Spokeperson: Prof. Dr. Orit Halpern

Orit © Michael Kretzschmar

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Prof. Dr. Orit Halpern

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Z21, Rotunde 2. OG, Raum 207 Zellescher Weg 21

01219 Dresden

Secretary: sekretariat-digitalcultures@tu-dresden.de

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Orit Halpern is Full Professor and Chair of Digital Cultures at Technische Universität Dresden. Her work bridges the histories of science, computing, and cybernetics with design. She completed her Ph.D. at Harvard. She has held numerous visiting scholar positions including at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, IKKM Weimar,  and at Duke University. She is currently working on two projects. The first is a history of automation, intelligence, and freedom;  the second project examines extreme infrastructures and the history of experimentation at planetary scales in design, science, and engineering. 

She has also published widely in many venues including Critical Inquiry, Grey Room, and Journal of Visual Culture, and E-Flux. Her first book Beautiful Data: A History of Vision and Reason (Duke UP 2015) investigates histories of big data, design, and governmentality. Her current book with Robert Mitchell (2023) is titled the Smartness Mandate. The book is a genealogy of our current obsession with smart  technologies and artificial intelligence. 

About Against Catastrophe

A Project mobilizing energies Against Catastrophe

Against Catastrophe

Blue globe in a glass box surrounded by medical devices that measure it and are partially defective. Inscription: Against Catastrophe. © Tal Halpern

The aim of this project is to interrogate the concept of catastrophe – how it is defined, analyzed, and deployed – and anti-catastrophic practices in an attempt to envision alternatives to our present.

It does so through an edited volume, art and design commissions, and offline and online exhibitions that explore catastrophe and anti-catastrophe in practice around the globe. The focus throughout is on how novel thinking and practice in design, architecture, and technology can open possibilities for more equitably, democratically,  and sustainably surviving a catastrophic world, but also expanding epistemic horizons beyond such apocalyptic thinking.

About Governing Through Design

Governing through Design is a collaborative research project that investigates how design impacts society. It uses history and ethnography to develop new narratives of how the practices and epistemologies of design reconceive global politics and everyday lifeworlds, and invest in pedagogies that seek to intervene in contemporary practices of design.

It is an interdisciplinary collective of researchers based at the FHNW Academy of Art and Design, the University of Basel, and Concordia University Montréal, with backgrounds in design history, urban studies, media studies, anthropology, sociology, political science, and science & technology studies.

About The Speculative Life Research Cluster

The Speculative Life

The research group is unique in the Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology at Concordia University in our emphasis on fostering science and technology studies, a focus on ecology and environment, an interest in scale and networks, and finally, a commitment to futurity and imagination as critical to design, art, and scholarship.

This cluster of artists, designers and scholars presents a rare opportunity to develop the systemic study and creation of emerging technologies with a focus on social justice, difference, and imagination. It engages with multiple technical ecologies, from bio-media to urban planning, in order to foster creative ways to think about the future of the planetary scale transformations currently occurring as a result of human action and technical developments.

Prof. Orit Halpern holds the Key Chair of Digital Cultures at the Faculty of Linguistics, Literature and Cultural Studies and is the Speaker of the Disruption and Societal Change (TUDiSC) Concept Group. © TUD

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Publications (related to TUDiSC)

46 Entries

2021

  • Planetary IntelligenceHalpern, O., Roberge, J. & Castelle, M., 2021, The Cultural Life of Machine Learning. London: PalgraveResearch output: Contribution to book/conference proceedings/anthology/report > Chapter in book/anthology/report

2020

2019

2018

  • The Planetary TestHalpern, O., Dec 2018, Victor Papanek: The Politics of Design . Clark, A., Klein, A. & Matteo Kries (eds.). Basel: Vitra Museum, p. 288-299Research output: Contribution to book/conference proceedings/anthology/report > Chapter in book/anthology/report

2017

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Declan John Galbraith
Last modified: Jul 14, 2023