This seminar series offers a critical reflection about the philosophical, aesthetic and political consequences of the increasing dominance of automated systems in contemporary culture. In particular, it is set to explore the tension between computation and philosophy, ratio and logic, measure and metaphysics as a central to our understanding of technology today. The seminars will revolve around the history of cybernetics and computation to discuss the transformation of mechanical automata into predictive systems that do not simply reproduce, but anticipate actions and make decisions. The seminars will start from the premise that this transformation of automation shall to be addressed in the context of philosophical understandings of reason and reasoning.
The first seminar will focus on the tension between cybernetics as the efficient machine of reasoning and metaphysics as a model of theoretical thought. It explores the possibility of a cybernetic metaphysics as a way to re-assess the critical and post-critical understanding of the significance of the machine in human culture. This discussion about cybernetic metaphysics will set the premise for the topic of the second seminar, computation and aesthetics. This seminar explores theories of aesthetics vis a vis the historical development of logical models embedded in computational systems. In particular, it will address the use of computational logics in design and invite a reflection upon the relation between reason and aesthetics in automated systems. The third seminar will direct the material of the first and second seminars towards questions of power, of governance and politics. It will address political theories in the context of automated intelligence and seek alternative possibilities to models of governance haunted by absolute contingency. The seminar will also draw on the post 1980s theorizations about the alliance between gender and machine, race and techne as offering artificial figurations of subjectivity.
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Mon, Mar 20, 20176:30 pm to 8:30 pm
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Tue, Mar 21, 20176:30 pm to 8:30 pm
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Wed, Mar 22, 20176:30 pm to 8:30 pm
Luciana Parisi is Reader in Cultural Theory, Chair of the PhD Programme at the Centre for Cultural Studies, and co-director of the Digital Culture Unit, Goldsmiths University of London. Her research is a philosophical investigation of technology in culture, aesthetics and politics. She has written within the field of Media Philosophy and Computational Design. She is the author of Abstract Sex: Philosophy, Biotechnology and the Mutations of Desire (2004, Continuum Press) and Contagious Architecture. Computation, Aesthetics and Space (2013, MIT Press). She is currently researching the philosophical consequences of logical thinking in machines.
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