Tactile Intelligence: Rethinking Consent through Embodied AI Prototyping with Patrícia J. Reis
11 AM - 4 PM
This hands-on workshop explores the ethical, emotional, and sensory dimensions of AI-driven human-machine interaction by approaching the body as a “black box” both as an artistic strategy and as a critical lens through which to examine how interactive technologies—and AI in particular—engage with bodies. Rather than prioritizing control, prediction, and optimization, it focuses on intimate, situated experience, while questioning how bodies are shaped, abstracted, and often excluded and discriminated against within these technological paradigms. Participants will engage with simple AI models and DIY touch-responsive interfaces using microcontrollers and open-source machine learning tools to examine how consent, agency, and embodiment can be both problematic and reimagined within artificially automated systems. By building interactive prototypes and experimenting with real-time feedback, the workshop invites critical reflection on intimacy, power, and the politics of touch in today’s technosphere, engaging ecofeminist and disability perspectives.
Beginners are also welcome; no prior experience is required.
Where: Mz*Baltazar’s Laboratory, Jägerstrasse 52-54,1200 Wien
Patrícia J. Reis is a media artist, researcher, and lecturer based in Vienna. Her practice engages critical and sensorial approaches to technology, employing hacking and ecofeminism to question systems of control and address the complexity of contemporary technological and social systems. She lectures at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, where she leads the Elise Richter PEEK research project Hacking the Body as the Black Box.
The exhibition and Public Programme are supported by MA7, BMWKMS, 15. District, Raw Matters and Mz*Baltazar’s Laboratory
Exhibition curated by Barbora Horská
Visual Design by Ale Zapata