Glitch Twins: An Alternative Genealogy to Digital Twinning (Edward King)
12. May
The Centre for Digital Cultures (CDC) invites you to the upcoming talk by Edward King (University of Bristol). This talk is organized by the research group “Smartness as Wealth.”
Tuesday, May 12 / 1:30 – 3 pm / online
Please contact us at cdcforum@leuphana.deto receive login credentials.
Metaphorical uses of twins in relation to data-driven simulations are haunted by a complex and ambiguous cultural history. On the one hand, twins have long been conscripted into scientific systems of control, from the role of twins in instruments of genetics research, employed to disentangle the influences of culture and nature over human development, to the use of imagery of twins in the popularisation of cybernetics during the postwar period. On the other hand, twins have also been used to evoke forces that seem to resist rational understanding, from associations with the Gothic trope of the uncanny double to the many ‘weird’ twins in contemporary horror. The term Digital Twins more directly builds on the association between twins and technological management through a conflation between twins and clones that is rooted in the Eugenics movement. In this talk, however, I will trace an alternative genealogy of digital twins through instances in which twinship has been evoked to emphasise the uncontrollable dynamics of technological systems. These range from the use of ‘identical’ twin faces to expose the limitations of biometric technologies to the role of twins in narratives about the unknowable dimensions of space travel. While the data modelling produced by Digital Twins constructs a future that is predictable and manageable, the future heralded by the ‘glitch twins’ discussed in this talk is open and unpredictable.