Welcome to the Media Lab Doctoral Seminar
TIME: Thursday October 25, 2018, from 16:30–19:30
LOCATION: Aalto University, Learning Centre, room JUHO.
DOM-L0007 New Media Doctoral Seminar
Responsible teacher: Prof. Lily Díaz-Kommonen
PRESENTATIONS BY:
Guest speaker: Tone Andersen
Mamdooh Afdile
Daniel Landau
See abstracts below.
The seminar is open for all. Welcome!
The neglected question of telling the life story of someone else
by Tone Andersen
My name is Tone Andersen and I’m a Norwegian cinematographer and filmmaker. Many of the films and programs I have worked on has been about strangers from a different country, a different culture, whom often speak a language I didn’t master. In countries like Palestine, Pakistan, Thailand, Kongo, Afghanistan and Somaliland I have been continuously facing the challenge of finding the way to tell their personal stories for a Western audience. Though the familiar reality to many documentarists worldwide, this is a question often not problematized. What are the advantages and disadvantages of coming in as a foreign filmmaker? Can a foreigner ever tell a local story in an authentic way? Through examples of projects I’ve worked, I will give a short talk presenting my personal reflections and the challenges in dramatizing the lives of others with a focus on the foreign setting.
Tone Andersen: After graduating from SIADUK, she started out as a camerawoman in the Middle-East in 2002. Since then she has worked as a cinematographer, director, producer and editor in various formats world-wide. She has shot award-winning stories on social and human rights concerns from Asia, Africa, the US, the Middle-East and Europe. Her debut documentary as a director; When the Boys Return premiered in IDFA in 2012 and won several prizes at festivals around the world. In 2016 Andersen and her partner Mamdooh Afdile founded their own production company, Klar Film. There Andersen currently works as a producer and screenwriter, developing ideas for TV-series and film.
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When it comes to us, we are different, but when it comes to them,
They are all the same!
by Mamdooh Afdile
The unspoken truth about our prejudice and negative attitude toward others left psychologists and researchers stand puzzled on how to investigate a behavior that many are ashamed to admit. We tend to “keep our thoughts to ourselves” when we suspect that the surrounding might be judgmental or dismissing. This behavior have caused a challenge to investigating negative emotions toward others. In this short talk I will present my work in trying to address this limitation by combining movie viewing with brain imaging methodology. The brain doesn’t lie when it comes to what it likes and what not.
Mamdooh Afdile graduated from the Sam Spiegel Film & Television School in Jerusalem in 2005. He has extensive experience in producing, directing, shooting and editing film and TV programs in a wide variety, from NGO advocacy films, reality TV shows, to feature films. Afdile has also worked as a film lecturer and consultant. As well as developing ideas for KlarFilm, he currently a doctoral candidate in media and neuroscience at Aalto University in Finland.
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by Daniel Landau
From Narcissus’s pond through reflective surfaces and modern age selfies, the concepts of self, body-image, and self-awareness have been strongly influenced by the human interaction with reflective technologies. As digital media pervasively enters our lives, a new dimension of self-documentation becomes a major force in shaping the conception of the narrative-self. With the current wave of Virtual Reality technology making its early steps as a consumer product, Media artist Daniel Landau, set out to explore the new ways in which VR impacts our concepts of self and self-awareness; and the opportunities and challenges that re-embodiment in VR brings to the way we perceive the ‘self’ in relation to ‘others’. In his lecture, Daniel Landau will map the empirical studies he has designed comprising his Doctoral research.
Daniel Landau is a media artist, researcher, and lecturer. He studied Computer Music and New Media at the Royal Conservatory in The Netherlands. Residing at the intersection of Art, Technology, and Science, Landau’s work explores the Impact of virtual embodiment on the construct of the Self. His work has been presented in major venues, museums, and festivals worldwide including Jerusalem, New-York, London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Shenzhen, Tokyo, Paris, and Mexico City. Daniel is regularly invited to give talks about his art and science projects in institutions and festivals worldwide, among them are CalTech, Stanford University, UCLA, University of Copenhagen, Aalto University. Between 2012 and 2016, Daniel led the Media Studies department at the Midrasha Faculty of the Arts, and since 2014 he lectures at the Interdisciplinary Centre, Herzliya. Daniel was recently invited to UCLA as a visiting lecturer and he is currently a doctoral candidate at the Aalto University Media Lab, Finland.