Critical Media Lab

Getting started with micro:bit workshop
2024-03-08 13:30 - 15:00 UTC | Critical Media Lab, ECH 1205, University of Waterloo
In-person workshop at the Critical Media Lab (151 Charles St W, Kitchener)
Friday, March 8 at 1:30 PM
This workshop is designed for anyone who is interested in getting started with microcomputers but doesn’t know where to begin. For better or worse, microcomputers like the RaspberryPI and Arduino have become synonymous with maker culture and DYI projects, offering modestly powerful computing in a pocket-sized package. As more rhetorical work embraces field work, on the surface these relatively inexpensive tools seem to offer nearly unlimited potential for extendibility, but the barriers to entry are often steeper than imagined, with coding, finding support, and troubleshooting hardware faults all potential pitfalls. Using the BBC micro:bit as a platform, this workshop will guide attendees in the basics of its onboard sensors including sound, light, and temperature, to create an environmental logger. As attendees build a device that interacts with their surroundings they’ll be encouraged to think through how things and humans “co-shape each other” (Wakkary). No previous experience with microcomputers or coding is required.
The workshop will be facilitated by PhD candidate in the Department of English, Chris Rogers.
Please RSVP using the QR code on the poster. Contact medialab@uwaterloo.ca with any additional questions.

Critical Media Lab Showcase
2023-08-02 17:00 - 19:00 UTC | Critical Media Lab, ECH 1205, University of Waterloo
The Critical Media Lab is thrilled to invite our colleagues and friends to our project showcase. Student work from ENGL 494, CS 889, and the XDM master’s program will be on display. Please join us to celebrate the creative and critical works of our fantastic students!
This event will be held in Area 151 at the Communitech Hub (151 Charles St. W, Kitchener, Ontario) on Wednesday August 2, 2023.
Please contact engl-cml@uwaterloo.ca for more information.
Poster Design by Bella Goudie

Critical Tech Talk 3: AI Five Ways
2022-05-16 19:00 - 21:00 UTC
As artificial intelligence grows more prevalent every day, even to the point of making life-and-death decisions for humans, principles of Responsible AI must be implemented to ensure safety, dignity, privacy, and autonomy for all. In this roundtable discussion, hear from five experts across different professional and disciplinary backgrounds on their approaches to the field and perspectives on the future of responsible AI.

Critical Tech Talk 2: Wendy Chun
2022-02-10 19:00 - 21:00 (America/New_York)
The SECOND event in this series of honest talks about innovation features Wendy Chun, Director of the Digital Democracies Institute.

Posters for Student Activism - a Visual/Sonic Online Workshop Event
2022-01-27 15:30 - 17:00 (America/New_York)
Feed your creative being while connecting to the themes of UWaterloo’s Critical Tech Talk Series discussing the ethics of Technology.

The Nature of Experiment
2019-04-08 09:30 - 17:00 UTC | Hagey Hall, 200 University Avenue, Waterloo, N2L 3G1, Canada
THE NATURE OF EXPERIMENT: INTELLIGENCE, LIFE, AND THE HUMAN
Mary Shelley’s famous invocation of human experimentation gone wrong is 200 years old, but remains as vibrant an analysis of the human implication of scientific insight as it did when it was first published; perhaps more so in an age on the verge of breakthroughs in both AI and bioengineering. This conference will approach the intersections of intelligence, life, and the human from a unique perspective, through the concept and practice of the “experiment,” both today and in the past.

Since the incorporation of the Royal Society in the 1660s, the experiment has been a central locus of both knowledge creation and design in our cultures and societies. Poets, engineers, scholars, entrepreneurs, and scientists all conduct experiments, and have done so for centuries. Today, experiment embraces information and data in new ways to create a host of new devices and vehicles. In this era of emerging AI, it is timely to ask practitioners in all these fields to reflect on what it means to “experiment.”
Sponsored by the Waterloo Centre for German Studies, Faculty of Arts, Department of Philosophy, and Department of English Language and Literature.
For more information please visit our website.

Infrastructure at Play - Winter 2019 Exhibition
2019-04-03 16:00 - 19:00 UTC | Critical Media Lab, ECH 1205, University of Waterloo
Join us for Infrastructure at Play, the annual Critical Media Lab exhibition featuring projects developed independently and in classes.
Featured in the show are Fine Arts students taught by Dr. Jessica Thompson (Fine Arts), Dr. Dan Vogel (Computer Science), Dr. Lois Andison (Fine Arts), Dr. Rob Gorbet (Knowledge Integration), as well as English students taught by Dr. Lai-Tze Fan.
Also, a live performance led by Matthew Borland of the University of Waterloo Tape Music Club will be held at 6PM!

This event is catered and licensed.

Salon Talk: "Talking Trash" with Lai-Tze Fan and Sabine Weber
2019-03-27 17:00 - 19:00 UTC | Critical Media Lab, ECH 1205, University of Waterloo
