This project is developing a media theoretical critique of computational environments that shape human cognition and behavior on different scales, ranging from technologies of the self, such as smartphone apps and small groups in educational and corporate environments, to large-scale market, climate, or war simulations. Historically, computer-based cognitive-behavioral design emerged as part of larger biopolitical and governmental structures in the 20th century in the Foucauldian sense. However, with the recent advancements in deep machine learning and generative AI, this type of design crossed the threshold from a heterogeneous set of aesthetic, scientific, and political techniques and theories to automatic quasi-closed systems, a new type of political technology and governmentality of the interface. Within science and industry, discussions of cognitive simulations, generative AI systems, and robotics are often driven by narratives of functionality, innovation, and progress; in contrast, this project asks what is made technologically impossible through the cognitive-behavioral design of computational environments: What does not compute, is made invisible, is excluded, disposed, forgotten, or foreclosed by the design of computational cognitive-behavioral environments?
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© University of California Santa Barbara
Assoc. Prof. Christina Vagt
University of California Santa Barbara (USA) | European Media Studies, German Studies, Comparative Literature
Christina Vagt is Associate Professor of European Media Studies, German, and Comparative Literature at the University of California Santa Barbara. Her research intersects media theory with European philosophy and the history of science and technology. Selected publications: Impossible-Possible Machines (communication +1, 2022), Action at A Distance (Minnesota, 2020); Design as Aesthetic Education: On the Politics and Aesthetics of Learning Environments (History of the Human Sciences, 2020), Geschickte Sprünge. Physik und Medium bei Martin Heidegger (Diaphanes, 2012).
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Prof. Florian Sprenger
Ruhr University Bochum | Media Studies, Virtual Humanities
E-mail: florian.sprenger@rub.de
Prof. Florian Sprenger
Ruhr University Bochum | Media Studies, Virtual Humanities
E-mail: florian.sprenger@rub.de
Florian Sprenger is Professor of Virtual Humanities at the Institute for Media Studies at Ruhr-Universität Bochum. He is also principal investigator at the collaborative research group Virtual Lifeworlds, where he has a research project on “Virtual Environments – Sensor-Algorithmic Virtuality in Self-Driving Cars” and directs the Virtual Humanities Lab. He is author of numerous articles and books, among them Uexkülls Surroundings – Umwelt Theory and Right-Wing Thought (with Gottfried Schnödl, 2022, Meson Press) and forthcoming “Von wo und von wem? Skizzen einer Genealogie der Situiertheit“ (August Verlag, 2024). His research covers topics such as the history of artificial environments, media of immediacy, the history of situatedness, and mobility cultures.
Website
https://ifm.rub.de/institut/personen/prof-dr-florian-sprenger