ITHACA, N.Y. -- Do computers have feelings? The significance of "affect" in both technological design and digital art is the focus of a two-day interdisciplinary symposium, "Affect, Interaction and Technology," April 22-23 on the Cornell University campus. For a complete schedule with listing of speakers and talks, visit the event Web site. All events are free and open to the public.

The symposium opens at 5 p.m. Friday, April 22, with a keynote address by Lynn Hershman Leeson, professor of art and art history, University of California-Davis, and a Cornell A.D. White Professor-at-Large. Leeson's talk, "The Raw Data Diet -- the Shape of Things to Come," will be given in Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall. It will be followed by a reception.

The interdisciplinary symposium brings together theoreticians and practitioners from the arts, humanities, sciences and social sciences to examine and better understand the role of affect in the relationship between people and computational systems. "Affect" is a hot term in the fields of information sciences and digital arts, and what it means exactly is a subject for discussion. Speakers will cover questions such as how an increasing focus on affect alters notions of the person as embodied in interactive technologies, and whether it is possible to develop digital practices around affect and interaction based on more complex, theoretically grounded conceptions.

The symposium is co-sponsored by the Visual Studies program, the Department History of Art, Faculty of Computing and Information Science, Department of Science and Technology Studies, and the Society for the Humanities with additional support from the A.D. White Professors-at-Large Program.

Questions about the symposium can be sent to co-organizers María Fernández, assistant professor of art history, at mf252@cornell.edu, or Phoebe Sengers, assistant professor of information science, at sengers@cs.cornell.edu .