THE NEW REAL: Past, Present and Future of Computation and the Ecologization of Cultural Techniques
In the 21st century, the cultural technique of computation has turned into a multilayered digital infrastructure that gives rise to an agential environment of our lifeworld. Thus, a new elemental space, the “technosphere,” is formed, in which elemental and technological media become recursively coupled to each other and produce so-called “medianatures.” Climate is a prominent example for these medianatures. Climate change but also the nature of the new media objects that we deal with in our algorithmitized lifeworlds represent a challenge to our understanding of “what is real.”
The New Real: Past, Present and Future of Computation and the Ecologization of Cultural Techniques project reacts to this challenge by attempting to define a third way beyond the traditional dualism of realism versus constructivism. To achieve this, the project aims to develop a new conceptualization of cultural techniques, based on the conviction that it is time to ecologize the concept of cultural techniques, on the one hand, and to technologize the concept of ecology, on the other. What is real is no longer what is “objectively” given. But The New Real is also not just epistemically or socially constructed. The project explores therefore an ontology by which everything that concerns us–as living beings, as social beings, as scientifically and politically acting individuals–becomes climate-like.
To achieve this, the project involves the collaboration of scholars from the computer sciences, life sciences, media studies, and philosophy. Subprojects address HCI (human-computer interfaces) as ecologies; the question of how the rise of the IoT (Internet of Things) transforms the mode of existence of “lifeworldly” objects; the question of how code becomes ontology in synthetic biology and bioengineering; and how the algorithmization of the cultural technique of filters plays an essential part in the environmentalization of media.
The New Real: Past, Present and Future of Computation and the Ecologization of Cultural Techniques is being led by Bernhard Siegert, professor for the history and theory of cultural techniques at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar (Germany).
Projektrelevante Publikationen
mit Hannes Bajohr: Text + Kritik Sonderband. Das Subjekt des Schreibens. Über Große Sprachmodelle. 2024.
Programmieren als Kulturtechnik. Grundlagentexte, Bielefeld (in Vorbereitung).
Maschinenphilologie, Berlin 2023.
The Mother of All Demos, in: Markus Krajewski/Harun Maye (Hg.), Universalenzyklopädie der menschlichen Klugheit, Berlin 2020, S. 137–139.
Computing. Zur Einführung, in: Andreas Ziemann (Hg.), Grundlagentexte der Medienkultur. Ein Reader, Wiesbaden 2019, S. 163–167.
Signs O’ The Times. The Software of Philology and a Philology of Software, in: Ramón Reichert/Annika Richterich (Hg.), Digital Material/ism (= Digital Culture & Society, Vol. 1, Issue 1), Bielefeld 2015, S. 151–163.
Diskurs/Signal (II). Prolegomena zu einer Philologie digitaler Quelltexte, in: editio. Internationales Jahrbuch für Editionswissenschaft, Bd. 28, 2014, S. 193–212.
Seppi, Angelika
»WIE MAN SIEHT. Industrielle Synthesen und die Kunst der Analyse«, in: Simon Baier; André Rottmann, Kunst ohne Bewusstsein?, Konstanz: Konstanz University Press, i.E.
mit Rebekka Ladewig (Hg.): Milieu Fragmente. Technologische und ästhetische Perspektiven, Leipzig: Spector Books, 2020.
mit Rebekka Ladewig: Milieu 2020. Eine Einleitung, in: Ladewig; Seppi (Hg.), Milieu Fragmente, S. 7–41.
Abstrakte Maschinen, konkrete Gefüge, existenzielle Ritornelle, in: Ladewig; Seppi (Hg.): Milieu Fragmente, S. 40–58.
Final Frontiers. Eine Medienarchäologie des Meeres. Paderborn: Brill Fink, 2024.
Kulturtechniken. Rastern, Filtern, Zählen und andere Artikulationen des Realen. Baden-Baden: Rombach Wissenschaft, 2023.
Zählen. Archäographie einer Kulturtechnik. In: Moritz Hiller/Stefan Höltgen (Hg.), Archäographien. Aspekte einer radikalen Medienarchäologie. Berlin 2019, S. 265-279.
Zeitschrift für Medien- und Kulturforschung, hg. v. Lorenz Engell u. Bernhard Siegert, 7, 2016, H. 2: Schwerpunkt Medien der Natur.
Cultural Techniques: Grids, Filters, Doors, and Other Articulations of the Real. Translated by Geoffrey Winthrop-Young. New York: Fordham University Press, 2015.
Archiv für Mediengeschichte, hg. v. Friedrich Balke, Bernhard Siegert und Joseph Vogl, Heft 14 (2014): Modelle und Modellierungen.
Zeitschrift für Medien- und Kulturforschung, hg. v. Lorenz Engell u. Bernhard Siegert, 1, 2010, H. 1: Schwerpunkt Kulturtechnik.
Fellows:
Eva-Maria Gillich (Universität Bielefeld)
John S. Seberger (Michigan State University)
Jeffrey West Kirkwood (Binghamton University)
Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal (Universität Basel)
Christina Vagt (University of California, Santa Barbara)
Thomas Nyckel (Universität Regensburg)
Mitarbeiter*innen und Assoziierte:
Dr. Angelika Seppi
Dr. Moritz Hiller
Benedikt Merkle, MA
Jan Knöferl, BA
Leitung:
Prof. Dr. Bernhard Siegert