(In-person) TrAIN Open Lecture: Gabriel Menotti and German Alfonso Nunez

Slop and Opera: Imaginaries of Brazilian Modernity, 1980s–2020s

Developing from the intellectual concerns of their recent book, Barbarian Currents, this joint presentation asks how successive information and communication technologies, from videotext and early computer networks to television, the internet and generative AI, have shaped broader imaginaries of Brazilian modernity. What continuities and ruptures connect the technological promises of the 1980s and 1990s to the contemporary proliferation of AI-generated cultural forms and “slop”? Bringing together their current research on early digital culture, television and recent generative AI systems, they consider how technological change has repeatedly been imagined as a break with the past, while remaining entangled with older structures of dependency, inequality and cultural authority.

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Filming and photography notice

Please note: film and photography may be taking place at this event. All images and footage may be published on the College websites, social media channels and in print. The lecture will be broadcast at a later date via TrAIN's YouTube channel.

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