Festival of Dangerous Ideas

By the year 2062, it is predicted that we will have built machines that are as intelligent as humans. Modern weapons will become more autonomous, machines will further infiltrate our daily lives, and the way we think of humanity will be permanently altered. To understand what lies ahead and learn from our past, Ann Mossop sits between Joanna Bourke and Toby Walsh in a conversation about the future of AI, killer robots and what it means to be human. Joanna Bourke is a historian, academic and professor of History at Birkbeck, University of London, and a Fellow of the British Academy.  Toby Walsh is a leading researcher in Artificial Intelligence, ARC Laureate Fellow and Scientia Professor of AI at UNSW and CSIRO Data61, and adjunct professor at QUT.  

Recording art for a post-human world, a machine attempts to describe a human dance. The piece responds to Eleanor Gordon-Smith and Slavoj Žižek’s discussion, the power of words to create reality, and the experience of emotion between the digital or artificial and what we take as ‘real’. Produced by The Festival of Dangerous Ideas, The Ethics Centre and Audiocraft.

Against the pillars of Enlightenment, how can we make sense of conspiracy theories, tribalism, and deepening divisions between our beliefs? In a conversation moderated by Simon Longstaff, Eleanor Gordon-Smith and Slavoj Žižek discuss the proliferation and saturation of knowledge, the rise of conspiracy theories, and whether or not the Age of Enlightenment is coming to an end. Eleanor Gordon-Smith is a philosopher and radio producer currently at Princeton University, where she is a Graduate Fellow of the University Centre for Human Values. Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher and cultural theorist.  Produced by The Festival of Dangerous Ideas, The Ethics Centre and Audiocraft.

During Sydney’s most recent lockdown, sound artist Alexandra Spence submerged a 15 minute-long piece of cassette tape in seawater. The cassette tape contained a field recording of waves, and a recording of Alex’s voice offering a non-definitive, and non-hierarchical list of things found in the Pacific Ocean. The resulting physical deterioration of the magnetic tape and degradation of the audio recording can be heard in this composition. ‘Within Salt’ is a short piece that responds to Lee Vinsel’s take on entropy and the breaking down of technology, along with Tyson Yunkaporta’s words on the importance of story and of preserving nature over data. Produced by The Festival of Dangerous Ideas, The Ethics Centre and Audiocraft.

Lee Vinsel and Tyson Yunkaporta speak with Ann Mossop about the passing age, apocalypses, and the cyclical nature of eras. Their conversation is anchored in language: both speak of systems, entropy, the roles of maintainers or custodians, and the machines and languages of capitalism. Tyson explains entropy by connecting an incident of Aboriginal people spearing Dutchmen centuries ago to the modern-day experiences of colonialism, and Lee speaks of entropy as the natural breaking down of systems. Lee Vinsel is an associate professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Virginia Tech. Tyson Yunkaporta is an Aboriginal scholar, founder of the Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab at Deakin University in Melbourne. Produced by The Festival of Dangerous Ideas, The Ethics Centre and Audiocraft.

We hear the recorded sound of the invisible electromagnetic landscape that humans created unintentionally, allowing us to tune in to what our environment has to endure. Against a backdrop, we hear the voices of anonymous FODI listeners, recording their hopes and fears for the future of humanity, and a poem by Sylvie Barber and Simon Longstaff. Anthropocene is a response to Sam Mostyn and Peter Singer’s discussion.

A conversation between business sustainability advisor Sam Mostyn and moral philosopher Peter Singer, moderated by Simon Longstaff. Sam and Peter discuss the role of business in sustainability and climate action, the discrepancies between our values and monetary donations for global aid, and the ethics of responsibility we have toward the generation of humans who don’t yet exist. They touch on how the pandemic has highlighted gender and class divisions, along with the significance of community and care. Sam Mostyn is a businesswoman and sustainability adviser, with a long history of executive and governance roles across business, sport, climate change, the arts, policy, and NFP sectors. Peter Singer is an Australian moral philosopher, best known for his work on Animal Liberation and writings about global poverty. Produced by The Festival of Dangerous Ideas, The Ethics Centre and Audiocraft.

Sydney-based writer Tasnim Hossain records her written take on the meandering histories of Enlightenment discussed by Joya Chatterji and Stephen Fry, and the experimental sounds of the first known recordings of the human voice. Music is composed from sounds found in the archives of firstsounds.org, and recordings taken from a museum of mechanical music (fairgroundfollies.com). Produced by The Festival of Dangerous Ideas, The Ethics Centre and Audiocraft.  

In a conversation moderated by Simon Longstaff, historians Joya Chatterji and Stephen Fry discuss whether the age of Enlightenment is truly coming to an end. They share varying Enlightenment narratives that cross geographical, cultural and class borders and challenge the attempt to define an era of history as linear, with a definitive start and end point. Joya Chatterji is a Professor of South Asian History.  Stephen Fry is an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter and film director. Produced by The Festival of Dangerous Ideas, The Ethics Centre and Audiocraft.

FODI: The In-Between is an audio time capsule recording this moment in time. It asks: Are we in-between two eras? And if so, what does this mean about the past and the future? 8 conversations between 16 of the world’s biggest thinkers, featuring Stephen Fry, Roxane Gay, Waleed Aly, Peter Singer, Sam Mostyn, Slavoj Žižek, Naomi Klein and more . Accompanied by 8 short creative sound responses to the themes that will be released alongside each conversation. Two new episodes dropping weekly. Subscribe now to join us at the in-between. Produced by The Festival of Dangerous Ideas, The Ethics Centre and Audiocraft.