Carter-White “Collective Memory, Dis/connection and the Digital Transformation of Witness Testimony in Museum Settings”

The B’AI Global Forum will hold a talk by Dr. Richard Carter-White entitled “Collective Memory, Dis/connection and the Digital Transformation of Witness Testimony in Museum Settings” on October 4, 2023.

◇ Date & Venue

・Date: October 4, 2023 (Wed), 3:00~4:30 pm (JST)

・Venue: On-site (up to 20 participants) & Online Hybrid

・On-site：Room 327, Faculty of Science Bldg.3 (The University of Tokyo, Asano Campus)
（https://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/content/400020145.pdf）

・How to register：For on-site participation, please register below by 27 September (Wed); to participate via Zoom please register below by 2 October (Mon).
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSey-cHBB7NBfwhlqEYr391JC-IO-UF__4jmq55oftoHU2shag/viewform

・Language: English

・Organizer: B’AI Global Forum, Institute for AI and Beyond, The University of Tokyo

・Supported by The Institute for AI and Beyond, The University of Tokyo

◇ Speaker

Dr. Richard Carter-White（Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at the School of Social Sciences, Macquarie University）

Dr. Richard Carter-White is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at the School of Social Sciences, Macquarie University. His research sits at the intersection of cultural and political geography, and provides a geographical perspective on structures, spaces, representations and experiences of violence (both political and environmental). He is currently engaged in projects investigating the spatialities of the concentration and refugee camp, post-disaster communities and landscapes in Japan, and the implications of digital technology for sites of difficult heritage.

◇ Abstract

Collective Memory, Dis/connection and the Digital Transformation of Witness Testimony in Museum Settings

Across various spheres of society and culture, from education and news media to the arts and creative industries, AI has become increasingly associated with ideas of inauthenticity, deception and alienation, even as the new communicative capacities of this technology become ever more imbricated into daily life. This tension is particularly evident in the dilemma faced by museums and other institutional curators of collective memory, which bear the responsibility for telling communal stories of the past while finding innovative new ways to engage diverse publics in listening to and participating in those stories.

This lecture explores the central yet ambivalent role that AI has assumed in the political and pedagogical life of contemporary museums through a discussion of the recent digitalisation of witness testimony, and in particular the use of machine learning to reinvent a genre of discourse whose principal contribution to museum narratives has hitherto been the sense of human connection to past events that it affords.

◇ Moderator

Ai Hisano (Associate Professor, Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies, The University of Tokyo)

◇ Inquiry

B’AI Global Forum Office

bai.global.forum[at]gmail.com（Please change [at] to @）