Public Lecture: Fri, Feb 11, 12:20 PM - 01:10 PM MT, on Zoom
"Automating Affect"
Dr. Daniel White
Senior Research Associate, Department of
Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge
For further information, email:
kathryn.goldfarb@colorado.edu

This event is free and open to the public
Sponsored by the Center for Humanities & the Arts
and the Center for Asian Studies, University of
Colorado Boulder

What is an affect automated? This lecture situates
discussions on affect, emotion, and technology in
anthropology in the context of contemporary Japan. It
asks what happens to the culturally specific dimensions
of affective experience when it is 1) formulated as a
theory, 2) modeled in a machine, and 3) used as a
technological tool to collect data and interpret human
behavior. The lecture will explore this question through
examples of social robots in Japan with so-called artificial
emotional intelligence. It will then use these examples to
examine how hierarchies of state power and gender are
reproduced through algorithmic embodiments.