course-schedule

Computerliebe – Die Funktion des Affekts im Digitalen (Seminar)

Termin:
wöchentlich | Dienstag | 16:15 - 17:45 | 04.04.2016 - 10.07.2016 | C 11.008 Lernwerkstatt

Inhalt: How would you tell your computer that you love it? It sounds like a ludicrous question because we presume that a computer is just a machine and machines do not have anything to do with human affections and emotions like love. And yet, it is safe to say that given our digitally mediated lives you might not be able to tell somebody of your love for them without a computer. The traditional histories of media and technology produce the human and the technological as discrete and separated, marking one as the receptacle of affect and the other as the tool through which the affect gets transmitted. However, as we live with intimate technologies, get our lives managed by quantifiying apps, sleep with tiny machines that rest on our pillows, and extend our domains of life, labour and language through the digital networks, there needs to be a new way of understanding affect as produced through measurements and computation. The seminar on Computing Love proposes that who you love, who your best friend is, who you are intimate with, what you feel, how you feel it, and how you express it to the people around you can all be examined as properties of the digital. In bringing together affect and emotion with computation and measurement, the seminar looks at the ways by which our human computer interaction can be understood as producing new modes of living and loving.

Fictions in Reality (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Manuela Klaut

Inhalt: Lässt sich der Übergang von Realität in Realität durch Medien überhaupt leisten; oder muss man davon sprechen, dass allein die Möglichkeit, am Bild zu schneiden, an der Information zu sparen und die Musik lauter zu drehen schon immer der Realität ein Bein stellt und eine Neueinstellung des Moments verlangt? Lassen sich Fiktionen als solche noch identifizieren, um etwas wie Realität zu beweisen und wer würde es dann mit der Beweislage aufnehmen: Die Gerichte, die Forschungsinstitute, die Polizisten oder die Filmregisseure? Ein abschließendes Urteil ließe sich nicht fällen. Das Seminar untersucht damit die Ränder, an denen sich die Realität als Ereignis nicht länger in irgendwas einschreibt, um schließlich Medienwissenschaft zu heißen – sondern die verkehrten Verbindungen: Wie schreibt sich die fiktionale mediale Realität in unserer Wahrnehmung fort? »Wie dem auch sei, die Fiktion hängt somit nicht an den (realen oder imaginären) Ereignissen, die in eine Erzählung eingebunden sind, sondern an dem Abstand, den die Sprache sich selbst gegenüber einnimmt, wenn sie unbekannte Eigenschaften sichtbar werden läßt und ungeahnte Gegebenheiten hervorbringt.« (Bellour, 1991)

History and Epistemology of the Computer (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Götz Bachmann

Termin:
14-täglich | Donnerstag | 14:15 - 17:45 | 07.04.2016 - 10.07.2016 | HMS 211/215

Inhalt: We will look at the history of the computer, stopping at some of its key moments - such as early computing in the 1930-40s, cybernetics in the 1940 and 50ties, graphical user interfaces in the 1970ties, or relational databases in the 1970-80s - to look at them form several different theoretical perspectives.

History and Epistemology of the Computer (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Nishant Shah

Termin:
14-täglich | Donnerstag | 14:15 - 17:45 | 07.04.2016 - 10.07.2016 | HMS 139

Inhalt: The computer as an object of analysis, opens up different levels of inquiry that range from historical conditions that enabled the computer to the history-in-making that we experience in the age of ubiquitous computing. The computer needs to be seen as a ‘wicked object’, where every time we try and access and understand it, it becomes something else, thus escaping epistemological frameworks and producing new episteme by which societies can be understood. The History and Epistemology of the Computer is a course that 1. examines the methods of historiography that help us understand the computer as a multi-faceted object, 2. maps the histories that get constructed with the computer as the focus, 3. analyses the different frameworks that can be constructed to make meaning of the computer as a technosocial artefact, and 4. critiques the ways in which the computer becomes a defacto reference point in understanding and shaping our contemporary societies. The course is divided into four sections, each one an attempt to approach the computer, its history, and its meanings through different disciplines, in order to complicate the notions of what it means to be a computer, as well as to look at how the emergence of the computer (both as an object as well as a metaphorical reference point) shapes knowledge making and critique of social, cultural, and political processes. We will look at the history of the computer, stopping at some of its key moments - such as early computing in the 1930-40s, cybernetics in the 1940 and 50ties, graphical user interfaces in the 1970ties, or relational databases in the 1970-80s - to look at them form several different theoretical perspectives.

Zufälle gibt‘s, die gibt‘s gar nicht! Zur Mediengeschichte des Zufalls (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Anneke Janssen

Termin:
wöchentlich | Donnerstag | 12:15 - 13:45 | 04.04.2016 - 10.07.2016 | C 6.317 Seminarraum

Inhalt: "Der Zufall nimmt immer größeren Raum ein, seit die Uhren feiner messen." Seit der Geburt der Statistik versuchen Mathematiker, Soziologen, Philosophen und in neuerer Zeit auch Informatiker dem Zufall, der Unberechenbarkeit und Ungewissheit habhaft zu werden. Die dazugehörigen Szenarien schwanken dabei zwischen Dystopien der Weltzerschmetterung und Utopien der Perfektion. Das Seminar soll anhand ausgewählter Texte den medien- und kulturhistorischen Weg der Denkfigur "Menschenberechnung" nachzeichnen.

Course Schedule

Lehrveranstaltungen

Computerliebe – Die Funktion des Affekts im Digitalen (Seminar)

Fictions in Reality (Seminar)

History and Epistemology of the Computer (Seminar)

History and Epistemology of the Computer (Seminar)

Zufälle gibt‘s, die gibt‘s gar nicht! Zur Mediengeschichte des Zufalls (Seminar)