Chelsea Manning

Chelsea Manning talk at Roskilde Festival

Background

In 2018, I invited Chelsea Manning (CM) to speak at the Gloria Stage as part of our Equality theme. The talk, moderated by Sebastian Gjerding from the newspaper Information, focused on transgender rights and public transparency in a digitized world, two topics that CM can personally relate to.

Challenge

We anticipated a large turnout for the talk. However, do attendees truly consider how algorithms influence their choices, behavior, and perception in their everyday lives?

Solution

To prompt a reflection I curated the gifted Andreas Refsgaard who could turn our idea into reality. The outcome was this digital art piece "In Algorithms We Trust" which Andreas describes like this:

The video below demonstrates user interaction with the algorithm and the required responses. The purpose was to prompt users to reflect on the odd questions and overall experience.

Outcome

The talk was held inside the Gloria stage in an itimate setting. Gloria was completely full and long lines where formed outside the stage. The talk was a great success and we received a lot of positive feedback from the attendees. The piece was also featured in the local media and on social media.

Hundreds of users interacted with the art piece, which included chosen questions for Chelsea Manning to answer at the end of the talk.