This edition of the POM-conference will explore the evolving politics of sentience across a wide array of fields, including, but not limited to, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, cultural studies, creative arts, philosophy, bioart, music, psychology, food, and the intersection of art & science. We welcome diverse proposals for Tracks that investigate the expansive implications of sentience within these disciplines. Possible themes include synthetic life, the role of sound and voice in sentient systems, the interaction between artificial entities and their environments, the technological mythologies surrounding sentience, and the cultural narratives shaping our understanding and expectations of sentient entities. We are also interested in perspectives and propositions that we did not (yet) consider.

Life is in crisis. In society, this crisis has generated an uncertainty entangled with environmental injustices, health emergencies and the many faces of right-wing movements around the world – to mention some examples. Uncertainty might blurry the future and our capacity to make decisions, but it also opens up a space of possibilities. In this fragmented framework a new field for contingencies emerges. If we are unsure about what might be, alternative but unstable scenarios become possible. How does society react to those alternative scenarios? How are scientific and artistic communities responding to the various contingencies of the present?

The Poetics sub-theme emphasises the artistic and expressive aspects of media art. It explores the aesthetic qualities, creative processes, and conceptual foundations of media artworks. Participants can delve into the use of different mediums, forms, and techniques to convey meaning and evoke emotional responses. Poetics encourages attendees to reflect on the role of aesthetics in media art and its relationship to society and culture.

What is the status of the transitions and their regimes of information technologies today? In a two-day symposium, MicroPOM Aalborg will untangle this question through the eyes of established and emerging media art practitioners and scholars. Revisiting Susan Leigh Star’s notion of transition regimes, the symposium re-evaluates the shifts occasioned by widespread new technologies. Where are we with these transitions today? And what is the role of Media Art in those transitions?

In a state of ontological crisis, all boundaries between human and machine, nature and culture, and the organic and inorganic have been severely blurred. These are times of curious contrivances, novel natures, inescapable automation, and posthuman performances – where human and nonhuman find themselves being entwined, meshed and muddled into new unwitting entanglements. But from biased machine-learning to surveillance capitalism and digital colonisation – what power-structures are implicitly and covertly being embedded into these technologies?

The goal of this edition of POM will be to tackle art practices and the relation of art to the machine. In parallel, it will also focus on understanding the influence and relation between art and conflict. POM will tend to explore the connection between the violence of conflict and violence as a process in art production; the role of conflict in the sociopolitical environment and how it relates to the field of art, science, and technology.

The question of how the machine impacts and contextualizes artistic production and perception is the overall topic of the conference. Recent research on the impact of machines and technology on art places the machine in the centre of ‘ecologies’ (Fuller), ‘archaeologies’ (Parikka) and ‘aesthetics of interaction’ (Kwastek) pointing towards a ‘techno-ontology’ (Broeckmann).