MediaFutures Demo Days
A two-day celebration of innovative projects
from all over Europe fighting misinformation and disinformation
Thursday 8 and Friday 9 of June 2023
Design Zentrum, Hamburg
The final event of the MediaFutures Project takes place on the 8 and 9 of June 2023 in the Design Zentrum Hamburg.
This summit on media, data and misinformation will be an occasion to showcase the results of the MediaFutures programme: artworks, tools and services created by the supported artists and startups but also learnings, toolkit on misinformation and policy briefs.
It will include panels and keynotes with experts, presentations of local and European initiatives for artists and startups as well as social moments for professionals and the general audience.
A specific focus will be made on the projects of the 3rd cohort of MediaFutures programme, supported in 2023, providing them with networking opportunities, as well as supporting them with the sustainability and visibility of their projects.
At the end of this event, demonstrating the impact of the MediaFutures programme to reshape the media value chain, attendees will be invited to celebrate the end of this 3-year programme around cocktails and music fostering synergies among teams, cultural and business partners and the general audience.
Programme
Thursday, June the 8th
10:30am – Easy Morning & Breakfast Pastries
11:00am – Welcome and introduction of the day
11:30am – Pitch session Startup meet Artists Track | The four teams supported this year in the Startup meets Artist Track combining the ingenuity of entrepreneurs and the creativity of artists will pitch their projects.
12:30pm – Pitch session “cookouts: Reshaping the Restaurant Landscape through Ghost Kitchens”
Join us as we introduce cookouts, a Hamburg-based start-up pioneering the Ghost Kitchen industry in Germany. Their innovative model connects underutilised commercial kitchens with expanding gastronomy concepts, creating new income streams and fostering sustainable business growth. Alongside their pitch, cookouts is thrilled to provide breakfast and lunch, offering a taste of the efficiency and culinary quality inherent to their approach. Don’t miss this exciting opportunity to discover how cookouts is redefining the restaurant landscape, one kitchen at a time.
12:45pm – Networking lunch
2:00pm: Slava Romanov – Edit Wars: disinformation at the heart of the war
Bremen-based data artist Slava Romanov leverages generative graphics and interactive installations to inspire social transformation. Currently, he’s part of the ‘Edit Wars’ team, utilizing the synergy of big data and art to deconstruct propaganda narratives.
2:30pm: Jana Schamuhn – Onilo: Reading Is the Basis for Combating Misinformation and Disinformation
Jana Schamuhn is committed to promoting reading skills in the context of sustainability. Her main concern is to prepare complex sustainability topics in a child-friendly way and to convey them using digital media in order to give children the courage to protect the earth. A basis for this is the teaching of the basic competence of reading. As a certified environmental manager, Jana not only attaches importance to promoting the children’s reading skills, but also to supporting the teachers so that they can support the pupils in the best possible way in learning to read in the context of sustainability.
Radu-George Caravateanu is an artist from Transylvania, with studies in traditional painting. He also has a degree in philosophy-anthropology, a master’s degree in archaeology. Professional activity in recent years includes mural painting, urban art, graphics and traditional painting.
Ioana Cheres is a computer science engineer and co-founder of TechWave Development Cluj. Through her work, Ioana creates artistic and interactive environments that merge the boundaries of artificial intelligence and human creativity, opening doors to a cross-domain dialogue. In recent years, her professional activities have primarily focused on areas such as artificial intelligence, full-stack development, and IoT development.
3:30pm – Break
4:00pm – Can Conversational Agents Help Provide the Tools of Data Literacy? | Media literacy is a key approach used in some form or other by many, if not most of the projects in MediaFutures. This often includes algorithmic literacy and data literacy. Johanna Walker of King’s College London will talk on ongoing research into whether generative AI can be used to provide the tools of data literacy.
4:45pm – Keynote speech – Dr. Leif Kramp
Dr Leif Kramp is a communication and media scholar, publicist and historian. He is Research Coordinator at ZeMKI, the Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research, University of Bremen. He also chairs the non-profit VOCER together with Alexander von Streit and Dr Stephan Weichert. Kramp is a founding board member of the Verein für Medien- und Journalismuskritik e.V. (Association for Media and Journalism Criticism). Before his academic career, Kramp worked as a freelance journalist for news agencies, daily and weekly newspapers as well as consumer and trade magazines focusing on media and culture. He has authored and edited over 30 books and studies on media change and digital transformation, most recently “New Perspectives in Critical Data Studies” (2022) and „Konstruktiv durch Krisen? Fallanalysen zum Corona-Jornalismus“ (2021). Currently, he co-leads the international project NPJ.news to build an online-portal on the subject and perspectives of charitable journalism.
5:30pm – Break
6:00pm – Pitch session Startups for Citizens Track | This track aims at supporting startups developing innovative ideas, products and services which encourage broader and more meaningful engagement with information. The 4 supported teams will pitch their projects.
7:00pm – Premiere of Hammer & Egg Audiowalk | The interactive audiogame by the concept studio HELLA LUX takes a closer look at our decision making process – right in the middle of HafenCity. The special thing about Hammer&Egg is that the outcome of the experience changes depending on the participants’ decisions. Your decisions have consequences, just like in real life! And that’s exactly what the game is about. We take a closer look at how we perceive and interpret the information around us in our everyday life. The question then quickly arises as to how large exactly the drop from assumptions and perceived truths to facts and research is.
7:00pm – 8:30pm: Networking drinks
Friday, June the 9th
09:30am – Easy Morning & Breakfast Pastrie
10am – Panel discussion – Further opportunities for artists and startups
Soenke Zehle (EIT Culture and Creativity)
As a media theorist, Soenke writes, teaches, and engages in collaborative research involving the shifting relationships of art, technology, and design. Co-founder of xm:lab – Experimental Media Lab at the Hochschule der Bildenden Künste Saar (HBKS, Academy of Fine Arts Saar), associate researcher at the Ubiqitous Media Technologies Lab (German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence), co-founder and co-managing director of the research-based transformation organization K8 Institut für strategische Ästhetik gGmbH. Soenke is currently part of the team of Action Programme Directors of the new EIT Culture + Creativity, the EU’s innovation agency for the creative sector. His research interests include anticipation and the exploration of collective agency and intelligence.
- Gefion Thuermer (IMPETUS project)
Dr Gefion Thuermer is the technical and scientific coordinator of the IMPETUS project, a Horizon Europe project that provides resources, support and recognition for citizen science initiatives across Europe. Her research interest is in (online) participation, process design, HCI and EDI: to enable inclusive engagement wherever people use technology to achieve goals together.
- Paula Lauterbach (Kreativ Gesellschaft)
Paula Lauterbach is Communications Manager at nextMedia.Hamburg. During her bachelor’s degree in media and communication sciences, her master’s degree in journalism at Hamburg University and various stations from TV productions to artist management, she discovered her passion for journalism and the media industry. Since 2019 Paula is constantly working on making the offers of nextMedia.Hamburg and the Hamburg content industry visible.
- Marta Portales (Digital Future Society)
Marta Portalés, PhD, has a diverse background in academia, EU projects, and communications. Holds a PhD in Journalism from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) and awarded as Young Researcher Talent by Caixabank in 2022. Currently she is the Coordinator of the European Projects Department at Mobile World Capital Barcelona and lecturer at UAB’s Communications Faculty. With a strong educational foundation, including a Bachelor’s degree in Audiovisual Communication and international study experiences, Marta combines her passion for interdisciplinary collaboration with a dedication to bridging the gap between academia, industry, and society.
Moderator: Simona Derosa (DEN – Design Entrepreneurship Institute)
Simona De Rosa (PhD) is co-leading the “Media and Creative Industries Research Department” at the DEN Institute. Simona leads policy analysis and impact assessment activities within research projects funded by the European Commission. She is an active member of the Media community at European level and she is strongly engaged in advocacy activities to strength the role of creative and cultural industries to promote innovation. Since 2017 she follows the EU strategies on disinformation and misinformation, being among the initiators of the following EU projects on the topic: Social Observatory for disinformation and Media Analysis, the Italian Digital Media Observatory, and MediaFutures.
11:15am – Break
11:30am – Pitch session Artists for Media Track | The five supported artists will pitch their projects, proposing new ideas and experiences that critically and materially explore data and technology to question its impact on individuals and society.
12:45pm – Networking lunch
2pm – Performance Mining Hate | Built with content generated by the audience, this performance will create awareness on the practices used by anonymous hackers to target journalists and minorities in India to spread misinformation.
3:00pm – Drew Hemment – A journey between art and technology
Drew Hemment is Professor of Data Arts and Society and Director of Festival Futures at Edinburgh Futures Institute and Edinburgh College of Art within University of Edinburgh. He is a Turing Fellow and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He leads The New Real (www.newreal.cc) and Experiential AI in partnership with the Alan Turing Institute and Edinburgh’s Festivals. Over 30 years, Drew has been one of the key figures who has shaped the field of digital art and culture in Europe. He has worked with cities and nations representing culture and research at the highest level, and worked for the Singapore Government on Smart Nation and Singapore’s 50th anniversary. In 1995, Drew founded FutureEverything, named by The Guardian one of the top 10 ideas festivals in the world. In 2016, he founded the GROW Observatory, the world’s first continental scale citizens’ observatory. He is presently working to develop a transformative research agenda for the coming decade on AI and the Arts, and to build a national capability for the UK in this highly significant area. Drew is a frequent public speaker and regularly appears in the media, including as expert witness on BBC’s Moral Maze, and film critic for Afternoon Show on BBC Radio Scotland. He is a member of the Editorial Board for Leonardo and Alan Turing Institute Steering Group for Arts, Humanities and Heritage. His work has been recognised by 14 international awards including Soil Award 2019 (Winner), STARTS Prize 2018 (Honorary Mention), Lever Prize 2010 (Winner), and Prix Ars Electronica 2008 (Honorary Mention).
4:00pm – Hannah Redler Hawes – Interrogating data through art
A contemporary art curator, producer, writer and researcher specialising in new and emergent technologies, Hannah brings international artists, researchers and subject matter experts together to create transdisciplinary projects which provoke social, cultural and ethical questions within the fields of art, data, science and technology. Her curatorial projects have been seen in major museums, galleries, universities, digital space and the public and private realms across the world. Alongside her independent practice she is the Director of the Data as Culture art programme at the Open Data Institute. She developed her love of interdisciplinary practice as Head of Arts Programme at the Science Museum Group, where, between 1999 and 2014 she curated art interventions, exhibitions and events. She also established the museum’s contemporary art collection, which notably includes some of the first ever media art acquisitions by a national museum in the UK. Hannah regularly lectures, speaks and writes on interdisciplinary art and curating practices and is a volunteer mentor for Arts Emergency. She trained at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts, Norwich School of Art and the Royal College of Art, London.
4:45pm – Break
5pm – Conclusion MediaFutures | MediaFutures consortium will close the days by summarizing the learning from the event and sharing the lessons learned and best practices on how to support artists and startups reshape the media value chain through innovative, inclusive and participatory application of data.
6:00pm – Prize announcement & Award ceremony
7:00pm – 10pm – Party
