Future Speculations Reading Group

The Future Speculations Reading Group (FSRG) is open to academics from UoB, UWE as well as artists and creative technologists from the Pervasive Media Studio and other creative tech groups. We engage with the methodologies of scholars, artists and writers to explore shifting patterns of creative relations between humans, machines and technologies. The aim is to discuss human and machine creativity together, whilst addressing the blurred divides between digital and analogue, real and virtual, and online and offline. This is an interactive reading group where participants propose texts, work-in-progress papers, article ideas, or creative/performance response in the hope of creating a space for critical speculation and for present and future imaginings inspired by the potentialities and problematics of human-machine collaboration.

We meet on Tuesdays from 6-7.30pm at the Pervasive Media Studio. This is ran by Katy Dadacz (Comparative Literature PhD) and Dr Francesco Bentivegna (Theatre).

The Centre for Sociodigital Futures runs a sibling reading group which runs in the day.

If you would like to get in touch or find out more please email katy.dadacz@bristol.ac.uk 

2025 Dates

CCT Evening Reading Group:

21/01, 11/02, 4/03, 1/04, 6/05, 3/06, 4/07

CenSof Day Reading Group:

27/01, 3/03, 31/03, 12/05, 9/06, 14/07

Readings

03/12 Thinking with Space

Reeves, J., & Stoneman, E. From the Confessional Booth to Digital Enclosures: Absolution as Cultural Technique 

An extract from Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem

05/11 Thinking with Time

Is Long-Term Thinking a Trap?: Chronowashing, Temporal Narcissism, and the Time Machines of Racism by Michelle Bastian 

Stop the Clock! A poem from Experiments in Imagining Otherwise by Lola Olufemi

15/10 Author Visit!

Towards a Future Tech by Mother Cyborg

24/09 Summer Reading 

Unauthorised Bread in Radicalized by Cory Doctorow.

16/04 Afro-Futurist Film and Digital Waste 

Neptune Frost (we will be viewing this together on 15/04)

05/03 Emerging Landscapes in Art and Technology

Issue 2 of ShiftSpace Journal (writing from K Allado McDowell, Mary Maggic, Simone Brown and Mother Cyborg and more)

13/02 Speculative Short Stories and Social Justice 

Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements, edited by adrienne maree brown and Walidah Imarisha.

23/01 Science Fiction

Lilith’s Brood by Octavia Butler

12/11 Techno-Magic

Chapter 7 Cyberspace: The Virtual Craft in TechnoGnosis: myth, magic and mysticism in the age of information  by Eric Davis.

21/10 AI Imaginings 

Chapter 5 Post-Machinic Learning & Anti-fascist AI in Dan McQuillan Resisting AI 

31/09 Beyond Human Intelligence

Chapter 1 Thinking Otherwise in James Bridle Ways of Being 

19/09 Queer Tech Meet Up X FSRG

Hacker Manifesto McKenzie Wark & The Real World of Technology Ursula Franklin

25/05 Decentralised Autonomous Networks (1)

Radical Friends Ruth Catlow & Penny Rafferty

9/05 Cyberpunk 

Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence Mamoru Oshii 

18/04 Science Fiction

The Employees Olga Ravn

21/03 Immersive Practices

‘Virtual reality witness: exploring the ethics of mediated presence’ Kate Nash

‘Feeling good about feeling bad: Virtuous virtual reality and the Automation of racial empathy’  Lisa Nakamura

Queering the Metaverse, a talk by Dr Jacqueline Ristola at the PM Studio which you can read about on our blog

28/02 AI and Creativity

Chapters on Labour and on Classification in The Atlas of AI Kate Crawford

The work of Holly Herndon and Lauren Lee McCarthy

7/02 Artificial Intelligence

Introduction in Atlas of AI Kate Crawford

‘Making Kin with Machines’  Jason Edward Lewis, Noelani Arista, Archer Pechawis and Suzanne Kite Jason

Posthuman Glossary: Altergorithm, AI (Artificial Intelligence) Algorithm and Kin

24/01 Technofeminism

‘Feminist Hacking Resistance through Spaciality’ in The Beautiful Warriors Sophie Toupin

Doing thinking: revisiting computing with artistic research and technofeminism Loren Britton, Goda Klumbyte & Claude Draude

Posthuman Glossary: Quantum Anthropology, Resilience, and Survival

13/12 Glitch

Glitch Feminism Legacy Russell

Posthuman Glossary: Hacking Habitat, Hypersocial, Informatic Opacity, Trans*, Xenofeminism

29/11 Techno-Creativity

Chapter 1 Beyond the Creative Species Oliver Brown

Posthuman Glossary: Anthropocene, Art in the Anthropocene, Computational Turn, In/Human, Biological Arts/Living Arts