#tresdancing: A virtual film launch

sava saheli singh, Lesley Marshall, Hingman Leung, Tim Maughan and Ann Tunkara
in conversation with Valerie Steeves
 
Tuesday, February 22, 2022
at 11:30 ET
Register here

Presentation
Join us for a virtual screening of #tresdancing and a conversation with the team behind this new film on surveillance and algorithms in educational technology.

The sudden shift from in-person to online classes due to COVID 19 has led to increasingly invasive surveillance technologies in education, including the use of problematic online proctoring software purportedly aimed at addressing academic integrity. 

The fourth film in the Screening Surveillance series, #tresdancing speculates on the effects of escalating surveillance and control through educational technology. In this near future fiction narrative, a young person has little choice as they are forced to ramp up their engagement with a new, experimental technology in order to make up for a failing grade.

The event will open with a virtual screening of the short film, followed by a conversation lead by Dr. Valerie Steeves with creator Dr. sava saheli singh, director Hingman Leung, co-producer Lesley Marshall, screenplay writer Tim Maughan, as well as actor Ann Tunkara who plays the lead character, Frankie.
 
This event and the movie are made possible thanks to the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada and the Scotiabank Fund for AI and Society at the University of Ottawa.
 
About the speakers
Dr. sava saheli singh is the creator, co-writer, and co-producer of #tresdancing. Currently a Research Fellow on Surveillance, Society, and Technology with the University of Ottawa Centre for Law, Technology and Society, she was previously the Scotiabank-eQuality Postdoctoral Fellow at the AI + Society Initiative, and before with the Surveillance Studies Centre at Queen’s University. sava is an academic, filmmaker, and public scholar based at the University of Ottawa, which is located within the traditional territory of the Algonquin Nation. She is an interdisciplinary scholar working at the nexus of media, surveillance, speculative futures, and intersectional marginality, with a strong commitment to community-based public scholarship. sava created the SSHRC and OPC funded multi award winning knowledge translation project, Screening Surveillance – a film series for which she co-produced four speculative fiction short films, co-writing one of them. The films have been screened at film festivals, international conferences, workshops, global public events and in classrooms across the world.

Hingman Leung is the director of #tresdancing. Whether it's through her work in health research or as community builder and filmmaker, Hingman Leung is driven by the core value of making an impact for social good. She is a multiple award-winning director, with her most recent short film, Curbside Pickup, reaching top three on CBC's Short Film Face Off. Her work has appeared on CBC, Apartment613, and Rogers TV, collaborating with a variety of local arts and culture organizations as a videographer and editor. In 2020, she was named by CBC as one of ten Trailblazers in Ottawa for her work in representation in media.

Lesley Marshall is the co-producer of #tresdancing. Lesley Marshall is a US/Canadian intermedia artist currently working on independent a/v projects with her company MAVN (Marshall Audio Visual Network). An award-winning filmmaker with films appearing in 40 festivals nationally and internationally, music videos by Lesley Mashall have been featured on Rolling Stone, American Songwriter, Vice, Exclaim!, Brooklyn Vegan, Aux, Rookie Mag, Stereogum, ClashMag and UPROXX. Lesley Marshall’s cinematography and editing of the 2019 Inside Out selected webseries “Village Legacy Project” can be seen on OutTV. Projection art by Lesley Marshall has been performed at the National Art Centre, Montreal Jazz Fest, and CentrePHI. Stay tuned for upcoming media art presentations of Lesley Marshall and collaborator Ashley Bowa’s Green Gazing, a touring project combining movement, meditation, video and plants.

Tim Maughan is the co-writer of #tresdancing. Tim Maughan is an author and journalist using both fiction and non-fiction to explore issues around cities, class, culture, technology, and the future. His work has appeared on the BBC, New Scientist, MIT Technology Review, One Zero, and Vice/Motherboard. His debut novel INFINITE DETAIL was published by FSG in 2019, and selected by The Guardian as their Science Fiction and Fantasy book of the year and shortlisted for the Locus Magazine Award for Best First Novel. He also uses fiction to help clients as diverse as IKEA and the World Health Organization to think critically about the future. He often collaborates with artists and filmmakers, and has had work shown at the V&A, Columbia School of Architecture, the Vienna Biennale, and on Channel 4. He currently lives in Canada.

Ann Tunkara is the 15 year old lead actress of #tresdancing. She was born in Hamilton, Ontario and raised in Ottawa. She has been acting since she was 4 years old and dancing since she was 8. She has a brother named Francis who is also a dancer. Dancing and acting are two things she loves doing and this role included both. Her other hobbies include doing nails, modelling, and playing volleyball.
 
Moderator
Dr. Valerie Steeves is a Full Professor in the Department of Criminology at the University of Ottawa, where she is a Faculty member of Centre for Law, Technology and Society. Her main area of research is human rights and technology issues. She co-leads (with Jane Bailey) The eQuality Project, a 7-year partnership initiative funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, focused on the ways in which big data practices contribute to a discriminatory environment that sets young people up for conflict and harassment. In addition, she is a co-investigator in two other SSHRC funded partnerships: one looking at Big Data Surveillance, and the other focused on addressing Rape Culture on University Campuses. She has written and spoken extensively on privacy from a human rights perspective, and is an active participant in the privacy policy making process in Canada.
 
This event will be in English only. This event will be recorded.