”We don’t have an energy problem, we have a matter problem.” Matt Jones (he/him) has been designing digital products and services since 1995. Most recently he was Head of Design at Lunar Energy, a company building the world’s best clean energy products to deliver home electrification at scale. From 2013-2021 he worked at Google as a Principal Desig…

“Software is an interesting medium. At least in theory, once you make something and it doesn’t become successful, it doesn’t cost anything to change your mind. You can just stop running it.” Software is built upon software, forming a complex and often invisible dependency tree. This is the world Andie Nordgren (she/her) navigates, where large and a…

Kickstarter helps bring projects to life and as the first crowdfunding platform with $7 billion pledged and 239,000 projects funded, so what new concepts have emerge with this aid? In the session Laura Feinstein, Senior Design and Tech Editor at Kickstarter, dives into how fashion and textile creators are breaking out of labs and turning cutting-ed…

“It’s very fun to make AI tools magical. [...] But when you make AI feel airy, you remove the possibility for people to ask questions. So it’s better to make it approachable.” Trudy is an active technology enthusiast who is convinced that AI tools can be as useful as electricity. By providing real-life examples and related metaphors of ceramic mugs…

“Could AI ever be a common pool of resources?” Researcher Somya Joshi makes a compelling observation: the same extractive narratives of 19th century industrialisation are being reproduced today in our venture to conquer the AI ecosystem. Somya highlights how major technological shifts such as the Green Revolution relied on the premise that automati…

The Conference's main partner IBM hosted a talk during Wednesday’s Getting Grounded session focusing on approaches on AI, its uses and adaptations and our relation with it. Artificial intelligence provides us with new ways to communicate through products. In her talk, Mary Wallace portrays how AI can be used to improve consumers’ retail experiences…

Von Video Archive – The Conference by Media Evolution

The Conference's partner IKEA hosted a talk during Wednesday’s Getting Grounded session focusing on IKEA most recent findings on play, design and why it all matters more than we think. Why is play important? And why is IKEA so obsessed with playfulness? Anna Granath and Maria Törn are ready to answer those questions, freshly armed with insight from…

The Q&A from the session Late-Stage Digitalization with Somya Joshi and Trudy PainterVon Video Archive – The Conference by Media Evolution

The Conference's main partner IBM hosted a talk during Wednesday’s Getting Grounded session focusing on approaches on AI, its uses and adaptations and our relation with it. Matt Candy presents the numerous opportunities that generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) offers, and provides insight into IBM’s human-centred approach to leveraging new …

“How do we protect something we do not love and do not understand?”Seán Ronayne is the ornithologist who came up with the idea to sound-record every bird in Ireland, to show the world what beautiful and unique creatures they are. He is also the main character in the documentary Birdsong. With his extraordinary projects capturing soundscapes and ima…

“We are living in a world where we do not agree.”The spoken word artist Joshua Idehen kicks off the session by delivering a humorous performance about the flaws of various ideologies, the world according to your mom, doing the washing. Aiming to unite the audience through music, he showcases the power of humor, language and love when speaking acros…

Q&A from the session Structuring Structures with Jenny L Beijar, Marco Guadarrama, Emily Best, Sarah Watson and Györgi GálikVon Video Archive – The Conference by Media Evolution

Think about your childhood – what made you feel safe at home? For many of us, our childhoods were unplugged. Now, times have changed. We’re wired into tech at every turn. Parents have turned into safety officers—some offering trust and guidance, others building walls of protection. But for kids, the question is "What’s lurking in the dark?" IKEA, i…

Q&A from the session Entangled and Enmeshed with Andie Nordgren, Tony Olsson and Matt JonesVon Video Archive – The Conference by Media Evolution

This century will be defined by society’s capacity to respond to climate breakdown. It’s not going to be like the movies, a CGI spectacle of eschatological earthquakes and meteorites. Climate breakdown is a slow and terrifying disaster. Györgi Gálik, City Transitions Co-Lead at Dark Matter Labs, emphasises our need to have an honest understanding o…

“Almost everyone has a story connected to their mobile phone. They are deeply personal and interconnected with our daily lives.” But what if technology isn't just what we do, but how we feel? Emily and Sarah knew this truth. Their experiences with tech left deep imprints, revealing that while Silicon Valley excels at innovation, it often overlooks …

“When we know who enters what, we can also adapt the situation accordingly” As a part of the session ”Entangled and Enmeshed”, Tony Olsson shares with us his experience of working on UX design for access control management products. Tony (he/him) has been in the tech industry for many years, including at companies like Assa Abloy who, through their…

Are we in control of technological megasystems, or are they in fact controlling us? By taking on a critical approach to modern technology, Georgina Voss emphasizes the need to collectively challenge the systems that underpin our world.Humans suffer from hubris in terms of using technology to exert control. Voss draws a parallel to the film Jurassic…

The Q&A from session Time, Trust and Wisdom with Monika Jiang, Gustavo Noguiera de Menezes and Valeria AdaniVon Video Archive – The Conference by Media Evolution

“Trust is an outcome – not something you can design for.” For many years designers and users alike have been pushing for “seamless” technologies and services – but this approach has not always prioritised safety, privacy, and TRUST. We’ve been obsessed with making things easy to use, rather than making things that are transparent, accountable, and …

“Underneath the experience of loneliness is always a longing”. It is not part of our human nature to isolate ourselves from others – yet this is increasingly the reality of modern-day societies. Our physical environments (such as car-centric cities and single-person homes), our technologies (such as social media), and our attitude towards work (i.e…

Katlyn’s talk digs deep into a critical question: "How did we get here?" She challenges us to confront a deeply embedded paradigm—the "Twin Transition" of sustainability and digitalization. She covers three aspects. First, she critiques how we define environmental impact as caused by CO2, ignoring the other serious issues this oversimplified focus …

The Q&A session from Shifting Systems with Dan Shefet and Dr. Katlyn TurnerVon Video Archive – The Conference by Media Evolution

What connects Leonardo DiCaprio with the Grateful Dead, a 16th century Dutch diplomat, and a tech CEO recently arrested in a French airport. To answer we have to zoom out and look back. Ten years after three days ago, the last decade of the old millennium, revolutionary 1789, and further back still. Where did we come from and where are we going? Da…

“We are the time travelers we’ve been waiting for”. Gustavo Nogueira de Menezes – Gust for short – founder of Temporality Lab, takes us on a whirling tour of wisdom on the philosophy of time and temporality. Or should we say, temporalities. For every society has had distinct experiences of being, doing and existing in their relationship with time. …

”What future will we dream when we dream with plants?” Jemma (she/her) is an artist, writer and curator working with plant intelligence and vibrational medicine. If you wonder what plants sound like – check out this talk. After a guided visualisation, where we imagine going back to a state of being before our human form – we see ourselves as plants…

“As we eat food we are consuming things that we don’t even know what’s in there, because they are unknown and we don’t even know where to look for them.” What really makes up the food we eat? Dr. John De La Parra (he/him) invites us to decode the magic and mystery of our food, challenging the conventional ways we understand its composition and impa…

The Q&A from the session Planting the Seeds with Jemma Foster and John De La ParraVon Video Archive – The Conference by Media Evolution

Moderator Johanna Koljonen speaks to a packed Theatre stage before the closing keynote on Wednesday. She talks of the collective dreams that have been manifested through Jemma Foster's Geomantra app and helps us to land in the space of hopefulness and melancholy that is present in them before introducing Nipun Mehta and his keynote on Who Must We B…

The Q&A from session Rewilding Us with Giulia Testa, Michael Kibedi and Seowoo NamVon Video Archive – The Conference by Media Evolution

”Climate change is hard to sense but we can try to rewild ourselves by reconnecting our senses to the planet.” Data definitely feels more hard than soft and it’s not something you generally associate with nature. But in her contribution to the session ”Rewilding Us”, Seowoo Nam (she/her) shows how useful it can be for green infrastructures. Current…

“We should look inwards and consider who gets to be called a designer and think of the cultural exclusion that’s happening there.” In this insightful talk, Michael Kibedi (he/him) challenges us to rethink our impact on the earth, ourselves, and our future. He explores how a human-centered economy and isolating technology contribute to environmental…

“By adding AI to software we can create something magical.” Ella Fitzsimmons cleverly draws parallels between AI and how magic has been used, portrayed and worked in medieval courts and beyond. It is something that we are fascinated by – a great power that allows us to create something from “thin air” with minimum work. She suggests that we as a co…

“Sometimes one has to travel to another planet in order to understand what is going on in one’s own”. —Trojan Horse James Taylor-Foster explores the meaning and power of design through concepts such as ASMR and LARP-ing. He introduces the audience to the concept of "world glimpsing," where we learn about our own world by experiencing the worlds of …

“Through others we become ourselves, we learn, we grow and acquire knowledge”. As society becomes increasingly digital, people become more socially awkward. But, learning through interactions with other human beings is an essential part of life. So how can we learn from each other when there are less opportunities to meet in person? According to Lo…

The Q&A from session Learning How to Learn with Ella Fitzsimmons, James Taylor-Foster and Lore OxfordVon Video Archive – The Conference by Media Evolution

“Do we want species to exist only at the bare minimum, just above the threshold of being considered endangered, or do we want a thriving nature?” Giulia Testa’s (she/her) talk dives deep into the concept of shifting baseline syndrome—a gradual change in accepted norms that has led us to unknowingly accept the decline of wildlife populations as "nor…

What does a climavore eat? More than a diet, it’s a call to address the manmade seasons created by pollution, soil exhaustion, and fertiliser runoff. How we structure our food systems in turn structures the environment, directly impacting the climate. Rosa Whiteley is Director of Material Research at CLIMAVORE, a research platform and agency who as…

The Q&A from the session Manufacturing Materiality with Rosa Whitely and Laura FeinsteinVon Video Archive – The Conference by Media Evolution

Beloved The Conference moderator Johanna Koljonen opens the 2024 edition with restating the question Joshua Idehen asked in his performance: How did you get here? The theme of the first day is a wake-up call – a kind of “oh shit” moment that forces us to turn to that scary corner in the room, but to light it up with rationality, with community, wit…

British artist Joshua Idehen (he/him) opens The Conference 2024 with a spoken word performance in which he asks the audience “how did you get here”. The electrifying performance is an homage to David Byrne’s 1980 track "Once in a Lifetime", originally performed by Talking Heads.Von Video Archive – The Conference by Media Evolution

”We need to move from transaction to relationship.”Nipun Mehta brings us on a transcendental journey to find our compassionate selves. Through the transforming story of his walking pilgrimage across India, Nipun kicks off by sharing his three key values: success, service and stillness. Further life snippets trigger us to ask ourselves fundamental q…

Johanna Koljonen closes 2023's The Conference with a recap how we as participators have tried to move away from oppositional binaries but also reflects that how these binaries also work as an aid to understand the world. Not only that, we are also able to shift and remix the the meanings of these opposites. Remembering a recent conversation at The …

Examining the creativity of generative artificial intelligence tools brings up interesting parallels with human cognition. Just as AI systems predict and fill gaps, our brains do so too, drawing from a wide range of learned behaviours, experiences and beliefs. Both entities heavily rely on their training data: AI on diverse datasets, humans on fact…

BITOI stands for Bass is the original instrument. BITOI are exploring the boundaries of the voice and the electric bass. The band is made up of one electric bass player and three vocalists from Denmark and Sweden (Cassius Lambert, Alexandra Shabo, Lise Kroner, Anja Tietze Lahrmann). They are working with an extended electric bass neck to allow quar…

Q&A from the sessions Tending To Transformation – For Creative Leaders Who Stay With The Trouble with Pernilla Glaser (Author, Educator), Lydia Slaby (Community Leader and Author) and Holley M. Kholi-Murchison (Oratory Glory)Von Video Archive – The Conference by Media Evolution

“Are you willing to dig deep and choose what your heart wants in the face of fear?” How can we begin to view the work that we do as a journey towards self-actualisation? Holley began in their own journey of resignation from a toxic workplace, to found Oratory Glory, and has continued to work in spreading stories and helping people find meaning in t…

“Take time to pay attention. Not everything can be solved in 15 minutes, let it take the time it takes” “Stay in the hard and uncomfortable conversations” Lydia Slaby learned the hard way that to live a life that is worthwhile, you need to find space for the heart and the brain. At the end of a long-list of achievements, and on a trajectory towards…

“We all start out as artists”, Pernilla Glaser explains. After all, most of us know how the snow eaten from a mitten tastes. We started out as open for experimentation, doing weird things, feeling and exploring the world and the relationships around us. Pernilla invites us to find ways back into this state, and to put more attention to our heart an…