Saturday, 26.10.2019 
10 am to 6 pm
Aula, Medienhaus, Grunewaldstraße 3, 10823 Berlin
The workshop is open to the public. Registration is not required.
 

Digital technologies have become ubiquitous and are now found in the Humanities, as they are elsewhere. While computing has been discussed in media theory for decades, the relatively recent implementation of algorithms in the everyday practices of the humanities seems to indicate a new technological – and practical – media revolution. 

Media philosophy offers a perspective on this evolving practice of the Humanities. Rather than regarding media as the object of its research, media philosophy instead turns the attention to the “upheaval in the method of thinking” (Vilém Flusser), as both a passive and active response to the changing media of knowledge, perception and action. In this context, a media philosophical perspective is not just reacting to digital technology or privileging it above others. Media philosophy shows that a critique of “techno-determinism” becomes relevant for cultural theory far beyond a critique of the various forms of Kittlerian media theory, or the now prominent Science & Technology Studies. Rather, it points to methodological questions regarding different media practices; writing, archiving, and visualization are seen as both the objects of research as well as the “tools” for research in various fields, preceding and parallel to Medienwissenschaft, such as literature, film, art, history or ethnography.

The workshop will take up premises of German media philosophy in the international context, discussing new ways of analyzing culture by integrating media practices on one hand, and questioning media practices as technological practices on the other. Given the fact that the question of method is currently an international one, the goal is to engage in the discussion of a post-digital media landscape in the broader context of this “upheaval at the level of method” (Alexander Galloway) and its different manifestations in different cultural and historical contexts.
 

Financed by the DFG, with support from the Institut for Critical Theory, ZHdK.

For more information contact: cernst_ @uni-bonn.de; katerina.krtilova_ @zhdk.ch

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