Trier, Germany Configuring the Present across Arts and Media

Goethe Institute (Intranet), 2020

Comissioned by the Goethe Institute (Dept. Education and Discourses) in 2019/20 this deviant glossary contains 15 textual vignettes on new formations of contemporary culture – thereby simultaneously adressing contemporary forms of ‚newness‘. [en] TOC • AlterNative Futures — Shadow Plays of Altermodernity • CryptoCollectives — Keyholders to the Future? • Do Tanks and Real World Laboratories. — Getting Real • Design Everything — Are we on the Way to Design Being? • Dystopias! — Light in the Darkness? • Crisis (of) Knowledge — The Muses of Collective Self-Defence • Leaking & Whistleblowing — A Backdoor for Progress • Prediction Markets. Fever Charts of the New • Retrotopias — The Good Old Future. • Shared Legacies — World. Cultural. Heritage. • TAZ — Techno Autonomous Zones? • Our Tipping Points — Novelty as Pitfall and Capsizing • Delinking – From ‚Going Dark‘ to Electronic Exodus — People on the Margins of Progress • Between New Work, No Work & 'Bullshit Jobs' — Labouriously Clearing Everyone´s Future • Worldbuildings — One World is Not Enough [de] INHALT • ‚Design Thinking’ etc. Auf dem Weg zum Daseins-Design? • ‚Do Tanks‘ und ‚Reallabore‘. Getting Real. • ‚Prediction Markets’. ‚Zukunftsmärkte‘, ‚bookie 4.0‘ und ‚majority report‘. • Arbeits-Lose in der Zukunft. Kollektive Klärungsarbeiten. • KrisenWissen. Die Muse kollektiver Notwehr. • Unsere ‚Tipping Points‘. Das Neue als Stolperfalle und Verschwinden. • ‚World-Buildings‘. Eine Welt ist nicht genug. • Dystopien! Licht im Dunkel? • Retrotopien. Die gute, alte Zukunft. • TAZ. Technologisch-Autonome-Zonen. • ‚Leaking‘ & ‚Whistleblowing’. Fortschritt durch die Hintertür. • CryptoKollektive. Schlüsselbünde zur Zukunft? • Entnetzung – von ‚Going Dark’ bis ‚Electronic Exodus’. Menschen am Rande des Fortschritts. • Shared Legacies. Welt, Kultur, Erben. • AlterNative Zukünfte. Schattenspiele der Altermoderne. // This 'deviant' glossary was meant and is to read as a tool for instigation for the international offices programme planning. Thus, it was tailored as a format between glossary, (pre-)digest of current and dense fields of discourse, and thought-provoking (or ‚thought-prompting‘) essay for adoption, elaboration or further use in different (conceptual) contexts. As such it was one of the central inputs for the 3-year central theme of GI International on ‚How does the New come into the world?‘ (2019-21). // It also is an instance of what I call ‚Media Culture Diagnosis‘, extending the analytical stance through stronger positionings and broadly evaluative, speculative or characterizing stances. As such, while making use of and referencing some academic discourses, it is closer to the kind of multi-positional ‚theory‘ one finds in McLuhans elliptic and diagnostic writing; or the ‚circumstantial philosophy‘ that Günther Anders espoused, following in his philosophy informed meta-commentaries the more critical fault lines of the techno-industrial culture surrounding him – and us as social humans. // The ‚vignette‘ turned out to be the most interesting textual format and style for this. Representing brief but powerful scene focussed on characterization and dense imagery and sketch, ‚a good vignette leaves you wanting more‘ (Vocabularly.com). ‚Focused on vivid imagery and meaning rather than plot’ or systematization (Wikipedia). As such they display a ‚brief, concise style‘, but deviating from the idea of an ‚authoritative‘ glossary ‚they are rich in imagery to create a vivid, detailed description of a moment in time‘ – and provoke imagination, association, and also some resistance and ‚counteraction‘. // Some needed annotation: – The glossary, now privately published with consent of Goethe Institut, was written in the time directly preceding the global Corona-crisis. This has to be kept in mind and factored in – but possibly the now induced asynchronicity also makes for some interesting and contrastful reading… // Oh; and there is a discussion opened on this paper with a view to future iteration, updating and development. Every voice, mind and soul welcome!

Choice Reviews Online, 2013

Inhabiting the technosphere. Art and technology beyond technical invention Prepublication Manuscript "Media convergence under digitality actually increases the centrality of the body as a framer of information: as media lose their material specificity, the body takes on a more prominent function as selective processor in the creation of images." 1 The body as a framer of information: This notion, presented in the introduction to Mark Hansen's 2004 New Philosophy of New Media, could also stand as an introduction to the general condition under which art after 1989 thinks, produces and engages with technology. It marks not just a shift in thinking that concerns our general understanding of media technologies and practices-but an equally significant shift taking place within the type of artistic practice where new media and information technologies are not just deployed but are themselves also objects of thinking, investigation and imagination. The 1 Timothy Lenoir, Foreword, in Mark Hansen, New Philosophy for New Media, MIT Press, 2004, xxii task for art history is then to try to understand the newly prominent mediatic body that emerges with this shift-to discover its various manifestations in artistic practice, as well as its implications for aesthetic theory. In particular, we need to conceptualize its double relation to, on the one hand, technological media and the realm of media production and, on the other hand the notion of the artistic medium. With this shift, several influential conceptions of the relation between art, technology and media may be questioned. Firstly, the notion of the body as a framer of information challenges some of the most influential theorizations of the cultural shift that took place in the 1990's, as the Internet became a global phenomenon and digital processing emerged as a communal platform for all previously separate media and technologies of expression. One was the marginalization of art in the realm of new media. Digital media leave aesthetics behind, Friedrich Kittler claimed, with all the apocalyptic gusto of the early computer age: In distinction to the consciousness-flow of film or audio tape, the algorithmic operations that underpin information processing happen at a level that has no immediate correlate to the human perceptual system. Humans had created a non-human realm that made obsolete any idea of art based on the sense apparatus. And this turn of events was related to the way in which technologies of the information age severed any tangible connection with human existence beyond what pertains to the control practices of capitalist superpowers, notably warfare, surveillance and superficial entertainment or visual "eyewash". 2 Yet, against Kittler's bleak description of posthuman technologies it could be argued that information will still necessarily have to be processed by human bodies-even if the interaction between the human perceptual

The series Transformations in Art and Culture is dedicated to the study of historical and contemporary transformations in arts and culture, emphasizing processes of cultural change as they manifest themselves over time, through space, and in various media. Main goal of the series is to examine the effects of globalization, commercialization and technologization on the form, content, meaning and functioning of cultural products and socio-cultural practices. New means of cultural expression, give meaning to our existence, and give rise to new modes of artistic expression, interaction, and community formation. Books in this series will primarily concentrate on contemporary changes in cultural practices, but will always account for their historical roots. The publication of this book has been made possible by grants from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).

Social Science Research Network, 2021

2015

who organised the games track. A special thanks go to Lewis Webb who provided support and help. List of partners Critical Heritage Studies Critical Heritage Studies (CHS) at the University of Gothenburg is a priority research area devoted to critical and interdisciplinary studies of the many layers of cultural heritage as a material, intangible, emotional and intellectual field. Centre for Digital Humanities The Centre for Digital Humanities at the University of Gothenburg was established in order to create a creative environment for new venues and projects within and across Humanities research. HUMlab HUMlab is a vibrant meeting place for the humanities, culture and information technology at Umeå University. Current research and development is covering fields such as interactive architecture, religious rituals in online environments, D modelling, and the study of movement and flow in physical and digital spaces. Visual Arena Research Visual Arena Lindholmen is a neutral environment to support innovative development projects through the use of visualisation. Visual Arena run visualisation networks, offer interactive meeting places and can demonstrate the latest visualisation technology at the studio at Lindholmen Science Park. LinCS LinCS is a national centre of excellence funded by the Swedish Research Council (-cont.) and with additional funding from several agencies. The focus of the research is on issues of the relationship between learning and media. Malmö Museer Southern Sweden´s largest museum is located on Malmöhusvägen in the heart of Malmö in a beautiful park-like setting surrounded by canals. At Malmö Museer you can see everything from the Nordic region´s oldest surviving Renaissance castle to a real submarine and fantastic vehicles. The conference was made possible through a generous grant from Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (RJ) is an independent foundation with the goal of promoting and supporting research in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Illustrations: The cover illustration contains shadows of Planet Mercury passing in front of the Sun by Giacomo Balla (). Conference logo and birds by Jonathan Westin. The boat-head-person illustration is the symbol of Critical Heritage Studies at the University of Gothenburg. The etching on page  of the Pyramid of Cestius is by Giovanni Battista Piranesi and was originally published in Verdute di Roma , a collection of representations that had a great impact on classicism and our perception of the past.

Futures, 2007

This article questions certain current assumptions taken as decisive for the future of art. One such notion is that the future of art can be predicated on media technologies. But art history is not a straightforward progression from one state of media practice to another. Art does not respond to the paradigm shifts which are normal to the advance of science. The impasse struck by early 20th century avantgarde modernist innovation would seem to underpin a necessary cultural transition to the timebased and networked collaborative practices of electronic technology in the aesthetic sector. This paper challenges that assumption and puts in question the very nature of art history itself. Artistic originality is not simply unpredictable but a conundrum of negative dormancy resistant to futurist study as explored in these pages. Art does not submit to forecasting, programming or normalization. In this sense, art has no future. r 2007 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Art is active and reactive. Different artistic forms have always been responsive to major historical, cultural, social and political landmarks. This artistic response is known for its significance as it tends to be both expressive and impactful. This significance is fostered by the artistic ability to voice ideas, kindle new thoughts, spark new movements, and trigger change; reform and chaos. Over the cross of time, Literature and Films have become known for their reflective, expressive, responsive, and representational qualities. The specificities of these artistic mediums along with their polysemic tendencies mould the response, its reception and its effects. Texts and reels have always responded to great milestones in history such as World War I and II, Avant-Garde, Revolutions, War on terror, the Arab Spring, Totalitarianism, Egalitarian Movements, and Woke movements.