What are digital practices for/of testing?
Our lecture series on „Testing Infrastructures“ starts tomorrow.
From QR codes used to verify COVID-19 vaccination status’ to cloud software used to train machine learning models, infrastructures of testing are proliferating. Whilst the infrastructures themselves come in different forms – from ‘off the shelf’ systems to tailor-made technologies – they all have a capacity to generate specific ‘test situations’ involving an array of different actors from ‘ghost’ workers to python scripts. An increasing reliance on digital platforms, protocols, tools, and procedures has led to a redistribution of testing itself: not just where testing takes place, and who performs the testing, but who has access to, and control over, mechanisms for testing, test protocols and of course, test results. In this lecture series, we focus on the practices making up the test infrastructures and explore different perspectives to make sense of the realities enacted by testing.
Our exploration of test practices is interwoven with the search for test media that bind actors together or create barriers; that enable cooperation or declare it impossible. Thus, our guest lecturers will reflect on a wide range of questions regarding ‘testing infrastructures’: How do testing infrastructures engender the construction of specific testing routines and practices? What kinds of affective experiences, reactions, and responses are generated through testing? How do testing infrastructures fade into the background, pointing to a tapestry of maintenance and repair practices? Lastly, what are the ways in which we can evaluate the role of digital infrastructures more broadly?
What novel test methods can be developed and actually ‘tested’ to gain a better understanding of how infrastructures work?
The lecture series is organized by the Collaborative Research Center (SFB 1187) “Media of Cooperation”.
Contact: Dr. Johannes Schick (johannes.schick[æt]uni-siegen.de)