Screening of Space Down: a film by Dominic Gagnon

The Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology is inviting you to a research symposium on the media, culture, and life in the cosmos.  

The invited speakers are Valerie Olson, UC Irvine; Fred Scharmen, Morgan State University; Katarina Damjanov, The University of Western Australia; De Witt Douglas Kilgore, Indiana University Bloomington; and Chris Russill, Carleton University.
 
Space Down a film by Dominic Gagnon will be screened and followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker.
 
University of Toronto PhD students Upasana Bhattacharjee, Lauren Knight, Suarjan Prasai, Bryan Mark, Yuxing Zhang, Arun Jacob, Kaushar Mahetaji, Lucas Wong, Priyanka Verma, Hiu-Fung Chung and Mathew Iantorno will deliver 5-minute “theory pill” talks that target a number of concepts that revolve around the symposium theme. You will also hear from the organizers Marie-Pier Boucher, Jeremy Packer, and Tero Karppi.
 
SPACE OUT! When the current and former owners of social media sites and e-commerce platforms increasingly turn their lustful gaze to outer space, we should take note. Yes, outer space is obviously the site of future wealth and resources, but it is also a field of activity shaped by the tools, artifacts, devices, and frameworks of media studies, revealing that humanity’s relationship with the cosmos is a mediated one. We rely on satellites in Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) for communication as well as for health and environmental monitoring and planning; on Geo Positioning Satellite (GPS) for navigation; on space travel apparatuses for the development of methods of storage and transportation of information, bodies, and goods; on tele-communication devices for interplanetary transmission; on the tools of media archeology for data sampling; on the tools of media geology for mining and extraction; and on the tools of information sciences for data processing and visualization. By focusing on outer space, the ICCIT symposium invites us to rethink our relationship to space, media, technology, land, population, property, resource extraction, and environmental management without falling into the traps of military, colonial, capitalist, sexist, classist, racist, and ableist logics. Space Out! draws attention to the quickly unveiling post-planetary moment and, for one day, encourages us to focus on interstellar media and ask: what kinds of theories, stories, analyses, methods, techniques, and ethics are needed to live in the cosmos?