KCT18 Program Abstracts
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1 2 3 4 Cover Image Rosa Menkman, rosa-menkman.blogspot.com creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ Graphic Design Christina Drachsler 5 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE DIGITAL CULTURES: Knowledge|Culture|Technology Lüneburg, 19-22 September 2018 6 Digital Cultures: Knowledge / Culture / Technology Conference Program and Book of Abstracts Leuphana University Lüneburg 19-22 September 2018 Co-hosted by the Centre for Digital Cultures, Leuphana University Lüneburg, and the Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University, as part of the Knowledge / Culture Conference Series. In collaboration with: Department of Media Studies, University of Siegen Berlin Institute for Empirical Research in Integration and Migration, Humboldt University of Berlin ephemera: theory & politics in organization Meson Press The conference is partly funded by the „Niedersächsisches Vorab“ program of the Ministry for Science and Culture of Lower Saxony and the Volkswagen Foundation. Hosts Funders In cooperation with #KCT18 8 TABLE OF CONTENTS. Welcome from the Organizers 9 Conference Theme 12 Venue 18 Practical Information 22 Travel 23 Campus Map 24 Registration 25 Catering 25 Internet Access 25 Guidelines for Presenters 26 Short Program Overview 27 Detailed Program Overview 29 Concurrent Sessions I 30 Concurrent Sessions II 33 Concurrent Sessions III 36 Concurrent Sessions IV 39 Concurrent Sessions V 42 Concurrent Sessions VI 45 Concurrent Sessions VII 48 Abstracts 51 Keynotes 52 Spotlight Panels 56 Curated Panels 65 Individual Papers 92 WELCOME 10 WELCOME FROM THE ORGANIZERS. Research and writing on digital conditions is so hugely diverse and varied that no discipline can claim a monopoly of knowledge. In organizing the international conference Digital Cultures: Knowledge / Culture / Technology we have been mindful of the limits of disciplinarity while also alert to existing and emergent lines of inquiry. The days we spend together in Lüneburg in September will, we hope, register a moment in which the ensemble of participants signal a certain state of play and distinct style and mode of analysis within the motley field of digital media and cultural studies. The conference, held in Lüneburg, has developed over the last eighteen months with organizing teams working across Lüneburg, Sydney, and elsewhere. It builds on and deepens a longstanding relation of around seven years between Leuphana University’s Centre for Digital Cultures (CDC) and Western Sydney University’s Institute for Culture and Society (ICS). Where the CDC is concerned with developing a research profile and network focused on how digital cultures emerge in the interplay between digital media and global culture, ICS researches transformations in knowledge, culture, and society in a globalizing digital age. Both research agendas meet in the double title of the conference. In Lüneburg, the conference follows on from two previous international conferences on The Terms of Media, organized by the CDC in collaboration with Brown University and held in Lüneburg (2015) and Providence (2015) respectively, and focused on exploring the conditions of digital media and the terms we invoke to make sense of digital cultures. Digital Cultures: Knowledge / Culture / Technology now takes place as part of a series of Knowledge / Culture international conferences, initiated by ICS in 2011 with Knowledge / Culture / Social Change and continued with conferences on Economy (Sydney, 2014), Globalization, Modernity, and Urban Change (Hanoi), and Ecologies (Santiago, 2017). Next year will see a sixth and seventh instalment of the conference series, with Knowledge / Culture / Sustainability taking place in Ferrara, Italy followed by Knowledge / Culture / Climate (Rio de Janeiro, 2019). We encourage you all to consider submitting proposals to these events as well. Each conference in the series frames a pressing issue, salient theme, or prevailing condition in ways attentive to the contours of knowledge and dynamics of culture. Because the focal point of the conference series has been common to many disciplines, earlier events have attracted researchers from a range of fields, including cultural studies, geography, anthropology, political theory, gender 11 studies, and media and communications. This year the conference name departs from the convention of the Knowledge / Culture series to date, foregrounding Digital Cultures as the condition and phenomena around which knowledge and culture gather more broadly in conjunction with technology. Digital Cultures denote an emerging research field which starts from the premise that cultures are already thoroughly marked by the ubiquity of digital media technologies, with wide-ranging consequences for experiencing, thinking about, and intervening in knowledge, culture, and society and requiring a transdisciplinary effort of research and analysis. In the call for papers we invited contributions from fields mentioned above, along with postcolonial studies, architecture and urban studies, science and technology studies, digital humanities, digital sociology, environmental studies, computer science, and organization studies. The disciplinary breadth is consistent with the interests of CDC and ICS and, we think, indicative of the expansive research into digital cultures. Connecting to the six organizing themes of the conference – Histories, Environment, Economies, Subjectivities, Collectivities, and Futures – we received 177 individual paper proposals along with 16 submissions for curated panels, 12 of which are scheduled into the program. The individual paper presentations, organized into themed concurrent sessions, and the curated panels are complemented by keynotes and spotlight panels, which in our view demonstrate some of the most exciting and urgent research on key concerns and topics in digital cultures. With approximately 275 registrations, the conference will mark a significant event in the field. We are particularly pleased that so many emerging researchers submitted proposals and consider this a positive signal for research in the field of digital culture and society. Many of these proposals come from PhD students who participate in the Lüneburg Summer School for Digital Cultures, which precedes the conference and provides graduates and early career researchers with advanced training in the study of media, their theory, aesthetics, and history, with a focus this year on the historiographies of digital cultures. Digital Cultures: Knowledge / Culture / Technology will host in Lüneburg academics, practitioners, artists, and activists from many walks of life and disciplinary backgrounds. Participants are gathering from more than 100 institutions and 30 countries to critically interrogate the historical, prevailing, and future conditions of digital cultures. ____ 12 The conference has been made possible through funds from the Centre for Digital Cultures, Leuphana University, and the Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University. The conference is partly funded by the „Niedersächsisches Vorab“ program of the Ministry for Science and Culture of Lower Saxony and the Volkswagen Foundation. Conference Initiators: Armin Beverungen (University of Siegen / CDC) and Ned Rossiter (ICS). Conference Steering Committee: Centre for Digital Cultures, Leuphana University Lüneburg: Armin Beverungen, Timon Beyes, Manuela Bojadžijev, Lisa Conrad, Mathias Denecke, Randi Heinrichs, Laura Hille, Claus Pias, Sebastian Vehlken, and Daniela Wentz. Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University: Ilia Antenucci, Helen Barcham, Philippa Collin, Gay Hawkins, Tsvetelina Hristova, Liam Magee, Brett Neilson, Ned Rossiter, and Teresa Swist. In collaboration with: The Department of Media Studies, University of Siegen; Berlin Institute for Empirical Research in Integration and Migration (BIM), Humboldt University of Berlin; ephemera: theory & politics in organization; and Meson Press. CONFERENCE THEME 14 The advent and ubiquity of digital media technologies precipitate a profound transformation of the spheres of knowledge and circuits of culture. Simultaneously, the background operation of digital systems in routines of daily life increasingly obscures the materiality and meaning of technologically induced change. Computational architectures of algorithmic governance prevail across a vast and differentiated range of institutional settings and organizational practices. Car assembly plants, warehousing, shipping ports, sensor cities, agriculture, government agencies, university campuses. These are just some of the infrastructural sites overseen by software operations designed to extract value, coordinate practices and manage populations in real-time. While Silicon Valley ideology prevails over the design and production of the artefacts, practices and institutions that mark digital cultures, the architectures and infrastructures of its operations are continually rebuilt, hacked, broken and maintained within a proliferation of sites across the globe. Meanwhile the China tech industry is booming with investement and R+D in machine learning and artificial intelligence. To analytically grasp the emerging transformations requires media and cultural studies to inquire into the epochal changes taking place with the proliferation of digital media technologies. While in many ways the digital turn has long been in process, its cultural features and effects are far from even or comprehensively known. Research needs to attend to the infrastructural and environmental registrations of the