Cyborg Surrealism: The Reading Room

Date and Time: Monday & Tuesday, August 18 & 19, 8:30am–5:00pm Pacific Time

Location: Broad Stage Lobby (on-site only)

Created and presented by:

Meghan McGrath, IBM Future Demands, IBM

Experience a cozy reading nook outside of space and time! Our EPIC “house” takes the form of a speculative archive, filled with LLM-generated academic journals that technically don’t exist. Come explore with fellow conference-goers, or enjoy an introvert-friendly moment. Don’t forget to leave your insights and provocations on America’s favorite cassette recorder, a 1993 Tiger Electronics Talkboy. We’re going to sit with our rapid technological past and rapid technological future – and also there will be snacks.

This installation is inspired by Fluxus artist Alison Knowles and her FORTRAN-generated “House of Dust” poems, which were later realized into built spaces in Los Angeles County.

Meghan McGrath leads IBM Z’s speculative design practice and works closely across the company on AI Ethics in design, particularly for interventions with endangered programming languages. Her work has been featured in Fast Company, an HBS case study, and most recently, “Future Cultures” by Susan and Scott Smith. She is excited to learn more about mountain lions at EPIC 2024 (from a distance.)