Together with our guests, we aim to discuss the evolving relationship between human and machine-based sensing and the effects of this relationship on everyday life. With digital and networked technologies becoming an integral part of our routines, sensor technologies now play a key role in personal and domestic spaces, from health management and home automation to environmental control.

These “sensing machines”, e.g. advanced voice assistants that can capture visual and tactile signals demonstrate, incorporate sensors that detect a range of physical attributes such as brightness, motion, temperature, and humidity. This data enables machines to interact with their environments in sophisticated ways—observing human and animal movements, noting environmental changes, and assisting in daily activities. These tools can be empowering, especially in contexts of disability and assistance, but they also introduce new challenges related to privacy, equality, and the nature of human-machine interaction.

Contributions from empirical research will demonstrate for instance how users mobilize the human sensorium as well as old and new sensor technologies, thereby making their sensory experiences comprehensible for each other – from moment to moment, in their temporal sequence and in diverse contexts, including the enhancement of sustainability, convenience, assistance, entertainment or security.

In our discussions, we will tackle perception, embodiment, and interaction within shared spaces, emphasizing how both human and machine senses contribute to shared experiences. By focusing on sensory processes as practices, the event invites a rethinking of how we understand bodies, spaces, and machines as intertwined in new, hybrid modes of sensing and perceiving.

The event will thus foster a dialogue on how sensory technologies shape, challenge, and redefine our understanding of perception and sensing, both in practical settings and in theoretical contexts. We’re welcoming an international crowd of guests: Christopher Lloyd Salter (Zürich) and Bertolt Meyer (Chemnitz) as keynote speakers and roundtable inputs from Katharina Graf (Frankfurt), Wolfgang Kesselheim (Greifswald), Jakub Mlynář (HES-SO Valais-Wallis), Hannah Pelikan (Linköping), and others.

Venue

University of Siegen
Room AH-A-217/18 (2nd floor)
Herrengarten 3, D-57072 Siegen, Germany