For students at Exemplary studies

The Center for Culture and Technology, University of Southern Denmark and the research cluster “The Aesthetics of Biomachines and the Question of Life” (The Velux Foundations) invite you to join this exciting talk!This Is Your Brain on ImageNet": Embedding and Visual Epistemology – Fabian Offert (UCSB)"Embedding" is one of the most important techniques in the machine learning toolbox. Polemically, in natural language processing and computer vision, any useful knowledge is embedded knowledge. While the technique itself is hardly more than an advanced form of compression, it is the universality of embeddings that renders them interesting from an epistemological perspective: universal faculties – such as "seeing" in the case of computer vision, which I will focus on in this talk – are extrapolated from particular datasets and represented in an exclusively relational manner. Exactly because of their universality, embeddings live on, sometimes way beyond the lifespan of the datasets that they represent. "Historical" deep convolutional neural network features, for instance, still inform the training of newer generative models by ways of perceptual distance metrics that determine the realism of generated images. By becoming just another part of the training pipeline, however, they cease to appear as distinctive epistemic structures. More importantly, this "historical opacity" of embeddings obfuscates what I propose to understand as a major epistemic shift: scientific knowledge, at least if it relates to the visual, is often generated with the help of cultural data. Embeddings, then, can be seen as a cultural technique, and as a trading zone that spans, surprisingly, not only branches of the natural sciences, but the sciences and the humanities.Fabian Offert is Assistant Professor for the History and Theory of the Digital Humanities at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and principal investigator of the international research project "AI Forensics", funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. His research and teaching focuses on the question how machine learning models represent culture and what is at stake – aesthetically and politically – when they do. His current book project investigates "Machine Visual Culture" in the age of foundation models. https://zentralwerkstatt.org.Zoom linkRegistration is not necessary.Please contact: [email]nag@sdu.dk[/email] for additional info.

SFF invites discussion on the interchange between AI, robot science, and science fiction. The event takes place at the DIAS Seminar Room.

SFF invites discussion on the interchange between AI, robot science, and science fiction. The event takes place at the DIAS Seminar Room.

Want to know what is going on behind the scenes at IMADA?Come and join us for 2 x 20 min. inspiring talks while you enjoy a free “casual after-work” beer with your fellow student, colleague or teacher.Speakers will be Associate Professor Jing Qin (»AcuteX: Impact of extreme climate events for acute hospital services in Denmark«) and Communication Officer Ursula Lundgreen Svane (»Communicating on LinkedIn in 2024«).

Speaker: Apoorv Tiwari (University of Southern Denmark) Abstract:TBA

Center for Subjectivity Research at the University of Copenhagen was established in 2002 on the basis of a grant from the Danish National Research Foundation (Danmarks Grundforskningsfond). Its three founders were a philosopher, a psychiatrist, and a professor of systematic theology.  Since then, it has had more than 80 employees, attracted more than 250 guest researchers, and secured external funding in excess of 140.000.000 DKK. Currently, its staff involves people with a background in philosophy, psychiatry, sociology, anthropology, and criminology. In my talk, I will outline the history of the center, present some of its distinctive features, and discuss how it over the years has facilitated interdisciplinary collaboration.About Dan ZahaviDan Zahavi is Professor of Philosophy and director of the Center for Subjectivity Research at the University of Copenhagen. Zahavi’s primary research area is phenomenology and philosophy of mind, and their intersection with empirical disciplines such as psychiatry, psychology, and anthropology. In addition to various scholarly works on the phenomenology of Husserl, Zahavi has mainly written on the nature of selfhood, self-consciousness, intersubjectivity, empathy, and most recently on topics in social ontology. His most important publications include Self-awareness and Alterity (1999/2020), Husserl’s Phenomenology (2003), Subjectivity and Selfhood (2005), The Phenomenological Mind (together with Shaun Gallagher) (2008/2012/2021), Self and Other (2014), Husserl’s Legacy (2017), Phenomenology: The Basics (2019), and Being We (forthcoming in 2025). His work has been translated into more than 30 languages.

Meeting notice with time and agenda will be sent by email.

Valentino Picotti defends his PhD thesis: Language Support for Microservices Development.Professor Jacopo Mauro will act as chairman at the defence.

Speaker: Guillaume Laplante-Anfossi (University of Southern Denmark) Abstract:Given a curved A-infinity algebra and a bounding cochain (a.k.a Maurer—Cartan element), one can twist the former by the latter to get a new A-infinity algebra where the curvature is zero. This uncurving procedure plays a central rôle in Floer theory, where Fukaya categories are naturally curved objects. The goal of this talk will be to give a universal characterization of the procedure, using the theory of operads: we will show that the operad cMC, whose algebras are curved A-infinity algebras endowed with a Maurer—Cartan element, together with its natural morphism to the A-infinity operad, is terminal in a certain comma category. This category does not contain the Maurer—Cartan equation, thus the theorem provides a way to « rediscover » it as the answer to a universal (algebraic) problem. This is joint work with Adrian Petr and Vivek Shende.

Speaker: Christoph Nega (Technical University of Munich)Abstract:TBA

The digital revolution has transformed the way we create, preserve, and access information, reshaping the role of archives in society.This talk explores the potential future of archives in the digital age, using one of the oldest philosophical archives and research institutes for philosophy in Germany – the Husserl Archives Cologne – as an example. Drawing on insights from phenomenology and digital humanities, it examines how digitalization challenges traditional notions of permanence, authenticity, and ownership. How do virtual repositories affect the human experience of accessibility and historical continuity? What implications does this have for cultural memory? About Thiemo BreyerThiemo Breyer is Professor of Phenomenology and Anthropology at the University of Cologne, where he also serves as Director of the Husserl Archives. He holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Freiburg and an M.Phil. in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge. He was visiting professor in Kyoto, Mainz, Milano, and Montreal, and research fellow at Harvard University. His research interests within the broader field of consciousness studies include affectivity, attention, embodiment, empathy, and memory. Venue: DIAS Auditorium Address: Fioniavej 34, 5230 OdenseOpen for all

Read more about the Department Council: https://sdunet.dk/en/enheder/institutter/imada/udvalg-og-moeder/institutraad

Why is there a sudden and sharp drop in births occurring in so many countries in the 2010-20 decade?

Speaker: Michael Borinsky The Institute for Theoretical Studies (ETH-ITS), Zürich Abstract:I will present new results on the asymptotic growth rate of the Euler characteristic of Kontsevich's commutative graph complex. These results imply the same asymptotic growth rate for the top-weight Euler characteristic of M_g, the moduli space of curves, due to a recent work by Chan, Galatius and Payne. Further, they establish the existence of large amounts of unexplained cohomology in this graph complex. I will explain the role of this graph complex from the perspective of M_g's cohomology.

Speaker: Meer Ashwinkumar University of Bern Abstract:TBA

Read more about the Teaching Committee: https://www.sdu.dk/da/om_sdu/institutter_centre/imada_matematik_og_datalogi/ledelse_administration/raad_naevn_udvalg/undervisningsudvalg

All staff at IMADA are invited to the Departmental Fora.Meeting notice and agenda will be sent by email.

Read more about the Teaching Committee: https://www.sdu.dk/da/om_sdu/institutter_centre/imada_matematik_og_datalogi/ledelse_administration/raad_naevn_udvalg/undervisningsudvalg