This collected volume explores a novel approach to the intersection of artificial intelligence and the humanities, proposing that instead of merely writing about AI, scholars should think with AI. Rather than treating AI as an external subject of study, the essays explore how concepts from artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data science can provide ways to rethink core humanistic questions of meaning, representation, and culture. Critical AI Studies typically focuses on AI’s societal implications—its role in surveillance, exclusion, and global capitalism.

Arguably, infrastructural study calls attention to the geological and material underpinnings of contemporary digital systems, thus offering opportunities to interrogate the histories of race, capital, and colonialism that inhere within contemporary media. However, infrastructural discourses can also support broader techno-deterministic and technocratic discourses of engineering, foreclosing alternative imaginaries about the constitution of agency, politics, and life.

This commentary situates the idea of ‘counter-practice’ within a history of art and documentary cinema to ask what it means to witness in an age of big data and ubiquitous sensing? And how might art practices and data studies inform each other? To do so, this essay focuses on the work of Harun Farocki and the concept of the operational image to question whether politics can be separated from aesthetics and to re-introduce problems of human subjectivity and history into the discourse of subversion and praxeology.

The German Society for Design Theory and Research (DGTF), in collaboration with the Chair of Digital Cultures TU Dresden, invites participants to critically engage with the theme Planetary Experiments: Environments by Design. This conference explores the diverse perspectives and practices of design research and theory in addressing the far-reaching ecological, social, and technological challenges of our time. Planetary Experiments seeks to map the complexities of planetary-scale design interventions and interrogate the ethical, social, and ecological stakes of reimagining the planet as a site of experimentation and design.

Curated by team members Eylül İşcen Özgün and Nadia Christidi and featuring a global group of speculative designers, artists, and academics re-imagining the future of the planet under catastrophic conditions. Part of the Against Catastrophe Project directed by Orit Halpern and supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation, Sinergia Grant, Governing through Design.

Article appears in anthology "What could possibly go wrong? Impact and Consequences of Design" and offers a close reading of Horst Rittel’s and Melvin Webber’s often cited, yet rarely challenged or historically situated publication on wicked problems «Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning,» published in 1973. Invested in a denaturalization of design fixes as a predominant design response to crisis it contemplated the (unintended) consequences of adopting wickedness as a design paradigm.

This research studio invites participants to explore the haunting legacy of abandoned mines and extractive landscapes in the regions of Ore Mountains and Lusatia, questioning how these sites can inform our understanding of resource-driven histories and speculative futures. We will delve into the concept of “ghost mines”—both as literal sites of abandonment and metaphorical markers of environmental trauma and contested futures.

In/Convenience: Inhabiting the Logistical Surround Edited by Joshua Neves and Marc Sternberg Convenience is the feeling and aspiration that animates our platformed present. As such, it poses urgent techno-political questions about the everyday digital habitus. From next-day delivery, gig work, and tele-health to cashless payment systems, data centers, and policing convenience is an affordance and an enclosure; our logistical surround. Driving every experience of convenience is the precarious work, proprietary algorithms, or predatory schemes that subtend it.

The conference Planetary Design – Reclaiming Futures took place this year in Berlin, in late October, bringing together critical voices and debate on the role of design in making, unmaking and remaking worlds. This audio series gathers these provocative polemics and presentations for posterity, allowing for deep dives and due reflection.

Why is human movement increasingly conceived of as a logistical problem? Global forms of human movement have been occurring for centuries, but popular discourse and policies often construct contemporary human movement as exceptional: an unprecedented global problem that requires new techniques of management and logistics. Scholarship situates logistics as a site that articulates social relations of power and differentiates human worth. In this paper, we ask how human movement becomes transformed into a logistical matter in the first place.

There is a long history of psychology linked to economics. What is economics? It is the study of how people make decisions about resources or about money. Hayek was very interested in many sciences, particularly the new ones that emerged after World War II about systems, communication and information. He was very interested in models of decision making. His whole neoliberal economic theory is based on what he calls the limits of knowledge, the fact that human beings do not have complete information about our world, that we make imperfect and often bad irrational decisions.

The current state of the planet, marked by climate change and biodiversity loss, presents one of humanity’s most urgent challenges, further exacerbated by a projected population increase to nearly 10 billion by 2050. Scientific and technological advancements are vital for monitoring and mitigating these issues, offering solutions for humanity to coexist with a changing planet in a sustainable way.

As health systems increasingly adopt digital solutions, such as remote monitoring and telemedicine, the use of health apps is becoming increasingly widespread. Meanwhile, data protection regulations and digital transformation initiatives are making the individual responsible for protecting their health data.

KEYNOTE: Orit Halpern at Reconfigurations of Educational (In)Equality in a Digital World September 26, 2024 Buenos Aires

The conference Planetary Design: Reclaiming Futures brings together critical thinking and doing around the role of design in making, unmaking and remaking worlds. Starting from the intersection of design, infrastructure, and the planetary environment, it offers a generative platform open to artists, academics, and activists for rethinking design’s role in producing the present and for developing alternative planetary futures. Reflecting on how design makes worlds in the 21st century requires an interdisciplinary effort that addresses it as an intersectional, multi-faceted phenomenon.

In der dritten Ausgabe unserer KI-Reihe geht es um künstliche Intelligenz und Kunst. Kann KI echte Kunst und wie kreativ ist sie? Wo und wie kann sie im künstlerischen Prozess eingesetzt werden und worin liegt das Potenzial von Werken, die mit Hilfe von KI generiert werden? Wer ist dann eigentlich Urheber:in und welche Auswirkungen haben Bots und Algorithmen, die unsere Weltsicht formen, auch mit Blick auf historische Narrative und manifestierte koloniale Machtungleichheiten?

The research studio EXTRAXTIVE PASTS, SUSTAINABLE FUTURES? convened 30 interdisciplinary researchers and artists to investigate Lusatia’s transformation as it hits the ground. We engaged with company officials, city representatives, urban planners, energy researchers and artists from the region to understand their stakes in and perspectives on the transition. By bringing together our respective methodologies, practices and viewpoints, we developed an Energy Transition Inventory, attempting to reconcile the multiple scales of activity that converge as “the energy transition”.

The exhibition is a collaboration between the Chair of Digital Cultures and the DST (Department of Speculative Transformation). The exhibition is about "Thinking the Future Together!“, from 18th April to 18th July 2024 at COSMO, promising an immersive exploration into the transformative landscapes of science and research.

This conference is a collaboration between the Chair of Digital Cultures, Micro-Sociology and Techno-Social Interaction, North American Literature and Future Studies, Human Geography, and Chair of Thermodynamics. It inaugurates stsing e.V., an association doing Science and Technology Studies (STS) in and through Germany, established in 2020. STS is an interdisciplinary field of research and activity interested in how science and technology are practically done and socially embedded.

The project is consciously and critically dedicated to the university, in particular the classroom as a place where thought, research and knowledge are produced. A joint practice is to be developed with students, documented and archived/made available.

New Publication: Orit Halpern, "Beyond Data And Crisis" in Data Power in Action Urban Data Politics in Times of Crisis Edited by: Ola Söderström and Ayona Datta