The third edition of IAM’s yearly gathering for internet people, themed around The Renaissance of Utopias, using utopias as a tool to imagine better futures and navigate the complexity and uncertainty of our times.

Asking questions about the futures of arts, work, media, identity and reality itself, IAM Weekend 17 will explore, imagine, discuss and share utopias with a critical optimism, across talks, workshops and special projects, featuring speakers from across the creative and technology ecosystems including:

• Jasmina Tešanović & Bruce Sterling, the activist, feminist and filmmaker & the cyberpunk novelist, journalist and critic, who will present the closing keynote together;
• Jon Rafman, Artist, Essayist and Filmmaker;
• Monika Bielskyte, Creative Director, Strategist & Founder, ALLFUTUREEVERYTHING;
• Ash Koosha, Composer, Producer, Film director & Musician;
• Amal Khalaf, Projects Curator, Serpentine Galleries, Co-founder, GCC Collective
• Fernando Velázquez, Curator & Artistic Director, Red Bull Station;
• Fabien Siouffi, Founder, Fabbula VR platform
• Christian Cherene, Co–Founder, BeAnotherLab, Artist and interdisciplinary researcher;
• SPACE10 – a future-living lab and exhibition space in the heart of Copenhagen, that works as the external innovation hub for IKEA, represented by Kaave Pour, Creative Director; Bas Van de Poel, Head of Playful Research; Daniel Friis, Strategic Technologist;
• Form& – an innovation lab headquartered in New York, represented by Manuel Dilone, Principal; Jim Schachterle, Principal; Andrew Chee, Interaction Designer; Carolyn Centeno, Head of Development;
• Full line up available here!

IAM Weekend 17 will also premiere a series of special projects developed by IAM in collaboration with partners, including Possible Worlds, an immersive VR installation co-produced with Fabbula that will explore transformative realities and Micro-Utopias, a site-specific installation exploring the speed, manner, and ephemerality of micro-utopias presented by Form& visualising the role of the Internet in creating alternative futures.

Other creative partnerships that develop the research theme of this year are the IAM x UAL Futures Studio, a utopias-inspired learning studio lead by 10 students of UAL– University of the Arts London, who are prototyping alternative future narratives, working with learning partners as Kickstarter, Superflux, The Future Laboratory, It’s Nice That and The Pop Up Agency, and the first ELISAVA Alumni Labs, where a team of emerging industrial designers and engineers graduated from Barcelona’s leading design school, are developing an experimental R&D project to design a unique stage and networking area for the event.

Following the tradition of previous years, IAM Weekend 17 will be hosted in a cultural space and a school. This year the talks will be hosted at the dancehouse of Barcelona, Mercat de les Flors, and the workshops and masterclasses at ELISAVA, featuring sessions with SPACE10, Lava Lab, Form& and HOLO Magazine exploring Conversational AI; reality glitches, post-language culture and technological transhumanism; post-branding; and emerging trajectories in art, science and technology.

Talks across the weekend will be distributed across five interlinked sessions: Post-Contemporary (the complexity of the arts ecosystem), Post-Work (the evolution of work in post-capitalist societies), Post-Advertising (creativity and business beyond commercialism), Post-Labels (the emergence of ageless, borderless and genderless worlds), and Post-Reality (how VR/AR/MR and post-truth media is changing our perception of reality), with more information on the theme available here!

The event is limited to only 300 people, with the last tickets available here, with a 20% discount available for CAN readers using code WEAREIAM-CAN and an special 40% discount for CAN Members: [visitor][Log in to get code][/visitor] [member]IAMLOVESCAN[/member].

Dates: Thursday – Sunday, 27-30 April, 2017

Event website: internetagemedia.com/weekend17

Venues: Mercat de les Flors & ELISAVA Barcelona School of Design and Engineering
Event Partners: Raidho · ELISAVA · Fabbula · Space10 · Lava Lab · FORM& · HOLO
Media Partners: Crack · FvF · VICE · The Dots · Tendencias.tv · LSN Global · Stack Magazines · Perdiz · CAN

Previous Editions: IAM Weekend 16 · IAM Weekend 15

Additional links: internetagemedia.com · Facebook · Twitter · Instagram · IAM Journal (Medium) · #IAMW17

About IAM

IAM — Internet Age Media is a platform that connects the futures of media, learning & the arts, cultivating the randomness of internet cultures.

Together with leading institutions, media companies, brands and collectives from around the globe, we are understanding the evolution of internet as culture(s) through unique events, experience-driven content and experiments.

Because in randomness we trust.

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Hyper-Matrix – Thousands of physical pixels in a 180º vertical landscape

Trace Ribbon – An emergence by movement

Created by Shohei Fujimoto, Trace Ribbon is a device that automatically and continuously records and plays back movement. From reading the movements of the user via Leap Motion, it mirrors an organism that does not actually exist while simultaneously gaining an understanding of the rules of the movements that are physically taking place.

PlayART for iPad – Uniting classic art and children’s creativity

Silk Pavillion – CNC Deposited Silk & Silkworm Construction at the MIT Media Lab

Project explores the relationship between digital and biological fabrication by using silk threads laid down by a CNC machine followed by a swarm of 6,500 silkworms spinning flat non-woven silk patches.