Ältere Veranstaltungen finden Sie im Archiv!
Videoaufnahmen ausgewählter Vorträge und Veranstaltungen finden Sie in unserer Mediathek!
Community and/in Collaboration:
Exploring Cultural Mediation and Spatial Research
Please register by Dec 10 by writing an email to Nina ter Laan.
About the Masterclass
As Anthropology encounters a world increasingly shaped by mediated exchanges across diverse physical and cultural spaces, researchers are called to innovate methods that engage more dynamically with the communities they study and work with. This masterclass invites participants to explore how contemporary ethnographic practices can harness the potential of spatial analysis and transmedia work to deepen our understanding of social phenomena and better support community-driven processes.
Our guiding question will be: How can we develop ethnographic methods that work in tandem with public audiences to build collective insights and promote social justice? In a two-day program, participants will examine the potential of ethnographic work that engages publics and stakeholders through different case studies, focusing on how cultural mediation and critical spatial practices can redefine research approaches.
This masterclass combines conceptual discussions with hands-on activities, offering participants the time to explore tools that integrate diverse methodologies to enhance collaborative and participatory approaches to their projects. Some of the methods that will be presented and practiced include: social cartography, body mapping, sensorial ethnography, curatorial practice and cultural mediation, community archives and anarchivism, popular pedagogies, amongst others. No previous experience with the methods or the topics is required to participate fully in this masterclass.
This masterclass will be imparted in English.
Key topics include:
Access: If you have questions of accessibility to this masterclass, please contact Luciana at luciana@espacial.coop. We will do our best to accommodate any needs.
About Luciana Serrano
Luciana Serrano (b.1988, Buenos Aires) is a practice-based-researcher living in Argentina. Her expanded practice involves community-led research, interdisciplinary projects and cultural management with a focus on spatial justice. Her recent work explores critical spatial practices focusing on memory, identity and belonging connected to the material realm. These initiatives have been found of value in spaces such as popular education projects, academic conferences, human rights initiatives, art residencies, and policy design and evaluation. Luciana has been a guest lecturer in Argentina at Universidad Nacional de San Martín, Universidad Nacional de las Artes, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Universidad Nacional de Rosario, Profesorado Popular de Historia Osvaldo Bayer, and internationally in Universidad de la República, Leeds University, School for International Training, amongst others. Luciana also was a 2023 Fellow at the Institute for Critical Social Inquiry at the New School, and participated in art residencies in Brazil, Chile and Argentina. Her consultancy work, commissions, publications and collaborations include projects with Virginia Tech University, the National Ministry of Culture of Argentina, Tierra Narrative Collective, Arena Documenta, FAN digital magazine (Fantasías Arquitectónicas Nerviosas), Centro Cultural Kirchner, World Learning, the Direction of Creative Industries of the City of Buenos Aires, Embassy of France in Argentina, Contested Territories, Nuevo Oro magazine, Bienal Arte Joven Buenos Aires, and Curatoría Forense. She has been the editor of PURGA magazine, a member of Ciudad del Deseo feminist urbanism collective, and is currently the President of the Cooperativa Espacial work coop. Luciana’s training includes a background in Socio-Cultural Anthropology, Experiential Learning, and Transmedia Narratives.
More info:
Mit dem Bundle Explorer Sinnespraktiken in digitalen Kindheiten untersuchen.
mit Bina E. Mohn (Zentrum für Kamera-Ethnographie, Berlin) und Astrid Vogelpohl (Uni Siegen, SFB „Medien der Kooperation“)
Anmeldungen bitte bis zum 06.12.2024 an Astrid Vogelpohl.
Zum Blicklabor „Berührung“
Der Bundle Explorer ist eine von Bina E. Mohn und Astrid Vogelpohl entwickelte multimediale Forschungsplattform, die im Rahmen einer Orientierung der Kamera-Ethnographie an Wittgenstein entstanden ist, an seinem Sprachspiel Ansatz (grammatische Untersuchung) und der Abwandlung in eine ‚zeigende Grammatik‘. Mit dem Bundle Explorer lässt sich an kurzen Filmen untersuchen, wie Praktiken mit Praktiken gebündelt auftreten und wie ihre Umgebungen und materiellen Settings daran partizipieren. Die Identifizierung der Bündel, in die Praktiken verwoben sind, eröffnet einen Zugang zur jeweiligen Situierung; das Spektrum an Situierungen wiederum bietet die Basis für eine praxeologische Konturierung von ‚Berührung‘ als Praxis und Begriff. Auf selbstgewählten Wegen durch den Explorer ergeben sich Vergleiche, Unterscheidungen und Zuordnungen, schließlich auch Kategorien, Überschneidungen und Grenzfälle.
Der Prototyp „Bundle Explorer: Berührung“ untersucht Berührungspraktiken im Feld der frühen Kindheit und eröffnet darüber ein neues Verständnis situierter Sinnespraktiken in digitalisierten Alltagswelten. Im Umgang mit dem „Bundle Explorer“ werden im Rahmen des eintägigen Workshops Erkundungspfade und Denkwege erprobt und diskutiert.
Die Veranstaltung wendet sich an Promovierende, Postdocs und Forschende aus den Medien-und Erziehungswissenschaften, Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften.
Diskutant*innen:
Birgit Griesecke (Japanologin und Philosophin, Schwerpunkt Philosophie Wittgensteins, Berlin)
Klaus Amann (Wissenschaftssoziologe und Bildungsberater, Schwerpunkt Methodenentwicklung, Dörsdorf)
Jochen Lange (Erziehungswissenschaftler, Schwerpunkt Digitalisierung, Materialität und Medialität in Kindheit und Schule, Uni Siegen, SFB ‚Medien der Kooperation‘)
Programm
09:30 – 11:00 Präsentation: Bundle Explorer ‚Berührung‘
11:00 – 11:15 Kaffeepause
11:15 – 12:30 Werkstattphase: Erprobung von Wegen durch den Bundle Explorer und Formulierung eigener Beobachtungen und Gedanken
12:30 – 13:30 Mittagspause
13:30 – 14:30 Austausch der Erfahrungen mit dem Bundle Explorer ‚Berührung‘
14:30 –15:00 Feedback zu Ansatz und Umsetzung des ‚Bundle Explorer‘
Die Vorstandssitzungen enthalten Berichte, Themenpunkte und Verschiedenes, die für alle SFB Mitglieder öffentlich sind. Personenbezogene Anträge und Finanzen sind nicht öffentlich und werden nach dem öffentlichen Teil besprochen. Webex-Links für Online-Teilnahmen werden am vorherigen Freitag verschickt. Teilnahme vor Ort ist möglich.
Digitale Protokolle des öffentlichen Teils werden über sciebo zur Verfügung gestellt.
Surveillance technologies have grown increasingly into the very fabric of urban landscape across the globe. Sometimes these go unnoticed, sometimes they are veiled under the pretence of smart city developments that render the deep embedding of sensory technology into our immediate surroundings a false declared beacon of progress and interconnected life. Forensis and Forensic Architecture develop methods to critically scrutinise the violence of state, corporate and environmental actors. Using a wide array of digital tools and spatial reconstruction techniques we have turned our investigations towards surveillance technologies, documenting their abuse and embedding in regimes of occupational, colonial and state violence. The lecture and workshop will show both case specific examples of counter-surveillance work as well as illustrate the ways through which open-source investigative techniques, testimonial work, and spatial research methods can intersect to document, counter and resist ever more present surveillance.
Tobechukwu Onwukeme. In May 2022, Tobechukwu Onwukeme received his Bachelor of Science(B.Sc) from the University of Utah’s Multi-Disciplinary Design School, where his undergraduate thesis proposed the confluence of computational, architectural, and material design tools in response to environmental violence against migratory wildlife in the Americas, Eastern Europe, and West Africa. The project won the program’s thesis prize. Prior to joining Forensis he worked at various labs and agencies as a design technologist where he designed and developed applications for computer vision, sensors, ML, data sonification, and material fabrication.
Jasper Julius Humpert is a multidisciplinary researcher and artist. At FA and Forensis, Jasper works in the editorial and investigative teams across various topics. Focusing on the interpretation of the overlap of the written and the seen, his research revolves around the investigation of state brutality, extrajudicial violence and regimes of environmental destruction. Jasper received an MSc at the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford, and completed his studies in Philosophy, Journalism and Visual Anthropology in universities of Maastricht, Netherlands, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and London, United Kingdom. Prior to his work at FA, Jasper worked as a researcher and political organiser and activist in The Hague, Berlin and Rio de Janeiro.
Forensic Architecture (FA) is a research agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London. Our mandate is to develop, employ, and disseminate new techniques, methods, and concepts for investigating state and corporate violence. Our team includes architects, software developers, filmmakers, investigative journalists, scientists, and lawyers.
We are an interdisciplinary agency operating across human rights, journalism, architecture, art and aesthetics, academia and the law. In 2022, the Peabody Awards programme wrote that we had co-created ‘an entire new academic field and emergent media practice’; in 2024, the European Research Council assessed Forensic Architecture as ‘a scientific breakthrough (defined as a revolutionary work that led to deep change in existing paradigms or new methods opening a new stream of research)’.
Since 2020, FA has supported the growth of agencies worldwide that practice and apply our methods. The Investigative Commons is both a global network of practitioners, and a physical space in Berlin, within the offices of our sister agency Forensis.
Where does Internet Advertising come from? A Political Economic Perspective
Thu, 08.10.24 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Matthew Crain (Miami University) ➞
Sreda Theory: Environments, Media, and the Soviet Prehistory to Artificial Intelligence
Wed, 23.10.24 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Benjamin Peters (University of Tulsa) ➞
Finding A Smart Homeplace Or: How to Slip the Grip of Digitality in the Smart Home Age
Wed, 06.11.24 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Heather Woods (Kansas State University) ➞
In Digital Platforms We Trust: Data Capture and Pre-Emptive Governance in Tech Companies’ Environmental Policies and Initiatives
20.11.24 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Emily West (University of Massachusetts Amherst) ➞
Opening Up Opaque Infrastructures
04.12.24 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Donald Mackenzie (University of Edinburgh) ➞
Architecture of Surveillance, Methods of Resistance
18.12.24 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Forensic Architecture ➞
Hidden Advertising as a Systemic Risk in European Platform Regulation
08.01.25 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Catalina Goanta (Utretch University) ➞
Toxic Environments: Possible Media
22.01.25 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Samia Henni (ETH Zurich) ➞
All events take place in hybrid form (on site and via Webex). If you would like to attend on site, no registration is required. To attend the lecture online via Webex, please register here.
more info tba
Social media platforms have been thriving for the past decade. Their main business models have been relying on advertising in the form of getting paid by companies – and any other interested party – to display ads in the feeds of their users. Traditionally, such ads have been mimicking the clear demarcation of advertising from the content of radio and television programmes. Decades of media regulation led to a status quo where advertising needs to be very clearly disclosed, in order to preserve the consumer’s agency and freedom of decision-making, and avoid manipulation. Yet with the rise of user-generated advertising in the form of influencer marketing, this demarcation has been not only increasingly lost, but also very much challenged. Viral videos of creators engaging in enticing story-telling can feature product placements, promote own brands of goods or services, or offer discounts through affiliate marketing. The general perception by creators is that disclosing their sponsored content can be detrimental for their reach, and thus even when they may be aware of their legal obligations, they generally choose to not comply with the law. The Digital Services Act introduced a new set of obligations for platforms that are deemed to have such a high impact on consumers that they received their own extra liabilities (Very Large Online Platforms – VLOPs). According to Art. 34 DSA, VLOPs must identify systemic risks and take mitigation strategies against them. The DSA does not define systemic risks, but it includes the dissemination of illegal content in this category. Hidden advertising is a form of illegal content, as it violates disclosure obligations under EU and national advertising rules pertaining to consumer protection. This contribution makes the argument that hidden advertising can be considered a systemic risk, first by reporting on the empirical evidence from computer science literature on the meager volume of influencer disclosures on social media, and second by addressing the impact of such non-disclosures under the DSA. In doing so, the contribution also asks whether disclosures are still relevant for social media advertising given the changing preferences and information literacy of new generations of consumers such as gen z.
Dr. Catalina Goanta is Associate Professor in Private Law and Technology and Principal Investigator of the ERC Starting Grant HUMANads, focused on understanding the impact of content monetization on social media and on reinterpreting private law fairness in the context of platform governance.
Between 2016-2021 she was Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law at Maastricht University, and during February 2018 – February 2019, she was granted a Niels Stensen fellowship and visited the University of St. Gallen (The Institute of Work and Employment) and Harvard University (The Berkman Center for Internet and Society). Dr. Goanta is also an expert trainer in the European Commission’s E-Enforcement Academy, where she gives trainings on computational investigations of European consumer protection violations on digital markets. In this context, she also co-developed the first European influencer education resource on consumer protection and social media advertising, the Influencer Legal Hub.
Where does Internet Advertising come from? A Political Economic Perspective
Thu, 08.10.24 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Matthew Crain (Miami University) ➞
Sreda Theory: Environments, Media, and the Soviet Prehistory to Artificial Intelligence
Wed, 23.10.24 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Benjamin Peters (University of Tulsa) ➞
Finding A Smart Homeplace Or: How to Slip the Grip of Digitality in the Smart Home Age
Wed, 06.11.24 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Heather Woods (Kansas State University) ➞
In Digital Platforms We Trust: Data Capture and Pre-Emptive Governance in Tech Companies’ Environmental Policies and Initiatives
20.11.24 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Emily West (University of Massachusetts Amherst) ➞
Opening Up Opaque Infrastructures
04.12.24 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Donald Mackenzie (University of Edinburgh) ➞
Architecture of Surveillance, Methods of Resistance
18.12.24 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Forensic Architecture ➞
Hidden Advertising as a Systemic Risk in European Platform Regulation
08.01.25 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Catalina Goanta (Utretch University) ➞
Toxic Environments: Possible Media
22.01.25 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Samia Henni (ETH Zurich) ➞
All events take place in hybrid form (on site and via Webex). If you would like to attend on site, no registration is required. To attend the lecture online via Webex, please register here.
Die Vorstandssitzungen enthalten Berichte, Themenpunkte und Verschiedenes, die für alle SFB Mitglieder öffentlich sind. Personenbezogene Anträge und Finanzen sind nicht öffentlich und werden nach dem öffentlichen Teil besprochen. Webex-Links für Online-Teilnahmen werden am vorherigen Freitag verschickt. Teilnahme vor Ort ist möglich.
Digitale Protokolle des öffentlichen Teils werden über sciebo zur Verfügung gestellt.
Between 1960 and 1966, the French colonial regime detonated four atmospheric atomic bombs, thirteen underground nuclear bombs, and conducted other nuclear experiments in the Algerian Sahara, whose natural resources were being extracted in the process. This secret nuclear weapons program, whose archives are still classified, occurred during and after the Algerian Revolution, or the Algerian War of Independence (1954–62). This lecture introduces three media through which these histories and stories have been exposed: a series of translations, a traveling exhibtion and a book. Titled Colonial Toxicity: Rehearsing French Radioactive Architecture and Landscape in the Sahara, this printed manuscript brings together nearly six hundred pages of materials documenting this violent history of France’s nuclear bomb programme in the Algerian desert. Meticulously culled together from across available, offered, contraband, and leaked sources, the book is a rich repository for all those concerned with histories of nuclear weapons and engaged at the intersections of spatial, social and environmental justice, as well as anticolonial archival practices.
Samia Henni is a historian of the built, destroyed and imagined environments. She is the author of the multi-award-winning Architecture of Counterrevolution: The French Army in Northern Algeria (gta Verlag 2017, 2022, EN; Editions B42, 2019, FR) and Colonial Toxicity: Rehearsing French Radioactive Architecture and Landscape in the Sahara (If I Can’t Dance, Framer Framed, edition fink, 2024). She is the editor of Deserts Are Not Empty (Columbia Books on Architecture and the City, 2022) and War Zones (gta Verlag, 2018). She is also the maker of exhibitions, such as Performing Colonial Toxicity (Framer Framed, If I Can’t Dance, Amsterdam; gta Exhibitions, Zurich; The Mosaic Rooms, London, 2023–04), Discreet Violence: Architecture and the French War in Algeria (Zurich, Rotterdam, Berlin, Johannesburg, Paris, Prague, Ithaca, Philadelphia, Charlottesville, 2017–22), Archives: Secret-Défense? (ifa Gallery, SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin, 2021), and Housing Pharmacology (Manifesta 13, Marseille, 2020). Currently, she teaches at McGill University’s Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture in Montreal and co-chairs the University Seminar “Beyond France” at Columbia University.
Where does Internet Advertising come from? A Political Economic Perspective
Thu, 08.10.24 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Matthew Crain (Miami University) ➞
Sreda Theory: Environments, Media, and the Soviet Prehistory to Artificial Intelligence
Wed, 23.10.24 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Benjamin Peters (University of Tulsa) ➞
Finding A Smart Homeplace Or: How to Slip the Grip of Digitality in the Smart Home Age
Wed, 06.11.24 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Heather Woods (Kansas State University) ➞
In Digital Platforms We Trust: Data Capture and Pre-Emptive Governance in Tech Companies’ Environmental Policies and Initiatives
20.11.24 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Emily West (University of Massachusetts Amherst) ➞
Opening Up Opaque Infrastructures
04.12.24 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Donald Mackenzie (University of Edinburgh) ➞
Architecture of Surveillance, Methods of Resistance
18.12.24 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Forensic Architecture ➞
Hidden Advertising as a Systemic Risk in European Platform Regulation
08.01.25 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Catalina Goanta (Utretch University) ➞
Toxic Environments: Possible Media
22.01.25 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Samia Henni (ETH Zurich) ➞
All events take place in hybrid form (on site and via Webex). If you would like to attend on site, no registration is required. To attend the lecture online via Webex, please register here.
The Collaborative Research Center 1187 “Media of Cooperation” organizes the one-week winter school at the University of Siegen and invites graduate students, postdoc researchers, and media studies scholars interested in the intersections of AI methods, digital visual methodologies, visual social media, and platforms. The Winter School aims to explore questions centering on the implications of AI methods for new forms of sense-making and human-machine co-creation. Please register via the registration form until December 15 2025 →here.
About the Winter School
As artificial intelligence (AI) technologies rapidly evolve, the ways in which we perceive and process information are fundamentally changing. The shift from computational vision, recognition, and classification to generative AI lies at the core of today’s technological landscape, fueling societal debates across different areas—from open-source intelligence and election security to propaganda, art, activism, and storytelling.
Computer vision, a sophisticated agent of pattern recognition, emerged with the rise of machine learning, sparking critical debates around the fairness of image labelling and the deep-seated biases in training data. Today, models like Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, DALL-E, and more recently, Grok are not just recognizing—they are generating patterns, synthesizing multimodal data from websites, social media, and other online sources to produce oddly familiar and yet captivating results. This shift introduces significant ethical questions: How can we critically repurpose the outputs of AI models that are always rooted in platform infrastructures? Which methodological challenges and creative possibilities arise when the boundaries between context and scale become indistinct? Are patterns and biases all there is? And how about scaling down?
The one-week winter school at the University of Siegen organized by the Collaborative Research Center “Media of Cooperation” invites participants to explore these questions centering on the implications of AI methods for new forms of sense-making and human-machine co-creation. The winter school is practice-based and brings together conceptual inputs, workshops, and sprinted group projects around two collaborative methods: probing and prompting.
Probing involves repurposing AI systems to explore their underlying mechanisms. It is a method of critical interrogation—for example, using specific collections of images as inputs to reveal how contemporary computer vision models process these inputs and generate descriptions. Probing not only serves to problematize the hidden architectures of AI but also allows us to critically assess their different ‘ways of knowing’—how can alternative computer vision features such as web detection or text-in-image recognition help us contextualize and interpret visual data?
On the other hand, prompting refers to the practice of engaging GenAI models through input commands to generate multimodal content. Prompting emphasizes the participatory aspect of AI, framing it as a tool for human-machine co-creation, but it also shows the models’ limitations and inherent tensions. AI-generated creations captivate us, yet they also pose the risk of hallucination or what philosopher Harry Frankfurt might call “bullshit”— statements the models confidently present as facts, regardless of their detachment from reality.
The first day of the Winter School will be hybrid. Project group work will be taking place on site.
Program highlights
Participants will have the opportunity to explore and attune these methods to different research scenarios including tracing the spread of propaganda memes/deepfakes, analyzing AI-generated images, and ‘jailbreaking’ or prompting against platforms’ content policy restrictions. A blend of research practice and critical reflection, the winter school features
a keynote by Jill Walker Rettberg (University of Bergen) on “Qualitiative methods for analysing generative AI: Experiences with machine vision and AI storytelling”
two hands-on workshops on mixed techniques for probing and prompting facilitated by Carlo de Gaetano (Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences), Andrea Benedetti (Density Design, Politecnico di Milano), Elena Pilipets (University of Siegen), and Marloes Geboers (University of Amsterdam)
two project tracks intended to combine AI methods with qualitative approaches and ethical data storytelling.
Track 1 “Fabricating the People: Probing AI Detection for Audio-Visual Content in Turkish TikTok” led by Lena Teigeler and Duygu Karatas (both University of Siegen)
Track 2 “Jail(break)ing: Synthetic Imaginaries of ‘sensitive’ AI” led by Elena Pilipets (University of Siegen) and Marloes Geboers (University of Amsterdam)
Track I: Fabricating the People: Probing AI Detection for Audio-Visual Content in Turkish TikTok
Lena Teigeler & Duygu Karatas
Several brutal femicides in Türkiye in 2024 led to a wave of outrage, showing in protests both on the streets and on social media. The protesters demand the protection of women against male violence, measures against offenders and criticize the government under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for not standing up for women’s rights, as demonstrated, for example, by Türkiye’s withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention in 2021. One of the cases leading to the protest was allegedly connected to the Turkish “manosphere” and online “incel” community. The manosphere is an informal online network of blogs, forums, and social media communities focused on men’s issues, often promoting views on masculinity, gender roles, and relationships. At the core of these groups often lie misogynistic, and anti-feminist views. Many groups foster toxic attitudes toward women and marginalized groups. Incels, short for „involuntary celibates,“ are one subgroup belonging to the broader manosphere, formed by men who feel unable to form romantic or sexual relationships despite wanting them, often blaming society or women for their frustrations.
The project investigates how the cases of femicide are discussed and negotiated in Turkish TikTok by protesters and within the manosphere and explores how these videos make use of generative AI. The use of AI in video creation can range from entire scene generation, over the creation of sounds or deepfaking, to editing and stylisation. The project takes a sample of TikToks associated with the recent wave of femicides as the starting point and makes use of AI methods for two purposes: 1) To detect the usage of generative AI within a sample of TikToks with the help of image labeling. This can range from fully-generated images, videos or sound, to the usage of tools and techniques used within the creation and editing process. We compare different models for detection purposes. 2) With the help of Web Detection, we trace the spread of videos and images across platform borders and content elements that are assembled or synthesized within TikToks.
The aim of the project is to create a cartography of AI based methods for the investigation of audio-visual content. It is part of the DFG-funded research project “Fabricating the People – negotiation of claims to representation in Turkish social media in the context of generative AI”.
Track II: Track 2 Jail(break)ing: Synthetic Imaginaries of ’sensitive‘ AI
Elena Pilipets & Marloes Geboers
The rapid evolution of AI technology is pushing the boundaries of ethical AI use. Newer models like Grok-2 diverge from traditional, more restrained approaches, raising concerns about biases, moderation, and societal impact. This track explores how three generative AI models—X’s Grok-2, Open AI’s GPT4o, and Microsoft’s Copilot—reimagine controversial content according to—or pushing against—the platforms‘ content policy restrictions. To better understand each model’s response to sensitive prompts, we use a derivative approach: starting with images as inputs, we generate stories around them that guide the creation of new, story-based image outputs. In the process, we employ iterative prompting that blends “jailbreaking”—eliciting responses the model would typically avoid—with “jailing,” or reinforcing platform-imposed constraints. Jail(break)ing, then, exposes the skewed imaginaries inscribed in the models‘ capacity to synthesize compliant outputs: The more iterations it takes to generate a new image the stronger the latent spaces of generative models come to the fore that lay bare the platforms‘ data-informed structures of reasoning.
Addressing the performative nature of automated perception, the track, facilitated by Elena Pilipets and Marloes Geboers, examines six image formations collected from social media, which then were used as prompts to explore six issues: war, memes, art, protest, porn, synthetics. In line with feminist approaches, we attend specifically to the hierarchies of power and (in)visibility perpetuated by GenAI, asking: Which synthetic imaginaries emerge from various issue contexts and what do these imaginaries reveal about the model’s ways
Registration
Please register via the form above until December 15. Your registration will be confirmed by December 20, 2024. Participation is limited to 20 people.
Achieving direct observational/interviewing access to big, data-intensive digital platforms is notoriously difficult, so this paper will follow a materially disruptive episode that renders platform practices more visible. That episode is Apple’s 2021 App Tracking Transparency changes to iPhones. The paper will begin by discussing the material practices of data accumulation involving mobile phones that are highlighted by the disruption, and Apple’s efforts to block those practices. It will then turn to the “messy,” implicit, largely subterranean, conflict that has replaced 2020-21’s fierce, overt controversy. At stake in that conflict are two very different ways of materially organising the data flows crucial to the $500 billion app economy. The paper draws upon 111 interviews with 88 practitioners of digital advertising and related technical specialists, along with extensive participation in sector meetings, and, e.g., a training course on the advertising of games and other apps.
Donald Mackenzie is a sociologist of science and technology, and his research aims to throw new light on their role in shaping the modern world. He works on topics such as how financial-market participants use mathematical models, how nuclear weapons systems are designed, and how those involved try to produce high-confidence knowledge of the safety and security of computer systems. He is the author of several books: „Trading at the Speed of Light: How Ultrafast Algorithms Are Transforming Financial Markets“, on HFT was published by Princeton University Press in May 2021; „Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance“ (MIT Press, 1990) and „An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets“ (MIT Press, 2006).
Where does Internet Advertising come from? A Political Economic Perspective
Thu, 08.10.24 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Matthew Crain (Miami University) ➞
Sreda Theory: Environments, Media, and the Soviet Prehistory to Artificial Intelligence
Wed, 23.10.24 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Benjamin Peters (University of Tulsa) ➞
Finding A Smart Homeplace Or: How to Slip the Grip of Digitality in the Smart Home Age
Wed, 06.11.24 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Heather Woods (Kansas State University) ➞
In Digital Platforms We Trust: Data Capture and Pre-Emptive Governance in Tech Companies’ Environmental Policies and Initiatives
20.11.24 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Emily West (University of Massachusetts Amherst) ➞
Opening Up Opaque Infrastructures
04.12.24 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Donald Mackenzie (University of Edinburgh) ➞
Architecture of Surveillance, Methods of Resistance
18.12.24 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Forensic Architecture ➞
Hidden Advertising as a Systemic Risk in European Platform Regulation
08.01.25 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Catalina Goanta (Utretch University) ➞
Toxic Environments: Possible Media
22.01.25 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Samia Henni (ETH Zurich) ➞
All events take place in hybrid form (on site and via Webex). If you would like to attend on site, no registration is required. To attend the lecture online via Webex, please register here.
To participate, please send us a short email to warsensing@europa-uni.de. Before the workshop starts, we will send you an updated schedule and program and ask for your preferences for the working groups.
We invite you to participate in our workshop to explore ways of organizing ethical collaborations between academics and activists beyond academia. Hosted within the framework of the CRC „Media of Cooperation,“ the workshop is situated in media studies and related fields, examining emerging forms of collaboration between activists, journalists, and researchers in order to reflect on existing methodologies.
„Politics and Ethics of Activist Research“ aims to strengthen and reflect on these collaborations, giving particular attention to the power dynamics involved. We want to address the challenges that may arise from the differing values, interests, geographies, and priorities of academic and non-academic actors, and we are specifically interested in the conceptualizations, forms of value, and reflections that emerge from activist-academic collaborations.
On the one hand, in recent years we can observe the emergence of cooperations and so-called Third Mission projects funded by research agencies ranging from citizen science to collaborative art and activist projects in media studies, sociology, anthropology, and the like. Activists and researchers create knowledge for marginalized groups and develop research questions together, thus radicalizing the paradigm of participation (Brown and Strega). On the other hand, academics have been criticized for being too activistic in their research (cf. Issop, 2015). These accusations are, ironically, themselves political, challenging the role of contemporary reflexive scholarship. As studies have shown, knowledge construction is situated in knowledge infrastructures and framed by socio-political interests (Choudry, 2014; Maddison and Scalmer, 2006; and Choudry and Kapoor, 2010). Moreover, the interweaving of activist concerns and academic research have contributed to progressive social and epistemic transformations ranging from the women’s, gay and lesbian, environmental, anti-nuclear, black liberation, civil rights, and peace movements of the 1960s and 1980s to contemporary practices such as data and mobility activism.
Activist research and science-based activism go hand in hand with both productive collaborations and new problems. Within these tensions, questions arise about how to move from participation to an accurate form of activist research (Strega and Brown, 2015). In the workshop we will discuss:
The workshop invites activists and scientists from different disciplines to present and discuss their perspectives on these questions. The aim is to address the complex challenges of activist research together.
This talk takes the key terms of this series—environment, capture, and surveillance—and applies them to an emergent phenomenon in the world of big tech: the expansion of ambition and reach in these companies’ climate policies and initiatives. In the face of a “techlash” that is due to concerns about monopoly conditions as well as the environmental impacts of tech products, especially with the development of energy-intensive generative AI technologies, many if not all of the major digital platform companies have rolled out ambitious climate corporate social responsibility initiatives. A number of these seek to connect good corporate climate citizenship with their brand, and extend beyond the company’s own carbon footprint to improving, monitoring, and even regulating the emissions of other companies and organizations. “New practices of data processing and surveillance” via smart technologies are being extended as we speak to ever more human and non-human sites and activities in the name of monitoring carbon emissions and sequestration. From farm soil to oceans, from geo-thermal vents to buried biomass, big tech is expanding surveillance to the molecular level, either directly or via partnerships and investments in climate tech firms. This talk considers two main questions: 1) How does the move of tech platforms into climate surveillance and mitigation both depend upon and perhaps contribute to public trust in their brands (from users and governments), and 2) how will the expansion into climate-focused surveillance, platformization, and governance impact the power of digital platforms?
Dr. Emily West is Professor of Communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is author of Buy Now: How Amazon Branded Convenience and Normalized Monopoly (The MIT Press, 2022) and co-editor, with Matthew P. McAllister, of The Routledge Companion to Advertising and Promotional Culture, 2nd edition (2023). Her recent writing on digital platforms and promotional culture has appeared in a variety of journals and edited volumes, including Surveillance & Society and Media and Communication. Current research includes projects on promotional livestreaming and the climate initiatives of digital platform companies.
Where does Internet Advertising come from? A Political Economic Perspective
Thu, 08.10.24 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Matthew Crain (Miami University) ➞
Sreda Theory: Environments, Media, and the Soviet Prehistory to Artificial Intelligence
Wed, 23.10.24 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Benjamin Peters (University of Tulsa) ➞
Finding A Smart Homeplace Or: How to Slip the Grip of Digitality in the Smart Home Age
Wed, 06.11.24 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Heather Woods (Kansas State University) ➞
In Digital Platforms We Trust: Data Capture and Pre-Emptive Governance in Tech Companies’ Environmental Policies and Initiatives
20.11.24 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Emily West (University of Massachusetts Amherst) ➞
Opening Up Opaque Infrastructures
04.12.24 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Donald Mackenzie (University of Edinburgh) ➞
Architecture of Surveillance, Methods of Resistance
18.12.24 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Forensic Architecture ➞
Hidden Advertising as a Systemic Risk in European Platform Regulation
08.01.25 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Catalina Goanta (Utretch University) ➞
Toxic Environments: Possible Media
22.01.25 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Samia Henni (ETH Zurich) ➞
All events take place in hybrid form (on site and via Webex). If you would like to attend on site, no registration is required. To attend the lecture online via Webex, please register here.
Die Vorstandssitzungen enthalten Berichte, Themenpunkte und Verschiedenes, die für alle SFB Mitglieder öffentlich sind. Personenbezogene Anträge und Finanzen sind nicht öffentlich und werden nach dem öffentlichen Teil besprochen. Webex-Links für Online-Teilnahmen werden am vorherigen Freitag verschickt. Teilnahme vor Ort ist möglich.
Digitale Protokolle des öffentlichen Teils werden über sciebo zur Verfügung gestellt.
Alle Informationen und das Anmeldeformular für die Jahreskonferenz 2024 des SFB 1187 „Scaling Sensing – Sensing Publics: Landschaften und Grenzen, Häuser und Körper“ finden Sie ➞hier.
About the conference
The Collaborative Research Center “Media of Co-operation” first annual conference of its third and final funding phase, explores the interplay between sensing and the public. Through the theme “Scaling Sensing – Sensing Publics. Landscapes, and Borders, Homes and Bodies” the conference examines the mutually constitutive dynamics of sensing practices and the publics they shape and are shaped by, through multi-perspective, interdisciplinary approaches to sensing practices in graduated, fragmented, and heterogenous public spheres. How are sensors and sensing practices shaped within different public realms?
The pervasive integration of sensor technologies is fundamentally changing the way we perceive, sense, and produce knowledge. Technological sensors are capable of making their captured data visible and credible in ways human and environmental sensors cannot: they track movement, measure health data, and analyze built and grown environments. Thereby, they influence diverse settings, ranging from landscapes to cities, to homes and bodies. They both enhance and obscure bodily sensorial practices and intervene in their publicity and intersubjectivity. While sensor media might offer solutions to social, political, technological, medical, and environmental challenges, they also raise ethical and political concerns, such as privacy erosion, disconnection between sensory data and sensory experiences, controversial forms of surveillance, and the socio-technical diffusion of prejudices and various forms of bias. Thus, sensor data, their collection, analysis, and integration with other data formats, and within various social practices, groups of people, and institutions are constitutive not only of sensing but also of publicity and publicness. This conference aims to refine our understanding of the relationship between sensing and publics by examining collaboratively constituted sensors, media, and sensations across different research fields. Contributions present case studies from diverse disciplines and foreground practice in their theoretical stance, addressing the interplay between sensing and publics across four key domains:
These four key domains represent different scales of publicness involved in sensing, but also a range of different sociopolitical and environmental contexts in which various forms of socio-technical sensing occur, distributed among multiple actors, including humans, machines, and the environment.
To enhance interdisciplinary dialogue and debate, all contributions should engage with the broader issues of sensing and publicity that guide this conference and address the following questions:
Open datasession with Jürgen Streeck, Lorenza Mondada, Klaus Amann and others. Organized in cooperation between P01 and B05:
“Doing and Filming Physical Therapy” – “Talking Hands while Playing Cards”
Clemens Eisenmann (University of Konstanz / University of Siegen)
Astrid Vogelpohl (University of Siegen)
Hoa Mai Trần (University of Siegen)
Program
Nov. 7, 2024 |
12:00 | Get-together with soup & sandwiches |
12:45 |
Introduction Stephan Habscheid (Siegen) & Lorenza Mondada (Basel) |
13:00 |
Panel I: Interfacing and Interacting with Machines
Children and digital-analogue animals: Alive enough, to become a playmate? Hoa Mai Trần & Astrid Vogelpohl (Siegen)
Embodied robotic sensoriality: Walking with – and for – a robot Jakub Mlynář (HES-SO Valais-Wallis)
Démontage and Its (Dis-)Contents: Machine Ecologies as Staged Encounters Philippe Sormani (Zürich/Siegen)
Response: Tanja Aal, Dennis Kirschsieper (Siegen) Moderation: Clemens Eisenmann (Konstanz/Siegen |
15:00 | Coffee break |
15:30 |
Panel II: Augmenting Sensing Bodies in Interaction
Making sense of machines: Communicating asymmetries between human sensing and machine sensors Hannah Pelikan (Linköping)
Biosensibility: an Imaginary-Materiality in Affective Performance Mona Hedayati (Bruxelles)
A minimalist perspective on technologies and augmented bodies Clemens Eisenmann (Konstanz/Siegen) & Lorenza Mondada (Basel)
Moderation & Response: Tim Hector (Siegen) |
17:30 | Coffee break |
18:00 |
Keynote: Sensing Machines: Ubiquitous Technology and Bodily Experience Chris Salter (Zürich) |
19:15 | Short Apéro |
20:00 |
Dinner in the Dark Social awareness for the concerns of people with Dis-Abilities Jan Meyer-Krügel (Siegen) (Dark Café, Kölner Str. 11, 57072 Siegen) |
Nov. 8, 2024 |
9:30 |
Keynote: Merging Humans and Technology: Social-Psychological Implications Bertolt Meyer (Chemnitz) |
10:30 | Coffee break |
10:45 |
Panel III: Interaction in Space: Equipped Spaces for Interaction
Sensing in the Smart Kitchen: Studying Cyborg Cooks Katharina Graf (Frankfurt/London)
Jointly recalibrating the perceptual foundations of Wolfgang Kesselheim (Greifswald)
Sensing and Sensoring in Private Homes: The Smart AirFryer as a Case Study for Human and Non-Human Sensing in Interaction Stephan Habscheid, Tim Hector, Dagmar Hoffmann & Niklas Strüver (Siegen)
Response: James McElvenny (Siegen) Moderation: Dagmar Hoffmann (Siegen) |
12:45 |
Soup & sandwiches |
13:15 |
Concluding discussion Moderation: Philippe Sormani (Zürich/Siegen) |
13:45 | End of conference |
The conference “Machine – Body – Space. The Accomplishment and Entanglement of Human and Nun-Human Sensing” will explore the various relationships between machinic and human methods of sensing and sense-making in their practical environments. Digital and networked technologies are increasingly permeating everyday life and practices. This not only applies to forms of communication, navigating and traveling (e.g. on a bicycle in the city or at border control), but increasingly involves bodily and environmental sensor technologies also within people’s living environments. Whether its managing one’s blood sugar, cooking in the kitchen, watching television in the living room, or regulating the solar panels on the roof: sensor-based, domestic technologies are increasingly brought onto the market and get integrated into almost all areas of life – e.g. new generations of voice assistants, which now also capture visual and tactile signals. „Sensing machines“ (Salter 2022) pervade various environments, equipped with an array of sensors that detect diverse physical or chemical attributes. These sensors register and capture attributes like brightness, motion, touch, temperature, and humidity from their surroundings. Thereby, they capture the movements of humans and pets, their habits, information about architecture, furnishings, or consistency of certain materials (e.g. in the kitchen). They enable new kinds of everyday practices and sensory experiences – or transform familiar ones (e.g. cooking and tasting food) – and can play an ambiguous role also in the context of physical dis/abilites and assistance (Meyer/Asbrock 2018).
Sensory technologies not only potentially empower bodies, but also challenge them with new vulnerabilities, inequalities, and frictions. The entanglement of human and machinic sensing appears to be increasing, which reflects a broader trend of intertwining between humans and machines, e. g. in recent developments of communicative AI. Machines are capable of mimicking human behaviors, while in postmodern approaches such as Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto (1991) humans are often reconceptualized within mechanistic frameworks. Various perspectives on social theory, such as the concept of “human-machine reconfiguration” (Suchman 2007) have highlighted these developments. Approaches range from feminist critique (Haraway 1991) via Actor-Network-Theory and the idea of nonhuman actors (Latour 2007) up to posthumanist perspectives (Barad 2003) and psychological findings about humans who partly conceptualize themselves as computers (Turkle 1995, 30–31). These approaches stand in opposition to essentialist perspectives, which distinguish sharply between humans and machines as an ontological boundary. However, recent sociotechnical inquiry highlights “the simultaneity with which humans and machines are both separated and interconnected” (Lipp/Dickel 2022, 15). Expanded understandings of “interfacing” (Lipp/Dickel 2022) and of “human sense-making practices” (Eisenmann et al. 2023) offer paths for re-examining familiar boundary-work and exploring new connections between humans and machines.
To facilitate such a conceptualization a certain set of theoretical assumptions seems valuable: The activation and processing of senses and sensory systems can be conceptualized as practical “doings”, with which participants indicate to each other in practices whether and ‘what’ they perceive. Accentuated by praxeological perspectives (e.g. Hirschauer 2016), material objects, including machines, can engage in sensory practices. They contribute to sensory processes and exhibit specific machinic states (e.g. by emitting audiovisual cues), thereby actively participating in the practical execution of sensing. A praxeology of perception, grounded in ethnomethodology, hones in on the embodied and interactional dimensions of sensing (Coulter & Parsons 1991; Lynch & Eisenmann 2022, Mondada 2021), to illuminate the characteristics, achievement and display of sensing-and-sensory-practices. In this vein, figurations and conceptualizations of body and space come into play: Linguistic research in multimodality has intensively discussed this relationship (e. g. Streeck/Goodwin 2011) and suggested to conceptualize also space as an “interactive achievement” (Hausendorf 2013).
The conference encourages investigations into the social accomplishment of perception and sensing against the backdrop of sensor technologies. Contributions could focus on the co-constitution of perception in everyday situations, but also in situations of testing, research and self-examination of perception. We seek to explore (among others) the following questions:
We are looking forward to discussing theoretical questions, e. g. on interface/interfacing, multimodality and multisensoriality, as well as methodological approaches, empirical findings and project presentations.
The workshop is funded by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG) – Collaborative Research Center 1187 “Media of Cooperation” – Project-ID 262513311.
For questions, further information and participation requests, please reach out to Dr. Clemens Eisenmann or Tim Moritz Hector.
References
Barad, Karen. 2003. “Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter”. Signs and Society 28 (3): 801–831. DOI: 10.1086/345321.
Eisenmann, Clemens; Mlynář, Jakub; Turowetz, Jason; Rawls, Anne W. 2023. „‘Machine Down’: Making sense of human-computer interaction – Garfinkel’s early research on ELIZA at MIT in 1967-1968 and its contemporary relevance”. AI & Society 2023. DOI: 10.1007/s00146-023-01793-z.
Haraway, Donna. 1991. “A Cyborg Manifesto“. In Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, edited by Haraway, Donna. New York, NY: Routledge, 149-182.
Hausendorf, Heiko. 2013. “On the interactive achievement of space – and its possible meanings”. In Space in language and linguistics. Geographical, interactional, and cognitive perspectives, edited by Auer, Peter; Hilpert, Martin; Stukenbrock, Anja; Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt. Berlin: de Gruyter, 276–303. DOI: 10.1515/9783110312027.276.
Hirschauer, Stefan. 2016. “Verhalten, Handeln, Interagieren. Zu den mikrosoziologischen Grundlagen der Praxistheorie”. In Praxistheorie. Ein soziologisches Forschungsprogramm, edited by Schäfer, Hilmar. Bielefeld: transcript, 45–67. DOI: 10.1515/9783839424049-003.
Latour, Bruno. 2007. Reassembling the social. An introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lynch, Michael; Eisenmann, Clemens. 2022. “Transposing Gestalt Phenomena from Visual Fields to Practical and Interactional Work: Garfinkel’s and Sacks’ Social Praxeology”. Philosophia Scientiæ 26 (3): 95–122. DOI: 10.4000/philosophiascientiae.3619.
Lipp, Benjamin; Dickel, Sascha. 2022. “Interfacing the human/machine”. Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory 23 (1): 1–19. DOI; 10.1080/1600910X.2021.2012709.
Meyer, Bertolt; Asbrock, Frank. 2018. “Disabled or Cyborg? How Bionics Affect Stereotypes Toward People With Physical Disabilities”. Frontiers in Psychology 9 (2251): 1–13. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02251.
Mondada, Lorenza. 2021. Sensing in Social Interaction. The Taste for Cheese in Gourmet Shops. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. DOI: 10.1017/9781108650090.
Salter, Chris. 2022. Sensing Machines: How Sensors Shape Our Everyday Life. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. DOI: 10.7551/mitpress/12116.001.0001.
Streeck, Jürgen; Goodwin, Charles; LeBaron, Curtis. 2011. “Embodied Interaction in the Material World: An Introduction”. In Embodied interaction. Language and body in the material world, edited by Streeck, Jürgen; Goodwin, Charles; LeBaron, Curtis. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1-26.
Suchman, Lucy. 2007. Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Action, 2nd Edition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511808418.
Turkle, Sherry. 1995. Life on the Screen. Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
In this lecture, Dr. Heather Suzanne Woods examines the far-reaching consequences of proliferating domestic data-sensing environments—smart homes—in the United States of America. Drawing on findings from her recent book „Threshold: How Smart Homes Change Us Inside and Out“, Woods argues that smart homes (literally and figuratively) architect a future in which every moment of every day is mediated by surveillant technologies. Highlighting her extensive fieldwork at smart homes throughout the USA, Woods demonstrates that these data environments (and connected technologies more broadly) are now so ubiquitous that it is difficult to “be outside” of them. Although her book focuses on the domestic sphere, for Woods smart homes are only one point of arrival in the broader context of a new social, political and economic condition called “living in digitality.” Living in digitality names the technoliberal condition in which technology becomes environmental, expansive, and omnipresent. Troubling late-capitalist and neoliberal narratives of user choice and agency, Woods argues that individual agents need not “opt-in” to smart technologies to be affected by them. Partnering with the collective intelligence of the audience, Woods suggests forms of collective action to resist living in digitality—reformatting our technological future for a common good.
Heather Suzanne Woods, PhD is Director of the A.Q. Miller School of Media and Communication at Kansas State University. Woods is a scholar, teacher and higher ed leader who helps people understand the social impacts of technology so we can build a more just future. She is the author of two books: the first, “Make America Meme Again: The Rhetoric of the Alt-Right” explained how memes influence political elections; the second, “Threshold: How Smart Homes Change Us Inside and Out” examines how connected, immersive technologies shape how we live. Her research on smart homes, AI, chatbots, algorithms and platforms has been featured in The New York Times, Wired, The Atlantic, CBC’s Spark, The Washington Post, The LA Times, and more.
Where does Internet Advertising come from? A Political Economic Perspective
Thu, 08.10.24 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Matthew Crain (Miami University) ➞
Sreda Theory: Environments, Media, and the Soviet Prehistory to Artificial Intelligence
Wed, 23.10.24 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Benjamin Peters (University of Tulsa) ➞
Finding A Smart Homeplace Or: How to Slip the Grip of Digitality in the Smart Home Age
Wed, 06.11.24 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Heather Woods (Kansas State University) ➞
In Digital Platforms We Trust: Data Capture and Pre-Emptive Governance in Tech Companies’ Environmental Policies and Initiatives
20.11.24 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Emily West (University of Massachusetts Amherst) ➞
Opening Up Opaque Infrastructures
04.12.24 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Donald Mackenzie (University of Edinburgh) ➞
Architecture of Surveillance, Methods of Resistance
18.12.24 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Forensic Architecture ➞
Hidden Advertising as a Systemic Risk in European Platform Regulation
08.01.25 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Catalina Goanta (Utretch University) ➞
Toxic Environments: Possible Media
22.01.25 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Samia Henni (ETH Zurich) ➞
All events take place in hybrid form (on site and via Webex). If you would like to attend on site, no registration is required. To attend the lecture online via Webex, please register here.
In this seminar-style workshop, communication and technology expert Dr. Heather Suzanne Woods invites conversation and collaboration around scholarly and personal investigation of data-sensing domestic environments (sometimes known as smart homes.) Using the introduction and a case study from her recent book Threshold: How Smart Homes Change Us Inside and Out, Woods will guide participants through a discussion on the challenges and benefits of investigating the intersections of digitality, space, and culture, with a particular focus on digital domestic spaces (smart homes). Participants will be invited to imagine how researchers can contribute to finding/building a “smart homeplace,” which Woods playfully poses as the alternative to corporatized, technoliberal smart homes that privilege the pleasure of few digital subjects over the collective wellbeing of the majority.
Relaunch des SFB Grafikdesign und Vorstellung der neuen PR Guidelines und Formate
organisiert vom Teilprojekt Ö
Die Presentation findet hybrid statt. Es kann online über webex teilgenommen werden.
In 1932 Andrei Kolmogorov, under intense pressure from the KGB for his alleged gay relationships with Pavel Aleksandrov, formalized modern probability theory into an engine of radical contingency, thereby ushering in the current era of probabilistic artificial intelligence marked by „hallucinating“ large language models and Bayesian networks. In close reading of the tumultous Soviet history of media and mathematics, this paper offer a contribution to the ongoing theorization of environment media with a few profiles drawn from my current book on the Soviet prehistory of artificial intelligence. In particular, it offers a review of what I am calling „sreda theory,“ or a Russian-language media theory of environments. Snatches of the concept of sreda, or the Russian word for „environment,“ „Wednesday,“ and a near synonym with „medium,“ emerges across a tumultuous early twentieth century of Soviet intellectuals. In addition to the probabilistic fields of Kolmogorov, the notion of sreda emerges centrally in the grounded, yet cosmically writings of Theodosius Dobzhansky on the modern synthesis, Vladimir Vernadsky on the biosphere, and then Yekateryna Yushchenko’s conceptualization of „addressatsia“ (a decade before „pointers“) in early 1950s Kyiv. Ending in radio-controlled robots navigating the aftermath of Chernobyl, this talk traces out a (particularly Soviet-Ukrainian) history of media environments as smart environments, in which artificial intelligence materializes into an uncanny environment. What makes the noosphere, the sets of modern probability theory, the dynamism of statistical population models, and the lethally irradiated reactor four uncanny except their mutual, ambiguous question of life: what relationship, if any, do smart environments have with life as we know it? How might environmental media theorists, with the tragic Soviet annals of smart environments in hand survey our own era of data-driven surveillance, better critically reclaim and re-envision our own current era of coal-powered artificial intelligence amid the breakneck escalation of climate crises? The paper will conclude with remarks on these and other questions.
Benjamin Peters is the Mercator Fellow at the University of Siegen in the Fall 2024 as well as the Hazel Rogers Associate Professor of Media Studies at the University of Tulsa (a sister university of the University of Siegen), where he also holds faculty affiliation with the Cyber School and Honors Program. He is also as well as a faculty affiliate at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. He is currently at work on three book projects: a Soviet prehistory to artificial intelligence from which this talk draws, a cultural history of Russian hackers coauthored with Marijeta Bozovic (Yale Slavic), and a short book of letters to his college-aged child called How to College.
Where does Internet Advertising come from? A Political Economic Perspective
Thu, 08.10.24 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Matthew Crain (Miami University) ➞
Sreda Theory: Environments, Media, and the Soviet Prehistory to Artificial Intelligence
Wed, 23.10.24 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Benjamin Peters (University of Tulsa) ➞
Finding A Smart Homeplace Or: How to Slip the Grip of Digitality in the Smart Home Age
Wed, 06.11.24 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Heather Woods (Kansas State University) ➞
In Digital Platforms We Trust: Data Capture and Pre-Emptive Governance in Tech Companies’ Environmental Policies and Initiatives
20.11.24 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Emily West (University of Massachusetts Amherst) ➞
Opening Up Opaque Infrastructures
04.12.24 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Donald Mackenzie (University of Edinburgh) ➞
Architecture of Surveillance, Methods of Resistance
18.12.24 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Forensic Architecture ➞
Hidden Advertising as a Systemic Risk in European Platform Regulation
08.01.25 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Catalina Goanta (Utretch University) ➞
Toxic Environments: Possible Media
22.01.25 | 2.15-3.45 PM | Hybrid
Samia Henni (ETH Zurich) ➞
All events take place in hybrid form (on site and via Webex). If you would like to attend on site, no registration is required. To attend the lecture online via Webex, please register here.
Guest speaker: Dr. Vasil Navumau (Ruhr University Bochum; founder of the Belarusian civic initiative RADAR_BY – Research and Action for a Democratic Accountable and Resilient Belarus)
Die Vorstandssitzungen enthalten Berichte, Themenpunkte und Verschiedenes, die für alle SFB Mitglieder öffentlich sind. Personenbezogene Anträge und Finanzen sind nicht öffentlich und werden nach dem öffentlichen Teil besprochen. Webex-Links für Online-Teilnahmen werden am vorherigen Freitag verschickt. Teilnahme vor Ort ist möglich.
Digitale Protokolle des öffentlichen Teils werden über sciebo zur Verfügung gestellt.