Vorlesungsverzeichnis

Vorlesungsverzeichnis

Suchen Sie hier über ein Suchformular im Vorlesungsverzeichnis der Leuphana.

Start > Leuphana Bachelor (B.A./B.Eng./B.Sc./LL.B.) -> Major Kulturwissenschaften -> History and Epistemology of Digital Media

Lehrveranstaltungen

Archaeogaming. History of and in Video Games (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Jan Müggenburg

Termin:
wöchentlich | Donnerstag | 10:15 - 11:45 | 06.04.2020 - 10.07.2020 | C 5.326 (ICAM)

Inhalt: »I’m stuck in colonial times, tentacles are taking over the world, and now the toilet's backed up.« Hoagie in ›Day of the Tentacle‹ by Lucas Arts, 1993. Historical locations, people who have changed the course of history or legendary battles and conflicts are omnipresent in computer games. Most notably, popular titles such as Red Dead Redemption II or Assassin's Creed Odyssey strive for authenticity and an accurate representation of the past. However, the history of video games is full of games that "play with history" in a different way, for example by imagining counterfactual histories, exploring past futures or modelling entire human histories. A special case are games like the Tomb Raider-Series, which allow players to become archaeologists or historians in an artificial world. Last but not least real-world archeologist start to discover that games like No Man’s Sky, which implement "procedural generation" in order to create a variety of planets and environments, can become places for actual arachaeological research. However, the seminar does not only focus on the question of how historical epochs and events are represented, modified or simulated as alternative scenarios in computer games. Rather, the question of ›archaeogaming‹ points to a much more fundamental problem within media studies: historiography is always a constructive practice that takes place in, with and through media and is never simply an exact representation of the past. Therefore, the seminar will deal with questions like: ›Does ›playing history‹ change our understanding of history‹, ›What can ego shooters like Call of Duty teach us about the ›reality‹ of historical conflicts? Does the renactment of the Boston Tea Party in Assassin's Creed III offer us an authentic insight into the history of the American Revolution? Do simulations like Civilization VI privilege certain colonial or imperialist perspectives? And what does it actually mean for our understanding of history when we wander through a post-apocalyptic world that could be our own in Fallout IV?

History and Practice of Digital Humanities (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Sarah Gambell, Lorna Hughes

Inhalt: This course will introduce the core principles of digital humanities: digital content, tools and methods. It will also discuss in detail the historical development of digital humanities as an important intervention in the research life cycle. The course will also address the opportunities of digitally enabled scholarship in the humanities, examining case studies of important projects that demonstrate how digital approaches make it possible to carry out 'traditional' research more effectively and effectively; to create deeper and richer engagement with primary sources across the humanities; and to configure new and innovative research questions. The course will also present an overview of several important tools used in the field commonly known as 'digital humanities', or DH, allowing students to develop examination of the theoretical consequences of using digital approaches, and the implications of digital in the arts and humanities. Due to the current circumstances, the seminar will be taught online. If offline teaching becomes possible again, we will adjust accordingly.

Nachdenken über Technik. Einführung in Geschichte und Philosophie der Technik (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Christoph Görlich

Termin:
wöchentlich | Donnerstag | 14:15 - 15:45 | 06.04.2020 - 10.07.2020 | C 5.326 (ICAM)

Inhalt: –– Hinweis: Seminar findet gem. Plan via Zoom statt, alles Weitere wird in der ersten Sitzung besprochen –– Mit dem für sie zweifelhaften Status als Wissenschaft ist auch in der Philosophie der Markt der Bindestrich-Subunternehmen gewachsen: von der Kultur- über die Medien- und Tier-, bis zur Wirtschafts-Philosophie. (Zeichen des Unbehagens ist dass man hier lieber Komposita setzt.) Die Technik-Philosophie ist Teil dessen und wie auch in den anderen Fällen ist ihr deshalb noch nicht mit Ablehnung und Grundzweifeln, sondern mit Fragen zu begegnen: Was kann das bedeuten, „Technikphilosophie“? Bildet sie einen eigenen, klar abgrenzbaren Bereich innerhalb der Philosophie, d.h, gegenüber anderen „Philosophien“ bzw.: gegenüber „der restlichen Philosophie“? Gibt es also eine dezidierte Philosophie der Technik oder verhält es sich umgekehrt so, dass die Technik eine Richtung unteilbarerer philosophischer Reflexion ergibt? Nochmal anders gewendet: Sind die Einsichten und Erkenntnisse der Technikphilosophie solche über „die“ Technik oder sind sie Teil einer generellen Bewegung philosophischer Reflexion, für die Technik nur ein Moment darstellt? Diese Frage wird ein Seminar, das sich, aus verschiedenen Gründen, wiederum nur der „Technikphilosophie“ widmet, nicht beantworten können. Doch sie soll in diesem Seminar, gewissermaßen nach innen gewendet, erkenntnisleitend sein, insofern zunächst einmal gefragt werden kann ob überhaupt ein Gemeinsames technikphilosophischen Fragens gefunden werden kann – ob sich also der Gegenstand der Technikphilosophie so leicht auch auf den Begriff bringen lässt wie er benannt ist. Diese Diskussion soll im Seminar – anhand eines groben, entlang zentraler (oder zumindest für zentral gehaltener) Autoren orientierten Überblicks zur modernen technikphilosophischen Reflexion – entfacht werden.

Swarms. A Media History and Theory of Collective Intelligence (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Sebastian Vehlken

Termin:
wöchentlich | Donnerstag | 12:15 - 13:45 | 06.04.2020 - 10.07.2020 | C 5.326 (ICAM)

Inhalt: A spectre was haunting (not only) Europe: Since 2000, an inflationary discourse had been spreading around new types of social collectives, fundamentally different from older concepts of collective organization – such as described by classical mass psychology. Antonio Negri and Michael Hard dedicated a separate chapter to "swarm intelligence" in their bestseller 'Multitude', the American techno-apologist Howard Rheingold wrote of smart mobs as the "next social revolution", and everywhere people began to rave about "the wisdom of the crowd" (James Surowiecki) – or simply, like the Cologne-based advertising copywriter Frank Schätzing, about "the swarm". A new form of social collectives is imagined, characterized by variables such as flexibility, self-organization and lack of hierarchy, and based on an advanced (media) technical communication infrastructure. It is not by chance that the brochure of a futurology institute with close ties to the economy summarized the guiding principles of this "social swarming": "The rapid development of information technology increasingly determines our lives, which are becoming more and more flexible, dynamic and individual. The invention of the Internet triggered a media revolution that has a lasting impact on both the economy and private life. Although people still have conservative desires, in the age of blogs and smartphones these are satisfied differently. Desires for community, love and faith find new forms of fulfillment. Autonomous individuals can network more and more easily and cost-effectively with the help of new technologies. This results in smart majorities that influence decisions - from culture to consumption" (Trendbüro Hamburg, 2005). The seminar now pursues four critical guiding questions: First, it will ask what the historical-epistemological foundations of such a technicized swarm discourse were: How did a term like Swarm Intelligence actually develop? Were biological models simply transferred to social and economic conditions, as has been the case since ancient times, for example, with bee colonies or ant colonies (Auguste Forel, Alfred Espinas)? Or is its genesis more complex and unclear? What knowledge of swarms is used here, and what have been the specific media-technical bases for the description of swarms and their organisation at different times since 1900? Secondly, it is interested in why this discourse suddenly became popular in completely different or even opposite areas. To what core does swarm intelligence refer when it is negotiated both in the context of subversive demonstration strategies, as well as military tactics, or as the future of corporate action? And thirdly, there are questions about the power structure in which a social and political discourse about Swarm Intelligence emerges and becomes effective. More precisely, it is necessary to examine the governmentality (Michel Foucault) of swarms and how they differ as socio-political collective figures from other concepts such as multitude or network. Which literal pop-cultural models exist that may have contributed to a positive reevaluation of the term swarm (for example in films and documentaries), so that it is combined with "intelligence" around 2000, instead of standing for disruption, chaos, noise and the area of an outside of knowledge as it did around 1900? And fourthly, we want to examine what has remained of the techno euphoria, when for some time now the flip side of a "swarm stupidity" (Seeßlen/Metz, Dueck) has tended to come to the fore and social media hitstorms have been exhibiting quite the opposite characteristics of collective online phenomena. The focus is thus on the investigation of a governmental mediality of swarms and a critique and theoretical-historical deepening of those all too naïve and unspecific conceptions of swarm intelligence, as they emerged within the popular swarm euphoria. Beyond a mere metaphorical transmission, a media history and theory of swarms conceals the figure of a ›zootechnology‹ that establishes the non-transparent and dynamic media cultures in which we move every day.