Robots, VR, and Hacking panel video
· talk
Alex May moderated a panel at IMPAKT's Future Digital Life conference in Utrecht, bringing together perspectives on robotics, virtual reality, and hacking from across art and digital culture.
Robots, VR, and Hacking panel video documents a panel moderated by Alex May at IMPAKT in Utrecht, shared on 19 January 2019 as part of the wider Future Digital Life: A World Without Us? conference programme. The discussion brought May together with Ghislaine Boddington, John Holder, and Ine Poppe to consider how robotics, virtual reality, and hacking are shaping contemporary digital culture.
Rather than presenting those fields as separate trends, the panel set them alongside one another as overlapping ways of thinking about bodies, systems, agency, and technological futures. In the context of IMPAKT’s programme, that made the discussion part of a broader attempt to examine what life, intelligence, and control might mean in a world increasingly structured by machines and networked environments.
For May, moderating the panel sat clearly within the wider practice around art, emerging technologies, and public debate. The conversation extended questions already present in projects around robotics and post-human speculation, while showing how talk-based formats can open those ideas out beyond the gallery into shared critical discussion.