Montalvo's AUTOPILOTO Examines How Autopilot Tech is Transforming the World

By: Oct. 18, 2018
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Montalvo's AUTOPILOTO Examines How Autopilot Tech is Transforming the World

This November, the Sally & Don Lucas Artists Program at Montalvo Arts Center presents a new commission from international creative collective Radioee.net: AUTOPILOTO, a marathon radio transmission broadcast while on-the-move in a semi-autonomous vehicle traversing the Bay Area, examining how emerging autopilot technologies are transforming the world. Live streaming on November 15 and 16, AUTOPILOTO will include interviews with drivers, designers, technologists, municipal agents, researchers, artists, scientists, mechanics and more, as well as soundscapes and music. Though storytelling and sonic experiments it will compose an audio portrait of the Bay Area at a specific moment in time. The live-stream of the broadcast will be available on both radioee.net and montalvoarts.org.

AUTOPILOTO is a commissioned project by the Lucas Artist Program at the Montalvo Art Center, and is presented as part of New Terrains: Mobility and Migration, a series of cross-disciplinary exhibitions, programs and experiences that explore how bodies move through spaces-social, political, literal, and figurative. The broadcast is co-hosted with Trami Cron of Chopsticks Alley Art. Special guests will include voices from ARUP; fka SV Inc; Nissan Research Center; SETI Institute; Transportation Sustainability Research Center, University of California, Berkeley, Yu-Ai Kai Community Center, and others. It will feature music and live performance by such artists as Anna Fritz, Taylor Ho Bynum, Philip Hermans, Motoko Honda, Shane A. Myrbeck & Emily Shisko, and San Jose Jazz. For more information the public may visit Radioee.net or montalvoarts.org or call Donna Conwell on 408 777 2100.

Autopilot is a system used to control the trajectory of a vehicle without constant 'hands-on' control by a human operator. Though Silicon Valley is the birthplace of autonomous vehicles and auto-pilot technologies, they are now being actively engineered and publically negotiated all over the world. Transmitted in English, Spanish and Vietnamese, AUTOPILOTO takes up questions of how autonomy and automatic movement will shape geographies, societies, and cultures in the Bay Area and beyond-questions such as What will our cities sound like in a driverless future? How will society and infrastructure systems adapt? What might humans do during newfound transit time? In what ways do machines imitate human auto-pilot modes, and vice versa? How can we build equitable, planetary, intelligent transit for all? AUTOPILOTO will feature interviews with scientists and technologists about these important questions, but they will also include conversations with individuals often left out of such discussions, including the elderly, commuters, rideshare drivers, car mechanics, artists, and others.

"Humans are constantly navigating and adapting to technological shifts" said Radioee.net "We want to de-mystify certain ideas about technology through conversations with scientists, technologists and city leaders, and complicate them through parallel dialogues with artists, workers, and those who are experiencing the technology firsthand. Automation and self-driving cars are disrupting multiple industries, including parking, law enforcement, insurance, and real estate. This technology is not only transforming the transportation vehicles we will use, but also what our cities and streets will look like. It is informing new thinking about myriad topics, including labor, leisure, our bodies, legal and ethical responsibility, and so on. Unless we begin to have critical conversations about what we want a future with automation to look like and what we want from this technology, we will lose the opportunity to use it as a tool to shape life and society for the better. Automation has the potential to transform society--but it is unclear whether we will escape some of our tired and failing 20th century models in designing new infrastructures and policies."

AUTOPILOTO represents the Lucas Artists Program's continued commitment to supporting artists to create and present innovative and challenging public work," said Lucas Artists Program curator Donna Conwell, "Radioee.net and their new work AUTOPILOTO reflects our belief that artists are important catalysts for igniting meaningful and urgent social conversations about the issues shaping our collective future."

AUTOPILOTO is supported, in part, by the San José Office of Cultural Affairs

Photo credit: Diana Larrea



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