Events
Meet the Makers XL: NFF Fellows: Simone C Niquille, Victorine van Alphen and Radical Data
Together with the NFF Digital Culture Fellowships programme, Meet the Makers invites UU students and staff to join an exciting programme of practice-based, interdisciplinary research presentations by NFF fellows Simone C Niquille, Victorine van Alphen, and the collective Radical Data consisting of Jo Kroese and Rayén Mitrovich. The event marks the culmination of a year-long research trajectory during which the NFF fellows have developed their research into new technologies and storytelling.
Established in 2023, the NFF Fellowships Program supports and encourages mid-career makers engaged in research within the field of digital culture to explore new technologies, themes, and tools, and to initiate new collaborations. From 2023 through 2026, three cohorts each consisting of three fellows will develop their research proposals and present them during the Netherlands Film Festival (NFF).
The Netherlands Film Festival is the initiator of the Fellowships Program, which involves collaboration with a wide range of partner organizations. The three-year research trajectory supports the professional development of the makers and contributes to innovation in the sector at the intersection of society and technology, across disciplines such as science, visual art, film, gaming, design, or other forms of visual culture.
After the presentations, the fellows will engage in conversation with Abdo Hassan. Hassan is a creative technologist, AI ethicist, digital anthropologist, and poet. Based in Amsterdam, he works at the intersection of code, critique, and care. His work blends computer science, critical theory, and storytelling to build technologies that empower rather than extract, and that question rather than optimize.
Moderation by Dymhie Braun
This event is free of charge but there are limited tickets available, so please sign up to secure your ticket. Participation in this event is mandatory for 2024-25 students in MA Arts and Society. If you are part of this cohort, you are already registered for the event.
Read more about the 2024-25 fellows below.
Simone C. Niquille is a Swiss designer and researcher based in Amsterdam. Through technoflesh Studio, she produces films and writing that investigate computation as the new optics. Her work focuses on visionary technologies, the images they make and worlds they create —from computer vision, 3D animation, and computational photography to synthetic training datasets. During her research period, Niquille focuses on how storytelling can be used to intertwine the history of computer vision technology and children’s television. She specifically focuses on machine learning: explaining, documenting, and commenting on its development while also using the technology to create the children’s series itself.
Radical Data, founded by Jo Kroese and Rayén Mitrovich, is a collective of experts in mathematics, technology, dance, and design. They believe that data, used with care, can move us towards a world that is autonomous, just and joyful. They create data analyses and digital tools that are infused with queerness and decoloniality. In their research proposal, they focus on ‘Applied Science Fiction’. This is a research trajectory aimed at telling new, powerful stories that move beyond the dichotomy of technological dystopia and utopia. With this ‘third way’, they aim to create new, bolder narratives about the future.
Victorine van Alphen is a transdisciplinary researcher, audiovisual artist, futurologist, curator, and philosopher from Amsterdam. In her work, she plays with our present from a future perspective. She is intrigued by the human tension between sensual experience and rationality, between senses and systems, and creates and discusses meaning through the experimental use of various media and methods. In 2021, she won the Golden Calf for Best Digital Culture Production with her work IVF-X: Posthuman Parenting in Hybrid Reality. In her research project The Oracle: a Transformance, van Alphen works on a futuristic life- and technology-affirming ritual for humans, robots, and images, where the viewer is taken on an immersive, sensual, and rousing journey through a ‘hypermedial’ choreography. Her main question focuses on how we can relate to an unknown and ‘post-physical’, or hybrid, future in which (human) life and technology merge.
Meet the Makers is a series by The Creative Humanities Academy, a platform that fosters collaboration and knowledge exchange between cultural and creative professionals and academic researchers and students. Here you will find the full Meet the Makers programme and archive.