In this Lunchtime Talk, Amina Abbas-Nazari will present their PhD research investigating artificially intelligent machine listening and conversational systems that profile voices.

Voices are increasingly used by artificially intelligent machine listening and conversational systems (such as Amazon's Alexa). These systems surveil, analyse and understand people's voices in ways which are normative, over-simplistic and ultimately harmful to those who are marginalised within society.

In this talk, Amina will discuss this, and propose ways to reveal and resist voice profiling by artificial intelligence, through an expanded understanding of the sounding of voice.

About Amina Abbas-Nazari

A practicing designer, researcher, and vocal performer, Amina has researched the voice in conjunction with emerging technology since 2008 and is now completing a PhD in the School of Communication at the Royal College of Art, investigating the sound and sounding of voices in artificially intelligent conversational systems.

She has presented her work at the London Design Festival, Design Museum, Barbican Centre, V&A, Lisson Gallery, Milan Furniture Fair, Venice Architecture Biennial, Critical Media Lab, Switzerland, Litost Gallery, Prague and Harvard University, America. She has performed internationally with choirs and regularly collaborates with artists as an experimental vocalist.

About the Pervasive Media Studio

The Pervasive Media Studio is a partnership between the Watershed, University of the West of England and University of Bristol. The lunchtime talks are partly supported by MyWorld, a project led by the University of Bristol to support creative industries in the region. Watershed is supported by Arts Council England.

*Please note this is a hybrid event and will be live streamed so please be aware you will be in the live broadcast and recording when watching in the Studio.

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