Cristina Voto | Università degli Studi di Torino (original) (raw)

Books by Cristina Voto

I saggi di Lexia, 2023

Cada rostro es huella de su tiempo y lleva inscrito las marcas de su entorno cultural, de las tec... more Cada rostro es huella de su tiempo y lleva inscrito las marcas de su entorno cultural, de las tecnologías de producción y reproducción y de las di-námicas de intercambios de valores. Todas las contribuciones aquí reunidas se desprenden de este reconocimiento y del análisis de la cultura de las plataformas digitales. Los rostros analizados son rostros de intercambio de saberes y de experiencias; son superficies de subjetivación plurales y multifacéticas, que nos interfazan a las narrativas, los mitos y las obsesiones que atraviesan nuestra contemporaneidad. Porque si es cierto que, por naturaleza, todas las personas tenemos una cara de la misma manera es verdadero que en lo cultural nuestras caras devienen objetos de valor, rostros culturales que dan forma a necesidades, inquietudes y novedades.

I saggi di Lexia, 2022

Ogni volto è la traccia dei tempi e dei luoghi che lo hanno prodotto e continuamente ci mette a c... more Ogni volto è la traccia dei tempi e dei luoghi che lo hanno prodotto e continuamente ci mette a confronto con una dimensione situata. Questo posizionamento installa un confine tra prospettiva biologica e prospettiva culturale, una frontiera dove le riflessioni sui processi fisiologici che sottostanno alla natura organica si intrecciano con la pluralità e la discontinuità che caratterizzano la sua significazione culturale. Per l'esplorazione di queste coordinate spazio-temporali il volume I cronotopi del volto riconosce nel volto una strategia di condensazione spazio-temporale, uno strumento di studio dell'enunciazione in atto e di aspettualizzazione spazio-temporale dell'identità.

Rostrosferas de América Latina, 2022

Este es un volumen de semiótica dedicado a las culturas del rostro en América Latina. Ha tomado s... more Este es un volumen de semiótica dedicado a las culturas del rostro en América Latina. Ha tomado su forma a raíz de una serie de diálogos seminariales organizados virtualmente con las personalidades más destacadas de la semiótica latinoamericana durante el período pandémico. Gracias a las trasducciones de las rostrosferas incorporadas por las múltiples y variadas comunidades que atraviesan el continente, el rostro ha devenido un dispositivo en tensión entre dimensiones públicas y privadas, identidades y alteridades. En las contribuciones, la significación del tiempo transversal, así como la argumentación del espacio liminal son elementos importantes del recorrido en su conjunto: épocas pasadas se plasman en rostros contemporáneos, se vuelven carne, papel y pixel en paradigmas decoloniales y fundamentos críticos hacia la historia dominante; cuerpos, materias e imaginarios se agregan en un abanico híbrido, mestizaje policromo, remix narrativo resemantizado. rostrosferas de américa latina culturas, traducciones y mestizajes.

What is the future of the face in the metaverse? A semiotic investigation.

I Saggi di Lexia, 2021

Los monstruos audiovisuales son productos culturales que se hacen ver y que, al mostrarse, instal... more Los monstruos audiovisuales son productos culturales que se hacen ver y que, al mostrarse, instalan puntos de contacto entre materia y cuerpo para lograr un nuevo sentir común capaz de dejar el paso al cambio social. Los tres conceptos de agentividad, movimiento y morfología sirven de guía para la exploración de lo monstruoso y nos advierten sobre el presente, el pasado y el futuro de los productos audiovisuales. Como brújulas, los tres conceptos guían la lectura a través de una promesa transparente de lo real, del temblor del testimonio y de los ritornelos morfológicos de la imagen en movimiento. Deseos de la mirada, los monstruos audiovisuales nos invitan a la acción.

DeSignis, 2021

Publicar un número especial de revista sobre el rostro conlleva un desafío notable. El rostro es ... more Publicar un número especial de revista sobre el rostro conlleva un desafío notable. El rostro es un objeto huyente a partir de su propia definición lingüística: cara, semblante, rostro son lexemas que, dentro de una sinonimia superficial, designan matices distintos de una entidad misteriosa. El desafío resulta aún mayor cuando se elige enfatizar, en el estudio, la dimensión geocultural: ¿qué quiere decir, exactamente, rostro latinoamericano? ¿No son los rostros biológicos, sociales, culturales y representados de América Latina parecidos a otros rostros de otros continentes? ¿Subrayar su peculiaridad no expone qui- zás al riesgo de atribuir una esencia artificial a un conjunto de estereotipos y prejuicios?

FACETS Digital Press, 2021

Una serie di studi semiotici sul ruolo del volto nelle teorie del complotto, specie durante la pa... more Una serie di studi semiotici sul ruolo del volto nelle teorie del complotto, specie durante la pandemia di COVID-19.

Saggi sul senso del volto durante la pandemia del 2020.

Papers by Cristina Voto

Il Veltro. Rivista della civiltà italiana, 2024

Nel 1969 la figura e il ricordo liturgico di Vilgeforte furono cancellati dal Martirologio Romano... more Nel 1969 la figura e il ricordo liturgico di Vilgeforte furono cancellati dal Martirologio Romano, da cui la Chiesa cattolica espunse altri santi la cui esistenza non poteva essere accertata attraverso fonti storiche. Il culto di Vilgeforte fu paneuropeo, ma oggi si tratta di una figura dimenticata nel discorso ufficiale sulla santità (Kubas 2022). Al contempo, secondo la Bibliotheca Sanctorum, esso continua a presentare un’“esistenza culturale” (Ponzo, Marino 2021): Vilgeforte è ricordata in opere letterarie, nelle arti figurative e performative. È inoltre diventata un’oggetto di studi di genere. Vilgeforte, l’ex-santa, barbuta e crocifissa, è un modello dinamico che opera ai confini dell'identità sessuale e spirituale. Le narrazioni contemporanee su Vilgeforte sollevano la questione di violenza e potere esercitati da alcune categorie identitarie su altre: l’obiettivo del nostro contributo è analizzare rappresentazioni di Vilgeforte (dipinti, narrativa, drammaturgia) per capire il significato e la portata attuali del modello vilgefortiano.

Journal of Responsible Technology , 2024

Automated Facial Analysis technologies, predominantly used for facial detection and recognition, ... more Automated Facial Analysis technologies, predominantly used for facial detection and recognition, have garnered significant attention in recent years. Although these technologies have seen advancements and widespread adoption, biases embedded within systems have raised ethical concerns. This research aims to delve into the disparities of Automatic Gender Recognition systems (AGRs), particularly their oversimplification of gender identities through a binary lens. Such a reductionist perspective is known to marginalize and misgender individuals. This study set out to investigate the alignment of an individual's gender identity and its expression through the face with societal norms, and the perceived difference between misgendering experiences from machines versus humans. Insights were gathered through an online survey, utilizing an AGR system to simulate misgendering experiences. The overarching goal is to shed light on gender identity nuances and guide the creation of more ethically responsible and inclusive facial recognition software.

La Tadeo dearte, 2024

El objetivo de nuestra investigación es cuestionar las narrativas del futuro del Norte Global a t... more El objetivo de nuestra investigación es cuestionar las narrativas del futuro del Norte Global a través de construcciones semióticas vernáculas alternativas. Analizaremos el impacto que los semioversos vernáculos americanos tienen en la posibilidad de generar figuraciones decoloniales de futuros alternativos, basándonos en el marco teórico de lo que denominamos xenofuturismo. Arraigado en América Latina, el xenofuturismo tiene dos vertientes complementarias: la recuperación de una memoria activa de la deconstrucción decolonial y la comprensión de la alteridad radical. Dentro de estos semioversos, exploraremos las figuraciones culturales aymaras, para las que el futuro no está delante sino detrás, desorientándonos del presente, única dimensión temporal en la que existimos. La idea de futuro-pasado, o de que el pasado puede ser visto como futuro, deviene entonces central. Esta hibridez temporal desgarra la linealidad del tiempo y perfila la emergencia de figuraciones del futuro que contienen una densidad de tensiones temporales en el presente.

Reti, saperi, linguaggi, 2023

This research explores the manner in which images for visualizing the fetal stage initiate a cogn... more This research explores the manner in which images for visualizing the fetal stage initiate a cognitive loop that molds our perception of the prenatal environment and, concurrently, influences reproductive habits. From an examination of medical illustrations dating back to the 17th and 18th centuries – a seminal period marked by the medicalization of pregnancy – the study investigates the transformative process wherein fetal imagery not only singularizes the fetus into an icon but also disembodies women from the pregnancy experience. Furthermore, delving into the contemporary landscape, the research probes into the enduring influence of this historical iconization on modern AI-assisted imaging datasets, scrutinizing their role in shaping contemporary habits on human reproducibility. Ultimately, the investigation sheds insights on how fetal imagery, facilitated by advanced visualization technologies, navigates the realms of both visual replicability and biological reproduction.

deSignis, 2023

En este trabajo se entiende la construcción del archivo del Centro Editor de América Latina como ... more En este trabajo se entiende la construcción del archivo del Centro Editor de América Latina como una práctica social. Los materiales que lo conforman, los presentes y los ausentes, han ofrecido resistencia a la archivación llevada a cabo por la Biblioteca Nacional de la República Argentina, lo que obligó a llenar los vacíos de conocimiento y a pensar en una enunciación propia que pueda desempeñarse respecto del presente: curadurías y montajes de exposiciones sobre la buena praxis de la editorial acompañan las intervenciones en el medio urbano. El archivo del ceal, por lo tanto, no es solo la enunciación de esa memoria de la destrucción que trata de recordar, sino sobre todo, una acción con una sintaxis propia que puede actuar sobre un presente editorial y colectivo.

Lexia. Rivista di semiotica, 2023

This article aims to reflect on the ideologies that operate within the visual representation of n... more This article aims to reflect on the ideologies that operate within the visual representation of nature. To this purpose, it considers the long-term tradition of herbaria, i.e. books in use since antiquity that contain representations of plants, explanations of their virtues, and harvesting methods. Herbaria is the genre in which an inventory composed by nature is visualised and displayed as grouped into taxa with differential ranks, depending on the ideological discourses of the time, concerning domains, classes, species, proprieties, etc. To embed this taxonomy in these textual artefacts, the representation of nature is conceived and designed as a transparent figuration, even though this vision is culturally codified, being historically, politically, and therefore aesthetically emplaced. After a brief visual survey of the genre, I will focus on the Byzantine Codex Aniciae Julianae (5 th century) and how its discursive production about the system-nature materialised a peculiar visual ideology. I will later consider some contemporary artworks by Sofia Crespo as automated herbaria that question the visual patterns and expectations of what we inventory as "natural". In both cases, I will point out how representation is understood as an ideological codification, following Umberto Eco's theories, and exploring the dialectics between transparency and opacity from a normative perspective. Finally, thanks to the comparative analysis of these two inventory models, where the collection of natural types shifts from the universe of the referent to the hardware systems with which Artificial Intelligence is fed, it will be possible to account for a shift from a discourse on natural ideologies to a techno-ideology of nature.

Synthese An International Journal for Epistemology, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, 2023

The illicit diffusion of intimate photographs or videos intended for private use is a troubling p... more The illicit diffusion of intimate photographs or videos intended for private use is a troubling phenomenon known as the diffusion of Non-Consensual Intimate Images (NCII). Recently, it has been feared that the spread of deepfake technology, which allows users to fabricate fake intimate images or videos that are indistinguishable from genuine ones, may dramatically extend the scope of NCII. In the present essay, we counter this pessimistic view, arguing for qualified optimism instead. We hypothesize that the growing diffusion of deepfakes will end up disrupting the status that makes our visual experience of photographic images and videos epistemically and affectively special; and that once divested of this status, NCII will lose much of their allure in the eye of the perpetrators, probably resulting in diminished diffusion. We conclude by offering some caveats and drawing some implications to better understand, and ultimately better counter, this phenomenon.

Linguistic Frontiers, 2022

The goal of our research is to question the Global North's narratives of the Future through alter... more The goal of our research is to question the Global North's narratives of the Future through alternative vernacular semiotic constructions. We will analyze the impact that American vernacular semioverses have on the possibility of generating decolonial figurations of alternative futures, based on the theoretical framework of what we call Xenofuturism. Having its roots in Latin America, Xenofuturism has two complementary aspects: the recovery of an active memory of decolonial deconstruction and the understanding of radical alterity. Within these semioverses, we will explore the Aymara cultural figurations for which the future is not ahead but behind, disorienting us from the present, the only temporal dimension in which we exist. In the ancestral cosmogony of the Bolivian-Peruvian Andean, where the Aymara culture stems from the idea of future-past, or that the past can be seen as future, is central. Temporal hybridity tears apart the linearity of Western time and outlines the emergence of figurations of the future that contain a density of temporal tensions in the present.

Punctum - International Journal of Semiotics, 2022

The objective of the proposal is to analyze what latent space is within a Deep-Learning system an... more The objective of the proposal is to analyze what latent space is within a Deep-Learning system and how its visualization is capable of triggering a meaning-effect concerning the epistemology of big data. The latent space is the mathematical space that maps what a Neural Network has learned from the training dataset. It is the result of the compression of the input data and the step before the Neural Network’s output, a step that usually remains invisible to the human eye, rendering effective the promise of a transparent effect of reality generally promoted by Artificial Intelligence technologies. Precisely in contrast with this promise, the visualization of this complex spatiality makes accessible, and therefore intelligible, the epistemic and rhetorical relations inscribed within datasets, intended as archives that gather information. To achieve my objective, I will consider an artistic project realized by multimedia artist and coder Jake Elwes, Zizi-Queering the Dataset (2019), a multi-channel video where different facial portraits are shown in a morphing loop that visualizes what a Generative Adversarial Network has learned from the re-training of a dataset containing portraits with another one containing facial images of drag and non-binary individuals. This artistic gesture has led to a series of epistemic issues concerning big data and their situated and ideological meaning.

RIFL – Rivista Italiana di Filosofia del linguaggio, 2022

In this essay, we consider the possible impact that deepfake technologies may exert upon the phen... more In this essay, we consider the possible impact that deepfake technologies may exert upon the phenomenon of Non-Consensual Diffusion of Intimate Images or videos (NCDII), sometimes (mis)labeled as "revenge porn". In partial contrast to the pessimistic view according to which deepfakes could enhance the threat constituted by NCDII, we forecast that, on the long run, the spread of deepfake media could lead to deflating the sense of trust that make us assume that photographic-looking images and videos represent some actual reality. By so doing, deepfakes can ultimately depower the sense of intimacy that NCDII bring about, hence possibly reducing their allure among the wrongdoers as well as their power to harm.

Topoi. An International Review of Philosophy, 2022

By questioning the attribution of a primary role to the eyes as bearers of identity within tradit... more By questioning the attribution of a primary role to the eyes as bearers of identity within traditional Western culture, this paper will problematize the agentivity performed by the lower mereology of the face, identified with the mouth-nose assemblage. In particular, the study will focus on the manipulation of such facial spatiality through the intervention of three "lower face" artifacts: the grill, the ball gag and the gas mask. This piece of work will examine their plastic and figurative dimensions in the technological interaction with the facial organs. Furthermore, we will take into consideration the sociocultural context of wearability performed by the different bearers with the aim of grasping the identity shift that the artifacts trigger. The study, therefore, will organize the corpus as a sequence that starts inside the oral cavity where the grill is worn; then moves to a progressive exteriority with the ball gag that emerges from the mouth through the straps fastened around the head; eventually dealing with the exterior projection operated by the gas mask which by means of its filters portends beyond the anatomical face. Ultimately the three artifacts are presented as a threefold articulation of a liminal agency towards an expanded form of humanity including animality embedded within and without the space of meaning represented by the face.

deSignis. Semiosis y feminismos. Teorías feministas y del discurso, 2022

El artículo propone, desde una perspectiva de género, un análisis semiótico de la performatividad... more El artículo propone, desde una perspectiva de género, un análisis semiótico de la performatividad de la visión artificial en el ámbito de la producción de imágenes en la era digital. A partir de una puesta en diálogo entre la investigación basada en la inteligencia artificial Deep Neural Networks are More Accurate Than Humans at Detecting Sexual Orientation From Facial Images, de Michal Kosinski y Yilun Wang, de la Universidad de Stanford y la exhibición “Sexo, imagen y algoritmos: homosexual data”, del artista chileno Felipe Rivas San Martín, se busca reflexionar sobre el actual proceso de algoritmización de la identidad sexual y genérica y opacar las retóricas transparentes y reveladoras de la inteligencia artificial por medio de la práctica artística.

I saggi di Lexia, 2023

Cada rostro es huella de su tiempo y lleva inscrito las marcas de su entorno cultural, de las tec... more Cada rostro es huella de su tiempo y lleva inscrito las marcas de su entorno cultural, de las tecnologías de producción y reproducción y de las di-námicas de intercambios de valores. Todas las contribuciones aquí reunidas se desprenden de este reconocimiento y del análisis de la cultura de las plataformas digitales. Los rostros analizados son rostros de intercambio de saberes y de experiencias; son superficies de subjetivación plurales y multifacéticas, que nos interfazan a las narrativas, los mitos y las obsesiones que atraviesan nuestra contemporaneidad. Porque si es cierto que, por naturaleza, todas las personas tenemos una cara de la misma manera es verdadero que en lo cultural nuestras caras devienen objetos de valor, rostros culturales que dan forma a necesidades, inquietudes y novedades.

I saggi di Lexia, 2022

Ogni volto è la traccia dei tempi e dei luoghi che lo hanno prodotto e continuamente ci mette a c... more Ogni volto è la traccia dei tempi e dei luoghi che lo hanno prodotto e continuamente ci mette a confronto con una dimensione situata. Questo posizionamento installa un confine tra prospettiva biologica e prospettiva culturale, una frontiera dove le riflessioni sui processi fisiologici che sottostanno alla natura organica si intrecciano con la pluralità e la discontinuità che caratterizzano la sua significazione culturale. Per l'esplorazione di queste coordinate spazio-temporali il volume I cronotopi del volto riconosce nel volto una strategia di condensazione spazio-temporale, uno strumento di studio dell'enunciazione in atto e di aspettualizzazione spazio-temporale dell'identità.

Rostrosferas de América Latina, 2022

Este es un volumen de semiótica dedicado a las culturas del rostro en América Latina. Ha tomado s... more Este es un volumen de semiótica dedicado a las culturas del rostro en América Latina. Ha tomado su forma a raíz de una serie de diálogos seminariales organizados virtualmente con las personalidades más destacadas de la semiótica latinoamericana durante el período pandémico. Gracias a las trasducciones de las rostrosferas incorporadas por las múltiples y variadas comunidades que atraviesan el continente, el rostro ha devenido un dispositivo en tensión entre dimensiones públicas y privadas, identidades y alteridades. En las contribuciones, la significación del tiempo transversal, así como la argumentación del espacio liminal son elementos importantes del recorrido en su conjunto: épocas pasadas se plasman en rostros contemporáneos, se vuelven carne, papel y pixel en paradigmas decoloniales y fundamentos críticos hacia la historia dominante; cuerpos, materias e imaginarios se agregan en un abanico híbrido, mestizaje policromo, remix narrativo resemantizado. rostrosferas de américa latina culturas, traducciones y mestizajes.

What is the future of the face in the metaverse? A semiotic investigation.

I Saggi di Lexia, 2021

Los monstruos audiovisuales son productos culturales que se hacen ver y que, al mostrarse, instal... more Los monstruos audiovisuales son productos culturales que se hacen ver y que, al mostrarse, instalan puntos de contacto entre materia y cuerpo para lograr un nuevo sentir común capaz de dejar el paso al cambio social. Los tres conceptos de agentividad, movimiento y morfología sirven de guía para la exploración de lo monstruoso y nos advierten sobre el presente, el pasado y el futuro de los productos audiovisuales. Como brújulas, los tres conceptos guían la lectura a través de una promesa transparente de lo real, del temblor del testimonio y de los ritornelos morfológicos de la imagen en movimiento. Deseos de la mirada, los monstruos audiovisuales nos invitan a la acción.

DeSignis, 2021

Publicar un número especial de revista sobre el rostro conlleva un desafío notable. El rostro es ... more Publicar un número especial de revista sobre el rostro conlleva un desafío notable. El rostro es un objeto huyente a partir de su propia definición lingüística: cara, semblante, rostro son lexemas que, dentro de una sinonimia superficial, designan matices distintos de una entidad misteriosa. El desafío resulta aún mayor cuando se elige enfatizar, en el estudio, la dimensión geocultural: ¿qué quiere decir, exactamente, rostro latinoamericano? ¿No son los rostros biológicos, sociales, culturales y representados de América Latina parecidos a otros rostros de otros continentes? ¿Subrayar su peculiaridad no expone qui- zás al riesgo de atribuir una esencia artificial a un conjunto de estereotipos y prejuicios?

FACETS Digital Press, 2021

Una serie di studi semiotici sul ruolo del volto nelle teorie del complotto, specie durante la pa... more Una serie di studi semiotici sul ruolo del volto nelle teorie del complotto, specie durante la pandemia di COVID-19.

Saggi sul senso del volto durante la pandemia del 2020.

Il Veltro. Rivista della civiltà italiana, 2024

Nel 1969 la figura e il ricordo liturgico di Vilgeforte furono cancellati dal Martirologio Romano... more Nel 1969 la figura e il ricordo liturgico di Vilgeforte furono cancellati dal Martirologio Romano, da cui la Chiesa cattolica espunse altri santi la cui esistenza non poteva essere accertata attraverso fonti storiche. Il culto di Vilgeforte fu paneuropeo, ma oggi si tratta di una figura dimenticata nel discorso ufficiale sulla santità (Kubas 2022). Al contempo, secondo la Bibliotheca Sanctorum, esso continua a presentare un’“esistenza culturale” (Ponzo, Marino 2021): Vilgeforte è ricordata in opere letterarie, nelle arti figurative e performative. È inoltre diventata un’oggetto di studi di genere. Vilgeforte, l’ex-santa, barbuta e crocifissa, è un modello dinamico che opera ai confini dell'identità sessuale e spirituale. Le narrazioni contemporanee su Vilgeforte sollevano la questione di violenza e potere esercitati da alcune categorie identitarie su altre: l’obiettivo del nostro contributo è analizzare rappresentazioni di Vilgeforte (dipinti, narrativa, drammaturgia) per capire il significato e la portata attuali del modello vilgefortiano.

Journal of Responsible Technology , 2024

Automated Facial Analysis technologies, predominantly used for facial detection and recognition, ... more Automated Facial Analysis technologies, predominantly used for facial detection and recognition, have garnered significant attention in recent years. Although these technologies have seen advancements and widespread adoption, biases embedded within systems have raised ethical concerns. This research aims to delve into the disparities of Automatic Gender Recognition systems (AGRs), particularly their oversimplification of gender identities through a binary lens. Such a reductionist perspective is known to marginalize and misgender individuals. This study set out to investigate the alignment of an individual's gender identity and its expression through the face with societal norms, and the perceived difference between misgendering experiences from machines versus humans. Insights were gathered through an online survey, utilizing an AGR system to simulate misgendering experiences. The overarching goal is to shed light on gender identity nuances and guide the creation of more ethically responsible and inclusive facial recognition software.

La Tadeo dearte, 2024

El objetivo de nuestra investigación es cuestionar las narrativas del futuro del Norte Global a t... more El objetivo de nuestra investigación es cuestionar las narrativas del futuro del Norte Global a través de construcciones semióticas vernáculas alternativas. Analizaremos el impacto que los semioversos vernáculos americanos tienen en la posibilidad de generar figuraciones decoloniales de futuros alternativos, basándonos en el marco teórico de lo que denominamos xenofuturismo. Arraigado en América Latina, el xenofuturismo tiene dos vertientes complementarias: la recuperación de una memoria activa de la deconstrucción decolonial y la comprensión de la alteridad radical. Dentro de estos semioversos, exploraremos las figuraciones culturales aymaras, para las que el futuro no está delante sino detrás, desorientándonos del presente, única dimensión temporal en la que existimos. La idea de futuro-pasado, o de que el pasado puede ser visto como futuro, deviene entonces central. Esta hibridez temporal desgarra la linealidad del tiempo y perfila la emergencia de figuraciones del futuro que contienen una densidad de tensiones temporales en el presente.

Reti, saperi, linguaggi, 2023

This research explores the manner in which images for visualizing the fetal stage initiate a cogn... more This research explores the manner in which images for visualizing the fetal stage initiate a cognitive loop that molds our perception of the prenatal environment and, concurrently, influences reproductive habits. From an examination of medical illustrations dating back to the 17th and 18th centuries – a seminal period marked by the medicalization of pregnancy – the study investigates the transformative process wherein fetal imagery not only singularizes the fetus into an icon but also disembodies women from the pregnancy experience. Furthermore, delving into the contemporary landscape, the research probes into the enduring influence of this historical iconization on modern AI-assisted imaging datasets, scrutinizing their role in shaping contemporary habits on human reproducibility. Ultimately, the investigation sheds insights on how fetal imagery, facilitated by advanced visualization technologies, navigates the realms of both visual replicability and biological reproduction.

deSignis, 2023

En este trabajo se entiende la construcción del archivo del Centro Editor de América Latina como ... more En este trabajo se entiende la construcción del archivo del Centro Editor de América Latina como una práctica social. Los materiales que lo conforman, los presentes y los ausentes, han ofrecido resistencia a la archivación llevada a cabo por la Biblioteca Nacional de la República Argentina, lo que obligó a llenar los vacíos de conocimiento y a pensar en una enunciación propia que pueda desempeñarse respecto del presente: curadurías y montajes de exposiciones sobre la buena praxis de la editorial acompañan las intervenciones en el medio urbano. El archivo del ceal, por lo tanto, no es solo la enunciación de esa memoria de la destrucción que trata de recordar, sino sobre todo, una acción con una sintaxis propia que puede actuar sobre un presente editorial y colectivo.

Lexia. Rivista di semiotica, 2023

This article aims to reflect on the ideologies that operate within the visual representation of n... more This article aims to reflect on the ideologies that operate within the visual representation of nature. To this purpose, it considers the long-term tradition of herbaria, i.e. books in use since antiquity that contain representations of plants, explanations of their virtues, and harvesting methods. Herbaria is the genre in which an inventory composed by nature is visualised and displayed as grouped into taxa with differential ranks, depending on the ideological discourses of the time, concerning domains, classes, species, proprieties, etc. To embed this taxonomy in these textual artefacts, the representation of nature is conceived and designed as a transparent figuration, even though this vision is culturally codified, being historically, politically, and therefore aesthetically emplaced. After a brief visual survey of the genre, I will focus on the Byzantine Codex Aniciae Julianae (5 th century) and how its discursive production about the system-nature materialised a peculiar visual ideology. I will later consider some contemporary artworks by Sofia Crespo as automated herbaria that question the visual patterns and expectations of what we inventory as "natural". In both cases, I will point out how representation is understood as an ideological codification, following Umberto Eco's theories, and exploring the dialectics between transparency and opacity from a normative perspective. Finally, thanks to the comparative analysis of these two inventory models, where the collection of natural types shifts from the universe of the referent to the hardware systems with which Artificial Intelligence is fed, it will be possible to account for a shift from a discourse on natural ideologies to a techno-ideology of nature.

Synthese An International Journal for Epistemology, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, 2023

The illicit diffusion of intimate photographs or videos intended for private use is a troubling p... more The illicit diffusion of intimate photographs or videos intended for private use is a troubling phenomenon known as the diffusion of Non-Consensual Intimate Images (NCII). Recently, it has been feared that the spread of deepfake technology, which allows users to fabricate fake intimate images or videos that are indistinguishable from genuine ones, may dramatically extend the scope of NCII. In the present essay, we counter this pessimistic view, arguing for qualified optimism instead. We hypothesize that the growing diffusion of deepfakes will end up disrupting the status that makes our visual experience of photographic images and videos epistemically and affectively special; and that once divested of this status, NCII will lose much of their allure in the eye of the perpetrators, probably resulting in diminished diffusion. We conclude by offering some caveats and drawing some implications to better understand, and ultimately better counter, this phenomenon.

Linguistic Frontiers, 2022

The goal of our research is to question the Global North's narratives of the Future through alter... more The goal of our research is to question the Global North's narratives of the Future through alternative vernacular semiotic constructions. We will analyze the impact that American vernacular semioverses have on the possibility of generating decolonial figurations of alternative futures, based on the theoretical framework of what we call Xenofuturism. Having its roots in Latin America, Xenofuturism has two complementary aspects: the recovery of an active memory of decolonial deconstruction and the understanding of radical alterity. Within these semioverses, we will explore the Aymara cultural figurations for which the future is not ahead but behind, disorienting us from the present, the only temporal dimension in which we exist. In the ancestral cosmogony of the Bolivian-Peruvian Andean, where the Aymara culture stems from the idea of future-past, or that the past can be seen as future, is central. Temporal hybridity tears apart the linearity of Western time and outlines the emergence of figurations of the future that contain a density of temporal tensions in the present.

Punctum - International Journal of Semiotics, 2022

The objective of the proposal is to analyze what latent space is within a Deep-Learning system an... more The objective of the proposal is to analyze what latent space is within a Deep-Learning system and how its visualization is capable of triggering a meaning-effect concerning the epistemology of big data. The latent space is the mathematical space that maps what a Neural Network has learned from the training dataset. It is the result of the compression of the input data and the step before the Neural Network’s output, a step that usually remains invisible to the human eye, rendering effective the promise of a transparent effect of reality generally promoted by Artificial Intelligence technologies. Precisely in contrast with this promise, the visualization of this complex spatiality makes accessible, and therefore intelligible, the epistemic and rhetorical relations inscribed within datasets, intended as archives that gather information. To achieve my objective, I will consider an artistic project realized by multimedia artist and coder Jake Elwes, Zizi-Queering the Dataset (2019), a multi-channel video where different facial portraits are shown in a morphing loop that visualizes what a Generative Adversarial Network has learned from the re-training of a dataset containing portraits with another one containing facial images of drag and non-binary individuals. This artistic gesture has led to a series of epistemic issues concerning big data and their situated and ideological meaning.

RIFL – Rivista Italiana di Filosofia del linguaggio, 2022

In this essay, we consider the possible impact that deepfake technologies may exert upon the phen... more In this essay, we consider the possible impact that deepfake technologies may exert upon the phenomenon of Non-Consensual Diffusion of Intimate Images or videos (NCDII), sometimes (mis)labeled as "revenge porn". In partial contrast to the pessimistic view according to which deepfakes could enhance the threat constituted by NCDII, we forecast that, on the long run, the spread of deepfake media could lead to deflating the sense of trust that make us assume that photographic-looking images and videos represent some actual reality. By so doing, deepfakes can ultimately depower the sense of intimacy that NCDII bring about, hence possibly reducing their allure among the wrongdoers as well as their power to harm.

Topoi. An International Review of Philosophy, 2022

By questioning the attribution of a primary role to the eyes as bearers of identity within tradit... more By questioning the attribution of a primary role to the eyes as bearers of identity within traditional Western culture, this paper will problematize the agentivity performed by the lower mereology of the face, identified with the mouth-nose assemblage. In particular, the study will focus on the manipulation of such facial spatiality through the intervention of three "lower face" artifacts: the grill, the ball gag and the gas mask. This piece of work will examine their plastic and figurative dimensions in the technological interaction with the facial organs. Furthermore, we will take into consideration the sociocultural context of wearability performed by the different bearers with the aim of grasping the identity shift that the artifacts trigger. The study, therefore, will organize the corpus as a sequence that starts inside the oral cavity where the grill is worn; then moves to a progressive exteriority with the ball gag that emerges from the mouth through the straps fastened around the head; eventually dealing with the exterior projection operated by the gas mask which by means of its filters portends beyond the anatomical face. Ultimately the three artifacts are presented as a threefold articulation of a liminal agency towards an expanded form of humanity including animality embedded within and without the space of meaning represented by the face.

deSignis. Semiosis y feminismos. Teorías feministas y del discurso, 2022

El artículo propone, desde una perspectiva de género, un análisis semiótico de la performatividad... more El artículo propone, desde una perspectiva de género, un análisis semiótico de la performatividad de la visión artificial en el ámbito de la producción de imágenes en la era digital. A partir de una puesta en diálogo entre la investigación basada en la inteligencia artificial Deep Neural Networks are More Accurate Than Humans at Detecting Sexual Orientation From Facial Images, de Michal Kosinski y Yilun Wang, de la Universidad de Stanford y la exhibición “Sexo, imagen y algoritmos: homosexual data”, del artista chileno Felipe Rivas San Martín, se busca reflexionar sobre el actual proceso de algoritmización de la identidad sexual y genérica y opacar las retóricas transparentes y reveladoras de la inteligencia artificial por medio de la práctica artística.

SIGraDi 2021 | Designing Possibilities | Ubiquitous Conference, 2021

The article presents and discusses the experience of a workshop held online in 2020 as part of th... more The article presents and discusses the experience of a workshop held online in 2020 as part of the DigitalFUTURES event. The proposal found its starting point in the register of a world in the midst of a pandemic crisis. The general objective of the workshop was the construction of a design thinking capable of acting on the domestic by means of a disobedience projected towards a possible future. In this framework, digital disobedience became an exercise in critically questioning certain ambiguities of digital interfaces in their everyday omnipresence. By adopting a decolonial sight on design through an epistemology from the South, it was possible to achieve at alternative figurations of futures. These figurations led to the design of a series of futuristic domestic devices capable of exploring disobedient scenarios of domestic dwelling.

Signs and Society, 2022

Building on the case study of the performative practice of voguing within ballroom culture among ... more Building on the case study of the performative practice of voguing within ballroom culture among LGBTQIA1 communities, the aim of this article is to recognize a facial agency capable of putting into tension three thresholds of meaning: visibility and invisibility; identity and otherness; nature and artifice. On the basis of these tensions, interpretive habits concerning identity are incorporated into the face as a semiotic dispositif that negotiate sociocultural expectations and limitations. These habits, when agentively performed through the face, give shape to a communicative project that manipulates platforms of identity into biopolitical masks. The analysis will also give an account of how "worn" biopolitical masks reproduce and perform a facial monstrum, or warning, and how this specification warns others of the normativity of aesthetic and biopolitical appearance while activating an intentional transformation of identity.

Sign Systems Studies, 2021

Perceiving and recognizing others via their faces is of pivotal importance. The ability to percei... more Perceiving and recognizing others via their faces is of pivotal importance. The ability to perceive others in the environment-to discern between friends and foes, selves and others-as well as to detect and seek to predict their possible moves, plans, and intentions, is a set of skills that has proved to be essential in the evolutionary history of humankind. The aim of this study is to explore the subject of face recognition as a semiotic phenomenon. The scope of this inquiry is limited to face perception by the human species. The human face is analysed on the threshold between biological processes and cultural processes. We argue that the recognition of likenesses has a socio-cultural dimension that should not be overlooked. By drawing on Georg Lichtenberg's remarks on physiognomy, we discuss the critique of the semiotic bias, the association of ideas, and the mechanism of typification involved in face recognition. Face typification is discussed against the background of face recognition and face identification. We take them as three gradients of meaning that map out a network of relationships concerning different cognitive operations that are at stake when dealing with the recognition of faces.

deSignis, 2021

In this paper, we present some reflections that have emerged from the incorporation of facial rec... more In this paper, we present some reflections that have emerged from the incorporation of facial recognition technology in evangelical churches in Brazil. In these contexts, the faces of the believers shift from being questioned as signs of an identity to being supporters of a facial analysis taxonomy. In that interpellation, a gradual similarity is built between what the artificial technology recognizes and enunciates and what the priest or pastor expects to see. In this tension between the aletheic and the scopic, the face of the believer ceases to be a point of connection with an individuality to become the source of facial data. These data, finally, have a performative capacity: categories and patterns of recognition forge a reality.

VCS - Visual Culture Studies, 2021

L’obiettivo di questo testo è lo studio dell’edizione online della Bienal de la Imagen en Movimie... more L’obiettivo di questo testo è lo studio dell’edizione online della Bienal de la Imagen en Movimiento di Buenos Aires, una manifestazione artistica che ha visto sconvolta la propria attività durante la diffusione dell’epidemia da SARS- CoV-2. Sebbene una dimensione non in presenza coincida oggi sempre più frequentemente con la fruizione di opere d’arte, la diffusione online di biennali e mostre ha reso ancora più urgente la riflessione sulle forme espositive e sulle condizioni della spettatorialità. Nello specifico il testo analizza la piattaforma web progettata e curata per l’edizione online della Bienal de la Imagen en Movimiento: mirarnos a los ojos (volver a). Di fronte alla smaterializzazione del significante artistico imposto dall’emergenza sanitaria, la piattaforma costruisce una spazialità virtuale dove tornare a guardarsi negli occhi. Attraverso una riflessione sui meccanismi di interfacciamento e sulle possibilità di interazione offerte dai linguaggi digitali, mirarnos a los ojos (volver a) declina modalità comunicative tipiche dei mezzi di comunicazione con modalità comunicative tipiche dell’interazione faccia a faccia. Traduzione digitale delle interdipendenze emerse durante l’emergenza sanitaria, mirarnos a los ojos (volver a) è un progetto al quale hanno partecipato 70 artiste/i invitate/i a occupare una spazio-temporalità audiovisiva mappata da quattro coordinate cronotopiche con cui costruire una trama collettiva dell’esperienza del confinamento.

Signata Annales des sémiotiques / Annals of Semiotics 12 , 2021

The Centro Editor de América Latina began its activities in response to the violent intervention ... more The Centro Editor de América Latina began its activities in response to the violent intervention of the dictatorship of Juan Carlos Onganía at the University of Buenos Aires, in 1966. It survived the military junta of Jorge Rafael Videla and closed its doors during the neoliberal turn in 1995. The first print runs did not fall below 20,000 copies and, according to the materials seized during the last military dictatorship, the confiscated volumes numbered up to 3,000,000 copies per title. Recognizing in the archive that the Mariano Moreno National Library began to build in 2006 the marks and traces of the publisher and their meaning allows us to evoke, through an operation of re-enunciation, the symptoms of the memory of the dictatorships that devastated the second half of the 20th century in the entire Latin American region. The construction and circulation of the Latin American Editor Center archive is understood as a practice, that is, as an operation to transform editorial knowledge, technologies, and policies that enunciate and perform on a diaphanous present for the publishing industry in Argentina. The materials that make up the archive of the Centro Editor of Latin America, the present ones—the documents on the constitution and judicial persecution of the company, the correspondence of the workers, the printing plates, the color proofs, the interviews, the design of the collections, and the newspaper articles, and the absentees: the disappearances of the workers and the deposit burned in 1980 under the subversion judgment—have offered resistance to the practice carried out by the National Library, forcing it to fill the gaps in knowledge and to develop enunciation in a manner befitting the present: curatorships and montages of exhibitions on the good praxis of the editorial are accompanied by interventions in the urban environment. The practices—theoretical, material, and political—which re-enunciate about the Centro Editor of Latin America are practices that make memory and that seek to build denunciations that resist historical revisionism and denialism regarding the responsibilities and crimes of the military junta, even today, in court. The archive of the Centro Editor of Latin America, in this sense, is not only the enunciation of that memory of destruction which it tries to remember but, above all, an action with its own syntax that can act on an editorial and collective present.

Communication, technologies et développement, 2021

Drawing on research conducted within the ERC Consolidator Project FACETS, this presentation aims ... more Drawing on research conducted within the ERC Consolidator Project FACETS, this presentation aims at describing the state of art of solutions currently offered by AI for coping with loss of memory and identity in the pandemic scenario and at discussing advantages and disadvantages of these digital tools.
On the one side, the presentation will focus on how the interpersonal physical distance imposed because of the risk of contagion might be dealt with by applications based on Artificial Intelligence purposed to mitigate the loss of memory in elderly people by building new bridges between them and the generation of digital natives. On the other side, the paper will concentrate on obstacles that hamper the adoption of Artificial Intelligence across the generations. Lack in digital literacy as well as inappropriate interaction design as obstacles to effective cooperation between humans and artificial intelligence will be particularly stressed.
Finally, the presentation aims at presenting a concept study for a mobile and web application for autobiographical memory recovering, digitalization, preservation, recreation and transmission. The app is intended to bear on the visage as a memory and identity catalyst so as to enhance the neurophysiological functions of users, training their memory, and improving their ability to communicate.

Lexia. Volti artificiali, 2021

The aim of this article is to unmask certain areas of meaning related to a semiotics of the artif... more The aim of this article is to unmask certain areas of meaning related to a semiotics of the artificial face in digital arts. Art is considered as a privileged field of reflection since it is able to analyze and reproduce a model of the present where the machine vision is pervasive. Contemporary facial society confronts us with the continuous accumulation of faces generated by Artificial Intelligence. Today, an om- nipresent and all-significant faciality develops across media, urban planning, surveil- lance systems, and health care. In this context, digital art shows a series of productive gestures capable of mattifying the transparent promise of artificial visages. These gestures are able to devolve the aesthetic and biopolitical density to longtime social practices such as individuation and typification. Thanks to the analysis of a corpus of digital artworks the article recognizes a strategy that, through the use of errors, deformities, material translations, and intersubjective operations, opens the way to a transhuman ethic of the visage.

Design Meets Alterity. Case Studies, Project Experiences, Communication Criticism, 2024

The foundation of the following pages, as well as the theoretical object under consideration, rev... more The foundation of the following pages, as well as the theoretical object under consideration, revolves around the artistic platform <www.zizi. ai>, designed by Jake Elwes. Once entered The Zizi Show (the precise title of the artwork), we are immediately welcomed by an auditory landscape intertwined with the soundtrack from Bob Fosse's iconic cinematic creation, Cabaret. This sonic backdrop is thoughtfully paired with a captivating voice-over, enticing our active engagement in an extraordinary spectacle: the first deepfake drag-act. However, a fundamental question arises: what precisely does this encompass? As soon as we commence our interaction with the platform, we witness a fluid transformation of drag performances through artificial agents: digital embodiments undergo continuous transitions, evolving into captivating performances that unveil a customized drag experience unfurling upon a virtual stage. After being welcomed, the host of the show, transformed by the use of deepfake technology into a constantly mutable entity, provides us with the necessary tools to initiate the experience. From performer to performance, the platform empowers users to tailor the show letting the spotlight falls on the normativity governing artificial intelligence when recognizing and reproducing human identity. Indeed, central in The Zizi Show is the focus on the deficiency in diversity that persists within the training datasets harnessed by neural networks during the developmental phases of a wide array of artificial intelligence computational models.

The Hybrid Face Paradoxes of the Visage in the Digital Era, 2023

This chapter deals with the sociocultural performativity of artificial intelligence systems when ... more This chapter deals with the sociocultural performativity of artificial intelligence systems when communicating the meaning of otherness. To achieve its aim, it traces the effects of automated facial images on the sociocultural communication of otherness, the face, and its reproduction through visual artifacts being a privileged device for displaying an identification process. The chapter firstly proposes a cross-reading of Emmanuel Lévinas’ writings on the phenomenology of the face and Judith Butler’s reading of it with the aim of transducing and bringing their insights up to date with contemporary visual culture. Drawing on these sources, the chapter establishes an epistemic compass with which to navigate the universe of facial images, identifying a series of processes of codification of otherness: from the media representations of the enemy to the diffusion of the contemporary para-faciality, passing through the iconic value of face types. Furthermore, considering arts a privileged realm for reversing engineering and reconfiguring patterns toward otherwise neglected latent possibilities, the chapter recurs to the analysis of an artistic practice to understand how otherness is communicated within artificial intelligence systems.

TikTok. Capire le dinamiche della comunicazione ipersocial, 2023

#mtf e #ftm sono gli hashtag che descrivono una particolare tipologia di video di TikTok: quelli ... more #mtf e #ftm sono gli hashtag che descrivono una particolare tipologia di video di TikTok: quelli dove a essere ritratta è la propria transizione di genere. Sono video che rispecchiano uno stesso formato e che, almeno secondo la mia esperienza, non erano presenti nelle realtà social che hanno preceduto l’app in questione. Il rilievo del dato mi ha portato a chiedermi se esistesse una relazione tra l’emergere di questo nuovo formato ipervisibile dell’intimità e la diffusione di TikTok.

La società per immagini. Ricerca, metodi, linguaggi, 2023

Envisioning Architectural Narratives, 2021

This paper arises from a pedagogical experience based on the development of a methodology for res... more This paper arises from a pedagogical experience based on the development of a methodology for research in the field of construction of research problems in architecture. The experience was addressed to students in the fifth and final year of the architecture career at the National University of La Matanza, in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina. The main objective was an introduction to the broad and complex field of academic research as a pre-thesis exercise.
The hypothesis that sustained the experience was to understand tropology as a tool for the figuration (Haraway, 1992; Braidotti, 2019) of epistemic and heuristic problems. The methodology used consisted in developing an apparatus that generates research problems from the recognition of a topos – a topic or epistemic commonplace belonging to the disciplinary field of the career – and its relationship with a tropos –a figuration–. On the one hand, the topos was chosen by each one of the students according to their socio-cultural problems and according to their specific living situations within the framework of architecture and urbanism. On the other hand, the tropos emerged from an exercise of figurative displacement that made it possible to account for the predicative rather than denominative potential of the tropos. From the semantic crossing between the topos and the tropos, the students constituted their own syntagm that also served as the future title and tagline of the research project. This syntagma had the characteristic of being a hybrid, a space of signification generated by the displacement of the topic towards the creation of the new place, of fictional character, which had to be narrated and described according to its own logic and which functioned as an inhabited threshold between the topic and the u-topic, a place that is installed beyond the topical, the tropical.

I saggi di Lexia - Semiotica e intelligenza artificiale, 2023

These pages aim to reflect on the defining characteristics of artificial intelligence in order to... more These pages aim to reflect on the defining characteristics of artificial intelligence in order to account for the interpretive habits with which we relate to scientific knowledge when it passes through systems using these technologies. From this initial position, we set up a semiotic gaze to account for the challenges we face using artificial intelligence systems for climate change risk assessment. Thinking of big data collections on climate change as archives that, depending on selection criteria, can become the databases needed to train artificial intelligence, will bring out the need to reflect on the epistemic frontier that organizes data.

I volti del complotto, 2021

Il testo prende in esame tre accessori del volto: la maschera antigas, il grillz e la ball gag. I... more Il testo prende in esame tre accessori del volto: la maschera antigas, il grillz e la ball gag. I tre artefatti, nel discorso comune, vengono associati a culture visuali definite o autodefinite come “sovversive”: rispettivamente gli ambienti antisistema e la cultura raver per quanto riguarda la maschera antigas; le culture musicali rap, l’hip hop e trap dove si è diffuso il grillz e le relazioni ed erotiche afferenti al BDSM per quanto riguarda la ball gag.
I tre artefatti, in qualità di accessori del volto, esplicano in relazione a questo diverse funzioni: protezione ed estensione per quanto riguarda la maschera antigas; calco e falsificazione nel caso del grillz; e, infine, occlusione e subalternazione nel caso della ball gag. Cosi facendo, i tre accessori entrano in relazione semiotica con la spazialità dell’organo boccale, interagendo (inibendo o magnificando) con le principali funzioni di quest’ultimo: il respiro, la masticazione e la fonazione. Prendendo in esame alcune configurazioni semiotiche che i tre artefatti creano in relazione al volto organico, si ipotizza che tali figure enucleano un volto del complotto, intenso come un genitivo, un complemento di specificazione. Un’azione sovversiva, in grado, cioè, di subvertere di volgere dal basso in alto, un supposto ordine o normatività talora politica, economica, sociale, artistica, sessuale e quindi di mettere in luce la presenza di un complotto all’interno di un sistema di valori, che si vorrebbe talora rivoltare, talora difendere.
In ultima analisi, il testo intende mostrare con una serie di esempi come la rivelazione del complotto si visualizza sul volto e in particolare nella/sulla bocca. Cosi facendo il volto si rivela e si scopre nell’aspetto animalizzante del muso (Leone, 2021). L’analisi della differenza di potenziale tra queste articolazioni, volto e muso, svela cosi la funzione comunicativa e significante di esse in bilico tra animalità e umanità.

I cronotopi del volto, 2022

Ogni volto è la traccia dei tempi e dei luoghi che lo hanno prodotto e continuamente ci mette a c... more Ogni volto è la traccia dei tempi e dei luoghi che lo hanno prodotto e continuamente ci mette a confronto con una dimensione situata. Questo posizionamento installa un confine tra prospettiva biologica e prospettiva culturale, una frontiera dove le riflessioni sui processi fisiologici che sottostanno alla natura organica si intrecciano con la pluralità e la discontinuità che caratterizzano la sua significazione culturale. Per l’esplorazione di queste coordinate spazio-temporali il volume I cronotopi del volto riconosce nel volto una strategia di condensazione spazio–temporale, uno strumento di studio dell’enunciazione in atto e di aspettualizzazione spazio-temporale dell’identità.

Miradas, lenguajes y perspectivas semióticas. Aportes desde América Latina, 2017

El problema in nuce del paper es proveer una definición para el sintagma ‘diseño audiovisual’ que... more El problema in nuce del paper es proveer una definición para el sintagma ‘diseño audiovisual’ que aporte planteos para un campo –el del diseño– aún en busca de identidad epistémica propia. En este sentido, el objetivo general de mi presentación es reconstruir el espacio cartográfico y de reciprocidad que ocupa el diseño audiovisual en la determinación del imaginario colectivo, organizando una definición de diseño audiovisual como un espacio para el pensamiento intersubjetivo: gnoseológico, práctico y epistemológico. Desde mi punto de vista es en este espacio donde se relacionan quienes producen, utilizan y hacen circular formas y proyectos audiovisuales. Por esta razón, y pensando particularmente en la dimensión indicial del diseño audiovisual, quiero construir argumentativamente este espacio a partir del concepto de territorio imaginándolo como lugar donde saberes comunicacionales, prácticas audiovisuales y políticas de reproductibilidad se intersecan con las categorías operativas de formato, dispositivo y montaje. Por medio de esta propuesta propongo dar cuenta de ciertas reciprocidades que pueden incidir sobre los cuerpos que se encuentran emplazados en este territorio, ya sea desde el punto de vista cognitivo, somático como pragmático. Entender que nuestra relación con los productos audiovisuales es in-formada por los sentidos mientras que, al mismo tiempo, in-forma los sentidos nos recuerda que las imágenes audiovisuales no sólo se mueven sino que, mientras padecen, también producen movimiento, y de ahí transformaciones, excitando y citando. Gracias a esta dimensión transitiva y reciproca del movimiento audiovisual, los productos audiovisuales pueden actuar sobre los distintos contextos en los que circulan y permiten, además, entreabrir en las prácticas audiovisuales el espacio para un agenciamiento con el que, si necesario, transformar el mundo.

Nulla l'uomo teme di più che essere toccato dall'ignoto. Vogliamo vedere ciò che si protende diet... more Nulla l'uomo teme di più che essere toccato dall'ignoto. Vogliamo vedere ciò che si protende dietro di noi: vogliamo conoscerlo o almeno classificarlo. Dovunque, l'uomo evita di essere toccato da ciò che gli è estraneo. Di notte o in qualsiasi tenebra il timore suscitato dall'essere toccati inaspettatamente può crescere fino al panico. Neppure i vestiti garantiscono sufficiente sicurezza; è talmente facile strapparli, e penetrare fino alla carne nuda, liscia, indifesa dell'aggredito." Elias Canetti, Massa e potere (1960) Language! It's a virus! Language! It's a virus! Paradise Is exactly like Where you are right now Only much much better. Laurie Anderson, Language is a virus (1986) per successivi progressi sotto forma di trattamenti: ancora tempo! Quello che certamente sappiamo, e su cui non abbiamo dubbio alcuno, è che ci ritroviamo immersi in una colossale infrastruttura tecnologica di comunicazione che è totalmente asimmetrica rispetto alla traballante infrastruttura tecnologica dei sistemi sanitari. Questa asimmetria è un potente motore per la trasmissione del virus.

I Volti del complotto, 2021

Il testo prende in esame tre accessori del volto: la maschera antigas, il grillz e la ball gag. I... more Il testo prende in esame tre accessori del volto: la maschera antigas, il grillz e la ball gag. I tre artefatti, nel discorso comune, vengono associati a culture visuali definite o autodefinite come “sovversive”: rispettivamente gli ambienti antisistema e la cultura raver per quanto riguarda la maschera antigas; le culture musicali rap, l’hip hop e trap dove si è diffuso il grillz e le relazioni ed erotiche afferenti al BDSM per quanto riguarda la ball gag.
I tre artefatti, in qualità di accessori del volto, esplicano in relazione a questo diverse funzioni: protezione ed estensione per quanto riguarda la maschera antigas; calco e falsificazione nel caso del grillz; e, infine, occlusione e subalternazione nel caso della ball gag. Cosi facendo, i tre accessori entrano in relazione semiotica con la spazialità dell’organo boccale, interagendo (inibendo o magnificando) con le principali funzioni di quest’ultimo: il respiro, la masticazione e la fonazione. Prendendo in esame alcune configurazioni semiotiche che i tre artefatti creano in relazione al volto organico, si ipotizza che tali figure enucleano un volto del complotto, intenso come un genitivo, un complemento di specificazione. Un’azione sovversiva, in grado, cioè, di subvertere di volgere dal basso in alto, un supposto ordine o normatività talora politica, economica, sociale, artistica, sessuale e quindi di mettere in luce la presenza di un complotto all’interno di un sistema di valori, che si vorrebbe talora rivoltare, talora difendere.
In ultima analisi, il testo intende mostrare con una serie di esempi come la rivelazione del complotto si visualizza sul volto e in particolare nella/sulla bocca. Cosi facendo il volto si rivela e si scopre nell’aspetto animalizzante del muso (Leone, 2021). L’analisi della differenza di potenziale tra queste articolazioni, volto e muso, svela cosi la funzione comunicativa e significante di esse in bilico tra animalità e umanità.

I volti del complotto, 2021

Il metavolto (FACETS Digital Press), 2022

Unboxing AI, 2021

The beginning of this text can be situated in 2001 when a conference organized in Milan by a netw... more The beginning of this text can be situated in 2001 when a conference organized in Milan by a network of universities from Europe, the United States, and Canada resulted in a publication titled Mediating the Human Body: Technology, Communication, and Fashion (2003). The focus of that foundational event was the research for an interdisciplinary approach that is necessary in order to face the complex and emerging phenomenon of the mediation of the human body throughout technology. Today, two decades after that conference, a technological approach towards the human body has continued to mark our daily life, and three main fields of interaction can be recognized: 1) medicine, 2) fashion, and 3) Information and Communications Technology (ICT), especially mobile technologies, with general increasing attention to robotics.

Una regione piena di cinema: Bernardo Bertolucci, Feb 1, 2014

Bertolucci e la sua Bassa, i suoi paesani, il suo Po e i suoi filari di pioppi. La Bassa e la Sto... more Bertolucci e la sua Bassa, i suoi paesani, il suo Po e i suoi filari di pioppi. La Bassa e la Storia, il socialismo agrario, l'avvento del fascismo, la grande guerra, la Resistenza e la Liberazione. In un valzer tra rievocazione storica e mitologie, il regista tesse la grande tela agreste che racconta del segreto della nostra condizione umana e delle nostre vicissitudini, ancora oggi. La materia viva di quel mondo diventa allora exemplum di vita e di impegno sociale, monito al di là delle ideologie, che ricordi al pubblico della necessità di emanciparsi dai soprusi, da ogni sopruso. E in tutto questo poesia, messe in scena da epica, continui richiami a colori e motivi che hanno visto in quegli stessi paesaggi la loro scenografia naturale. La tensione tra realismo e idealizzazione diventa un continuo richiamo a forme e icone di grande impatto emotivo, e le memorie personali non possono che fungere da traino di quelle culturali. È un cinema che ritorna alla sua forma primitiva e forse più autentica, che fa sognare di mondi lontani, ma che scuote con estrema brutalità riportando alla ragione del presente la trama dei fatti, sempre attuali e di grande valore civile.

NONÁGONO SEMIÓTICO. Un modelo operativo para la investigación cualitativa, Jan 2014

"Como señala Lev Manovich, el paradigma epistemológico propio del lenguaje cinematográfico se ha ... more "Como señala Lev Manovich, el paradigma epistemológico propio del lenguaje cinematográfico se ha vuelto hoy en día el paradigma de los nuevos medios de comunicación: “las maneras cinematográficas de ver el mundo, de estructurar el tiempo, de narrar una historia y de enlazar una experiencia con la siguiente, se han vuelto la forma básica de acceder a los ordenadores y de relacionarnos con todos los datos culturales” (2008: 87). En la misma perspectiva –no obstante el declamado esfuerzo de destacar diferencias en los dispositivos de producción, visualización y reproducción audiovisual–, la continuidad es la base del desarrollo de la tecnología y los discursos cinematográficos, aun ahí donde el concepto de “novedad” ha sido penetrante y aberrante por razones de mercado. Como afirma Philippe Dubois, en su ensayo Video y teoría de las imágenes (2001), en el contexto de los audiovisuales la “novedad” se encuentra primariamente como efecto de discurso, en la medida en que siempre estuvo presente en la historia de los medios de comunicación: desde la aparición de la fotografía, pasando por el cine, la televisión luego, y finalmente, la imagen informática y sus derivados más recientes. El riesgo de que los discursos sobre estos objetos, condenados a una condición de novedad constante, oculten la persistencia de las inquietudes que los atraviesan contamina tanto una atenta práctica proyectual cuanto una posible arqueología de memoria foucaultiana.
Esa persistencia quiere ser rescatada en estas páginas a través de la construcción de una primera cartografía de las relaciones subyacentes a la imagen-cinematográfica en búsqueda de una posible lógica propia a lo audiovisual posiblemente útil a su diseño. "

Introducción a Regeneraciones Urbanas: de la ciudad abandonada al Smart Landscape de Marco D'Annu... more Introducción a Regeneraciones Urbanas: de la ciudad abandonada al Smart Landscape de Marco D'Annuntiis ; Gianluigi Mondaini ; Pino Sollazo.

en Regeneraciones Urbanas: de la ciudad abandonada al Smart Landscape de Marco D'Annuntiis ; Gian... more en Regeneraciones Urbanas: de la ciudad abandonada al Smart Landscape de Marco D'Annuntiis ; Gianluigi Mondaini ; Pino Sollazo.

Raison publique , 2024

Artiste conceptuel, hacktiviste et critique culturel, Paulo Cirio incarne les principes éthiques ... more Artiste conceptuel, hacktiviste et critique culturel, Paulo Cirio incarne les principes éthiques associés aux hackeurs, promouvant le libre accès, la vie privée et l'examen critique des cadres économiques, juridiques et politiques. Il s'entretient avec Critina Voto. La traduction est de Solène Semichon.

laFuga, 2020

Conversación con la artista visual, investigadora y productora cultural, María Ruido a propósito ... more Conversación con la artista visual, investigadora y productora cultural, María Ruido a propósito del estreno de su última película Estado de malestar, un ensayo visual que cuestiona la patologización de nuestras vivencias en tiempos de realismo capitalista o capitalismo tardío. Es decir, el capitalismo del “éxito”, el de la responsabilidad individual por sobre el de la estructura; en fin, el capitalismo que se desvanece en el aire y nos hace responsables de nuestras desgracias.

Imagofagia. Revista académica de la Asociación Argentina de Estudios de Cine y Audiovisual , 2019

Marcos Loayza nace en La Paz, Bolivia, es arquitecto de formación y es el director y guionista de... more Marcos Loayza nace en La Paz, Bolivia, es arquitecto de formación y es el director y guionista de las películas Averno (2018), Las bellas durmientes (2012), El estado de las cosas (2007), El corazón de Jesús (2003), Escrito en el agua (1998) y Cuestión de fe (1995); además, enseña en la Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión de San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba. Averno, su última película, fue ganadora de la Competencia Latinoamericana en el Festival Internacional de Cine Independiente de Buenos Aires del 2018.
Esta entrevista fue realizada en presencia y en el contexto de la 20° edición del festival BAFICI, donde asistí al estreno de Averno. Es entonces que me sorprendí de que el filme llevaba a la pantalla muchos de los senderos por los que se orientaba la línea editorial en la que estaba trabajando como programadora y curadora de la sección “Futuridades nómadas” del Festival CineMigrante que se presentó al público en septiembre de 2018.

Trinh T. Minh-ha visitó Buenos Aires por primera vez para la retrospectiva de su filmografía que ... more Trinh T. Minh-ha visitó Buenos Aires por primera vez para la retrospectiva de su filmografía que se realizó en el contexto del Festival Internacional de Cine y Formación en Derechos Humanos de las personas migrantes que tuvo lugar del 16 al 23 de septiembre de 2015.

La transcripción y traducción de la entrevista estuvo a cargo de Cristina Voto y Agustina Pérez Rial, quienes además han publicado un artículo reciente sobre la obra de Minh-ha (2014. "Nuevos juguetes para un etnógrafo ansioso: derroteros del registro audiovisual". Caiana, pp. 116-125).

http://www.revistaanfibia.com/

El brasileño Adirley Queirós creció en Ceilândia, asentamiento surgido apenas se inauguró Brasili... more El brasileño Adirley Queirós creció en Ceilândia, asentamiento surgido apenas se inauguró Brasilia, la promesa de modernidad urbana. Sus películas -exhibidas en el Festival CineMigrante- muestran rap, obreros metalúrgicos, racismo y desplazamientos, también el golpe de Estado contra Dilma Rousseff. Con estos elementos Queirós traza una contrahistoria y otros desenlaces. Esta nota es parte de una serie de textos surgidos de la alianza entre CineMigrante y Anfibia para pensar el futuro desde una territorialidad decolonial.

How does cinema work when it comes to create images of the future? What power relations does the ... more How does cinema work when it comes to create images of the future? What power relations does the future imply when it becomes the subject of a film? And, finally, how do we understand relations of subalternity with regards to the future? To answer these questions, I will use resources drawn from semiotics, postcolonial studies and film studies. The main contention of this talk is that cinema is a world-shaping activity – Far from imitating the world, cinema establishes images that materialize in multiple geographic spaces. Its inherent spatiality is what determines which realities cinema can frame and which others are beyond its grasp; which narratives it can recount and which others it has to dismiss. The spatial and geographic aspect of cinema is also what makes the image of a film an aesthetic and political construct: An instrument that people use to question their own epoch as well as their possible future. Tackling the theme of future from this cinematographic angle will allow me to set aside three traditional notions of future: (1) Future as projection; (2) Future as reality-to-come; (3) Future as time ahead of us. I will challenge these notions by introducing a ‘nomadic’ perspective whereby the future is understood as a figurative virtuality that is not detached from the present but rather continuously challenges it. I will argue that this idea of nomadic future, which emerges in cinema and allows viewers to watch over their present, reach a new sensitivity, and construct new temporalities, can help deconstruct any hegemonic future.

During the talk, we will watch excerpts from the following films:

(Sensitivity configuration)
Born in Flames, Lizzie Borden, EEUU, 1983
Les saignantes, Jean-Pierre Bekolo, Camerún, 2005
AfroPromo #1 King Lady, EEUU, 2017
Era uma vez Brasília, Adirley Queirós, Brasil, 2017

(What is left to do to us?)
Wiñaypacha, Oscar Catacora, Perú, 2017
Averno, Marcos Loayza, Bolivia, 2018

(Healing by Erasing)
Sci-Fi trilogy, Larissa Sansour, Palestina:
A Space Exodus, 2009
Nation Estate, 2012
In the future they ate from the finest porcelain, 2015

IDIS, investigaciones en diseño de imagen y sonido (http://proyectoidis.org/), es una página web ... more IDIS, investigaciones en diseño de imagen y sonido (http://proyectoidis.org/), es una página web que nace en el marco del proyecto de investigación Apuntes sobre los orígenes y el desarrollo de las narrativas audiovisuales no lineales y la cultura de códigos abiertos, dirigido por el Prof. Carlos Trilnick. Con el objetivo construir un recorrido historiográfico del diseño de imagen y sonido, la página busca encontrar métodos de visualizaciones de datos que muestren cómo influyen los cambios que se producen con la digitalización de datos, imágenes y sonidos.
IDIS busca construir un modelo de clasificación pensado, principalmente, en su relación con lo didáctico. Primera etapa fue la definición de un sistema de clasificación propio a partir de las herramientas que la web provee: los TAGs. Es decir, pensando en las relaciones que se pueden construir entre los TAGs como instrumentos de descripción, clasificación y búsqueda, se encontraron las modalidades a través de las que construir los discursos de legitimidad. De ahí pasamos a una idea de operatividad clasificatoria de los TAGS pensado en la relación entre TAGs, taxonomía y representación. Si los TAGS son rectángulos intemporales (Foucault: [1966] 1968) osea elementos clasificatorios que recuperan, de la mano de las ciencias duras, la abstracción del contenido respecto a la función, ¿por qué no rescatar su modelo para imaginar nuevos horizontes epistémicos? Y este es el último desafío que la construcción de la página conlleva: ¿es posible pasar desde la visualización de una taxonomía hacia la experiencia visual de la clasificación?.

Programa del Seminario de 32 horas para la Maestría en Análisis del Discurso de la Facultad de Fi... more Programa del Seminario de 32 horas para la Maestría en Análisis del Discurso de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de la Universidad de Buenos Aires.
El Seminario busca colaborar a la sistematización de los antecedentes y los marcos teóricos construidos en la actividad analítica o investigativa y la acción proyectual. Se trata de acentuar las relaciones de interdependencia que propone el planteo triádico peirceano entre los componentes formales, existenciales y valorativos de la temática y el discurso abordado, ya sea éste verbal, visual o audiovisual.

Revista deSignis, 2021

Call for papers ‘El rostro digital latinoamericano’ Número enmarcado en el ERC Consolidator Gra... more Call for papers

‘El rostro digital latinoamericano’

Número enmarcado en el ERC Consolidator Grant Project ERC-2018-COG 816640: FACETS: Face Aesthetics in Contemporary E-Technological Societies

Serie Intersecciones

Coordinación

Massimo Leone (Università di Torino, Shanghái University) massimo.leone@unito.it
Cristina Voto (Università di Torino, Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero) crivoto@gmail.com
Con la colaboración de José Enrique Finol (Universidad del Zulia) joseenriquefinol@gmail.com

Fechas de recepción de artículos: del 1ro de abril al 30 de setiembre 2020

Ver condiciones de presentación de los artículos en http://www.designisfels.net/

Este número de DeSignis continua con el estudio de las culturas digitales iniciado por el n°5 Corpus digitalis y continuado por el n°30 Ciberculturas. Estará dedicado a la exploración del el rostro en el horizonte digital latinoamericano y tiene como objetivo reunir las diferentes miradas que pueden ofrecer los estudios semióticos sobre el cambio que está atravesando, a escala mundial, el significado del rostro con un enfoque específico a partir de las experiencias y los abordajes latinoamericanos. Desde tiempos arcaicos el rostro está en el centro de numerosas estrategias de significación, como es el caso de las prácticas de representación, control, enmascaramiento y veladura que atraviesan toda la historia de la humanidad, y de estrategias de lectura (estudios de fisonomía y circulación, en determinados momentos históricos, de dispositivos coloniales para la racialización de ciertos rostros), pero es con la actual digitalización de la cultura que se van desdibujando una serie de novedades imprescindibles para entender nuestra contemporaneidad.
La circulación y difusión de nuevas tecnologías y prácticas (la fotografía digital, los software para el reconocimiento facial); la creación y el establecimiento de nuevos géneros (la selfi, los filtros visuales y los efectos); los nuevos enfoques para la percepción, lectura y almacenamiento (como el “hacer scroll” en Tinder) cambian drásticamente nuestras maneras de conocer, interactuar e interpretar los rostros propios y los de las/os demás. Frente a estos cambios cognitivos, emotivos y pragmáticos, DeSignis encara las culturas digitales del rostro en el horizonte latinoamericano teniendo en cuenta varias dimensiones de intersección: la plasticidad de la imagen digital para la creación, circulación y uso de íconos faciales; la mutabilidad de los formatos de comunicación del rostro; la implicación económica y política del almacenamiento de grande volúmenes de datos digitales de rostros; la dialéctica entre estos almacenamientos y las contraculturas de los rostros; el valor del velo, la máscara y el anonimato en el mundo de los rostros digitales; el cambio en la dimensión introspectiva, empática e interactiva del rostro digital.
Para abordar este debate tan necesario cuanto incipiente, DeSignis organiza el número de la revista en distintos apartados sobre la semiosis del rostro digital en América Latina, entre ellos: la neurofisiología de la percepción y la cognición, el papel de las artes y los géneros artísticos junto con la dimensión política de las prácticas artísticas (las prácticas decoloniales, poscoloniales y de resistencia a la violencia institucional), los géneros de los rostros a través de la historia de la comunicación y la evolución de las estrategias de lectura del rostro y su relación con los contextos de big data.

“It makes sense”; “it does not make sense”; “it is meaningful”; “it is meaningless”: when individ... more “It makes sense”; “it does not make sense”; “it is meaningful”; “it is meaningless”: when individuals or whole societies find meaning through language in reality, they are guided by invisible schemes called “language ideologies”. Language ideologies have been variously defined, but a common description designates them as “sets of ideas a community holds about the role of language”. They have become a key object of investigation for linguistic anthropology, that is, the branch of ethnology that concentrates on the role of language in human communities. Language, however, is not only verbal. It does not manifest itself only through words, but also through other patterned articulations, involving mental representations and non-verbal systems of signs. That is why linguistic anthropology must give rise to a semiotic anthropology in order to fully grasp the place of language in human groups. It must expand the study of language ideologies into that of semiotic ideologies. These can be defined as implicit guidelines that pattern meaning-making in societies. Using language to give value to space and time, perceive reality, interpret it, keep memory of it: these activities seem spontaneous exactly like speaking one’s ‘mother tongue’. Yet, exactly like ‘natural languages’, non-verbal meaning-making too follows rules, which together compose a mysterious ‘grammar of signification’. Building on linguistic anthropology, semiotics, and semiotic anthropology, the course will help participants understand why they conceive of verbal and non-verbal meaning as they do, and how different cultures develop alternative understandings of meaningfulness and meaninglessness through both verbal language and other systems of signs.

SILC Shanghai Symposium on the Semiotics of the Digital Face

IV International Conference on Semiotics and Visual Communication, Cyprus University of Technolog... more IV International Conference on Semiotics and Visual Communication, Cyprus University of Technology, Cyprus