Following the inaugural conference held in Amsterdam in 2015 (BD2015), this year's BD2017 aims to continue the discussion on the multidisciplinary investigation of biographical data.
Over two days, this conference will bring together international researchers of diverse backgrounds and experiences to facilitate knowledge exchange and innovation.
Hosted by the Austrian Academy of Sciences, this event is organized in conjunction with Edith Cowan University (AU), Huygens ING (NL), University of Amsterdam (NL) and VU Amsterdam (NL), in cooperation with Ars Electronica and DARIAH-EU Working Group "Analyzing and linking biographical data" (WG Biographical Data).
Ars Electronica Linz (AEC), Ars-Electronica-Straße 1; 4040 Linz. Austria | center@aec.at
Art, technology, society. Since 1979, Ars Electronica has sought out interlinkages and congruities, causes and effects. The ideas circulating here are innovative, radical, eccentric in the best sense of that term. They influence our everyday life—our lifestyle, our way of life, every single day.
The Festival as proving ground, the Prix as competition honoring excellence, the Center as a year-‘round setting for presentation & interaction, and the Futurelab and Ars Electronica Solutions as in-house R&D facility extend their feelers throughout the realms of science and research, art and technology. Ars Electronica’s divisions inspire one another and put futuristic visions to the test in a unique, creative feedback loop. It’s an integrated organism continuously reinventing itself.
How is human identity constructed? This overarching question serves to challenge traditional notions of what constitutes "biographies". Aside from monographies or an indivdiual's oeuvre, biographies can take the form of data gathered through fitness apps, the span of one's social network, genetic DNA, etc. Essentially, the multidisciplinary topical framework of this conference offers an opening up of the discourse on how a person's identity is formed and dynamically changes. Moving beyond the ridigty of traditional biographical work, the current research to be discussed at this conference aims to demonstrate how the dynamics and diversity of a person's identity can be documented and made visible.