[rohrpost] Technisierung/Ästhetisierung - Technological and Aesthetic (Trans)Formations of Society, Darmstadt Technical University, October 12 to 14, 2005

[Ingeborg Reichle]

Conference

Technisierung/Ästhetisierung - Technological and Aesthetic 
(Trans)Formations of Society

Darmstadt Technical University, October 12 to 14, 2005


For the past nine years, the interdisciplinary graduate college 
"Technisierung und Gesellschaft" considered the technological 
(trans)formation of society. As the last cohort of doctoral students 
concludes its studies, the final conference widens the perspective and 
brings past researches to bear on the interplay of technological and 
aesthetic dimensions of formative processes in contemporary societies.

By foregrounding process, the conference goes beyond the iconic turn in 
science and technology studies. Rather than focus on images, it will 
explore the work that goes into producing self and society in the image 
of technology. This work involves constructions of time and space, it 
negotiates forces of globalization and localization, it construes self 
and nature as subject and object of technological shaping. This work 
also produces tensions between and among aesthetic and technological ideals.

Plenary Speakers:

Michael Hagner (Zürich, Switzerland):A Brief History of Picturing Thoughts
Wolfgang Krohn (Bielefeld, Germany): Aesthetics of Technology as Forms 
of Life
Jeffrey Meikle (Austin, USA): Shifting Signifiers: Design as Mediator of 
Technology, Art, and Society
Thomas Sieverts (Bonn, Germany):The role of aesthetics in designing on a 
scale of the city regions
Christa Sommerer (Gifu, Japan): Interface Culture - the Art and Science 
of Invention
Gernot Böhme (Darmstadt, Germany): Technical Gadgetery. Technology in 
the Context of Aesthetic Economy


Wednesday, October 12

Arrival

13:45 Address of Welcome

14:00 Plenary Speech J. Meikle

15:00 Coffee break

Panel: Normalization and Cultural Technology Assessment

Wednesday, October 12, 15:30 - 17:00

In recent years a number of attempts have been made to develop an 
alternative to traditional methods of technology assessment. The panel 
discusses some of these alternatives that go under such different 
headings as "cultural, anthropological, and prospective assessment". The 
participants ask to what an extent it is possible to include an 
aesthetic dimension into the judgment and shaping of technological futures.

Panel: Design between Technology and Aesthetics

Wednesday, October 12, 15:30 - 17:00
Thursday, October 13, 10:30 - 12:30

Modern society not only invented various technical means of mass 
production but also created the field of design - the intentional 
aesthetic rendering of industrial goods. In the beginning of the 
discipline, the artists of Art Nouveau pleaded for an aesthetic 
transformation of modern life in order to improve living conditions in a 
humane way. But in the long run, humanitarian aesthetic values seem to 
have been replaced by superficial rhetorical means intended merely to 
pursuade customers. This panel will particularly focus on how the 
conditions of technological civilization shaped the aesthetic values of 
modern design and on how technological achievements (e. g. machine work, 
electrification, computer technology etc.) influenced the formal 
qualities of artificially created objects.

Speakers: Björn Brüsch (Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, 
Berlin), Peter Timmerman (University of Twente), Reinhard Komar 
(Institut für Designforschung, Oldenburg), Kai Buchholz, Nike Breyer, 
Volker Albus (Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe)

Panel: Urban Spaces and Private Quarters

Wednesday, October 12, 15:30 - 17:00
Thursday, October 13, 10:30 - 12:30

In this panel the focus lies on spatial relations and the city both as 
object of and as the location for scientific scrutiny. Perceptions of 
symbolic and material artifacts in the city guide the everyday life of a 
majority of the world's contemporary population. The tacit power of 
architecture, the subtle influences of the aesthetics of things are 
constantly reconfigured by the practices of the people moving through 
and using urban spaces. However, built space is not the only hub of this 
panel. The staging of events in the city by different actors and the 
conflicting uses of publically accessible spaces directs our interest to 
presentations and representations of the city and its diverse 
inhabitants. This area of inquiry connects discursive with visual and 
performative aspects of urban life. Finally, we are interested in the 
multiple ways in which the modeling and visualization of urban space in 
architectural design influences the development and the decision making 
processes that eventually solidify into concrete buildings, plazas, and 
parks. Regarding all three of these hubs we want to encourage 
presentations that explicitly deal with the ambivalent or dialectic 
character of aesthetics in the cities. Touristic interests produce sites 
that are intended to attract people, their time, their money and their 
attention. These sites become places of a specific cultural and economic 
significance. At the same time other places are produced and presented 
as repellent - the "no-go areas" of the modern ghetto, ethnic 
neighborhoods, and the hidden or gated communities of the rich and 
powerful. Aestetics are a central component of the processes of 
attraction and exclusion that regulate our everyday practices. We are 
particularly interested in presentations that include photographic, 
acoustic or audio-visual components. The presentetations should be tied 
to empirical phenomena.

Speakers: Helen Liggett, Lars Frers (Post-Graduate College "Technology 
and Society", TU-Darmstadt), Daniel Normark and Oskar Juhlin (The 
Interactive Institute / Mobility Studio, Stockholm and Göteborg 
University, Sweden), Jerome Krase (Brooklyn College), Lars Meier 
(Post-Graduate College "Technology and Society", TU-Darmstadt) Ute 
Lehrer (Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University, Canada), 
Lukasz Stanek (Technical University Delft)

Panel: Normalizing by Images - Imaging Normalization

Wednesday, October 12, 17:30 - 20:00

The question what is normal and who is abnormal is quite usual in our 
everday life. Normality is of fundamental importance for the functioning 
of society. This is also true for the production and maintainance of 
facts and objects in science. Individuals are permanently asked to 
compare and eventually to adjust their perception and action to existing 
sets of norm. This unreflected and mostly unconcious process implies in 
same time self-normalization and normalizing of the corresponding 
environment. Images are of the utmost importance in producing, 
maintaining and of course remembering normality. Images and diagrams 
channel our eyes and they have an apparently unlimited legitimation 
capacity in doing so. Insofar normality becomes evident by images. In 
this panel the issue is at discussing theories of image and confronting 
them with case studies on the normal and abnormal in society, economy 
and science.

Speakers: Katja Stoetzer (Post-Graduate College "Technology and 
Society", TU-Darmstadt), Claudia Wassmann (NIH/NIBIB)

Panel: Lifeworlds - Natural or Artificial?

Wednesday, October 12, 17:30 - 20:00

The increasing mechanization of human life leads to a heightened 
sensitivity to technology. Not only the design of artefacts, but also 
the processes by which they are produced and used become consequently 
more important. Central concerns here are the effects of technology on 
the natural and on the lifeworld. The connection of both trends is the 
basis for the growing significance of aesthetic and ecological aspects 
in design processes. How do terms such as "biocompatibility" and 
"sustainability" shape the design of products and in which way do 
aesthetic qualities influence their consumption?

Speakers: Nicole C. Karafyllis (Goethe University), Gregor Schiemann 
(Philosophisches Seminar Bergische Universität Wuppertal)

18:30-19:00
Urban spaces and Private Quarters: Mathew/Ninan

20:00
Plenary Speech: Michael Hagner (ETH Zürich), Reception in the "Haus für 
Industriekultur"
(HIK)

Thursday, October 13

09:00 Plenary Speech Th. Sieverts

10:00 Coffee break

Panel: Metaphors in Science and Technology

Thursday, October 13, 10:30 - 17:00

Metaphors are ubiquitous not only in everyday but also in scientific and 
technological language. Research on metaphor in discourse can describe 
shifts in scientific theories or technological models with the help of 
diachronic and synchronic comparisons. Since cognitive metaphor theories 
propose a close connection between linguistic metaphorical expressions 
and mental concepts, the study of the use of metaphor can also provide 
an insight into the structures of our thinking in general. From this 
perspective, metaphors figure as a means to grasp abstract concepts 
which are not perceptible to our senses. Metaphors are therefore not 
merely a linguistic, but a conceptual phenomenon. If so, the research on 
metaphor can be a useful tool to describe conceptual structures and the 
structure of our scientific and technological thinking. These general 
considerations can be made fruitful for the investigation of how to use 
and how to deal with metaphors in science and technology. Here, 
philosophers and sociologists of science and technology as well as 
linguists and cognitive scientists might approach a wide range of 
questions. Which metaphors are used in scientific and technological 
contexts? How can one describe and explain the connection between 
linguistic and conceptual phenomena? Are metaphors really unavoidable 
and universal principles of thinking and speaking? Which role do they 
play for scientific models? Can we chose freely which metaphors we use 
for scientific and technological research? What does that mean for our 
conceptual system? What does it mean for our conception of science? Can 
we prove the truthfulness of scientific arguments, or can we only 
analyse the metaphors? Are metaphors borders, or are they useful tools 
for scientific thinking, or are they neither of these? Which role do 
metaphors play for scientific creativity and innovation? Do aesthetics 
play a role in this, and if so: which one? The planned interdisciplinary 
panel will probe into these questions from both a theoretical and an 
empirical view. Cross-connections to other panels of the conference can 
(and will) be established, for instance to those on 'pictures' and 
'visualising strategies' in science and technology.

Speakers: Jörn Hurtienne (ZMMS, TU Berlin), Sven Hänke (Department of 
German Language and Linguistics, Humboldt University Berlin), Rosario 
Caballero (Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Spain), Dina Dalouka and 
Aristotle Tympas (University of Athens), Silvia Berger, Juliana Goschler 
(Post-Graduate College "Technology and Society" TU Darmstadt), Magdalena 
Zawislawska (Institute of Polish Language, Faculty of Polish Philology, 
University of Warsaw), Marzenna Mioduszewska, Daniel Casasanto (Stanford 
University)

Panel: The Aesthetic Dimensions of Warfare

Thursday, October 13, 10:30 - 12:30
Friday, October 14, 10:30

This panel deals with the aesthetic qualities of military technology. 
Weapons are culturally constructed and endowed with symbolical meaning 
in the setting of exhibitions, public parades, in art, literature and 
the media. In this respect military technology contributes to the 
formation of modern myths. Weapons suggest superiority, power, but also 
death and apocalypse. While political propaganda emphasizes the modern 
myth of a clean war guaranteeing peace and prosperity or relying on the 
intimidating effects of atomic weapons, the peace movement mistrusts 
those qualities, and instead focuses on the devastating effects and 
ultimate dangers of new weapons. Warfare and weapon industries invoke 
aesthetic qualities to advertise their products, likewise, the military 
decides on the basis of certain style and appearance of weapon 
technology. Soldiers are fascinated by modern technology and develop an 
emotional relation to machines. Furthermore, technology is by itself a 
condition of possibility and medium of the aesthetic experience of war. 
Technology distances the soldier from the battlefield, endowing it under 
certain circumstances with a touch of the beautiful and sublime.

We wish to ask in which context the aesthetic qualities of modern 
warfare matter, how weapons are illustrated and culturally constructed. 
What does the aesthetic dimension mean for people acting in the context 
of war? Can aesthetics disclose and unveil the nature of modern warfare 
or does it rather hide its moral dimensions?

Speakers: Stefanie Michels (University of Cologne), Christian Kehrt (TU 
Darmstadt), Silke Fengler and Stefan Krebs (RWTH Aachen), Stefanie van 
de Kerkhof (FernUniversität in Hagen), Cordula Dittmer (Universität 
Marburg), Raphael Sassower (University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, 
CO, USA)

Panel: Technologies of Visualization

Thursday, October 13, 14:00 - 15:30

The disenchantment of nature and the process of rationalization produced 
an austere and highly symbolic order of representation. Visual images 
with photographic qualities had a clearly defined place in this symbolic 
order, they served to document and authenticate facts. Visualization 
technology has since overturned this order and replaced the symbolic by 
the pictorial. Measurements are translated into images, computer 
simulations look like games that look like cinematic representations, 
visualization practitioners think of themselves as artists and 
scientists at once, visions of technical control have become amalgamated 
with a reenchantment of the world, rationality surrenders to the magic 
of technology. - This caricature of the history of visualization 
technology deserves scrutiny, and it also suggests questions that will 
be explored in our panel. For example, how are visualizations in science 
and technology produced? How do aesthetic and "scientific" 
considerations interact in this process?
Three papers (by Martina Heßler, Alfred Nordmann, and Johannes Lenhard) 
approach the topic from the side of aesthetics - they consider what 
happens when scientists start acting, more or less explicitly, as if 
they were artists. Philosophers and sociologists of science used to be 
considered subversive when they pointed to the constructedness of 
scientific knowledge and even the objects and experiences of science. Is 
contemporary technoscience embracing their point of view as it openly 
sets out to create new worlds?
Another set of three papers (by Angela Krewani and/or Petra Missomelius, 
Christine Hanke, Inge Hinterwaldner) approaches the topic from the side 
of the technical process - they consider how visualization techniques 
shape not only what we see, but the very act of seeing, and even the 
practitioner who does the seeing. In particular, it considers the 
delicate interplay of "aesthetic judgement" and"deskilled, mechanical, 
standardized perception" in the history of scientific visualization.

Speakers: Martina Heßler (Aachen), Alfred Nordmann (Philosophy, 
Technische Universität Darmstadt), Johannes Lenhard (Universität 
Bielefeld and TU Darmstadt), Angela Krewani and Petra Missomelius (Media 
Studies, University of Marburg), Inge Hinterwaldner (State Academy of 
Art and Design (HfG) Karlsruhe)

Panel: Art, Technosciences, and Social Criticism

Thursday, October 13, 16:00 - 17:00
Friday, October 14, 14:00 - 17:00

Modern forms of normative criticism of society and capitalism are often 
inspired by aesthetic phenomena. Instances of this range from the 
romantic idea of the "Gesamtkunstwerk" or the vanguard demand for an 
amalgamation of life and art to Joseph Beuys’s understanding of society 
as a social sculpture. Art here exemplarily articulates a longing for a 
more creative life, for unblemished bodies and undeformed souls, and an 
undiminished realisation of individual potentials and wishes. Current 
studies of western societies analyse a structural change in public and 
private life today. In their view, the momentary form of capitalism has 
incorporated outlined points of criticism and made them into initial 
points of capitalistic self-conception.
Given this analytic frame of social reality, the contemporary links 
between art, technique, science, and society must be redefined.

1) Leading a life, designing life-styles, and the whole conception of 
the "Lebenswelt" has throughout the last decades become more and more 
dominated by values of primarily technology-based aesthetic dimensions. 
This is reflected in the intimate relations between literary modernism, 
science, and social values as well as in the current need to redefine 
the social and aesthetic dimensions of laboratory made realities.
2) In contemporary art the phenomena of Transgenic Art and Transhuman 
Art very clearly demonstrates the blending of artistic production, 
scientific research and social sensitivity. The technological upgraded 
bodies of the transhuman artists and the genetically modified transgenic 
objects cast a new light on the relation of art, technosciences, and 
society.
3) How should social criticism respond to the fact that the glance of 
beauty in the promises of high-technology is more and more conceived of 
as reality itself (like in the promises of freedom, individuality and 
independence)? What happens to those aspects of daily life which are 
socially determined as ugly or otherwise deficient (such as illness, 
disability, depression, or death)?

Speakers: Thomas H. Borgard (University of Bern/Switzerland), Heather 
Fielding (Brown University, Providence, RI, USA), Ingeborg Reichle 
(Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and 
Humboldt-University, Berlin), Jörn Ahrens (Kulturwissenschaftliches 
Seminar, Humboldt Universität Berlin), Verena Kuni (Institut für 
Medienwissenschaften, Universität Basel), Melanie Grundmann 
(Kulturwissenschaftliche Fakultät der Europa-Universität Viadrina, 
Frankfurt Oder), Marc Ziegler (Post-Graduate College "Technology and 
Society" TU Darmstadt)

17:30-18:30
Plenary Speech Christa Sommerer (Gifu, Japan)

21:00 Theatre "Every Computer is Red"
20:30 Admission


Friday, October 14

09:00 Plenary Speech W. Krohn

10:00 Coffee break

Panel: Aesthetic Anticipation
Friday, October 14, 10:30 - 12:00

Technology of the future? This can be understood in two different ways: 
how technology could be in the future, and how future is anticipated 
through technology. Of course, future is not present. This does however 
not exclude the question about the certainty with which the future is 
presented as expectation. Moreover, various technologies play an 
important role. For example, dream interpretation (oneirocriticism), the 
liver soothsaying (haruspicium) and astrology are ancient techniques for 
visualizing the future, while statistics and computer-based simulation 
represent modern methods. Moreover and alongside the technicity of 
anticipation, the aesthetic shaping of technological prospects is 
currently becoming evident. Diagrams serve as an indicator for 
continuities, and the breaking of social and technological developments. 
Myths, narratives and images invoke the potentialities of technological 
future. Aesthetic anticipation appears to be fundamental for the 
communication of the new.

Which aesthetic expectations of future are to be found in former and 
current prospects of technological developments? How is future colonised 
and conquered respectively by aesthetic techniques? What aesthetic 
techniques make it possible to visualize future?

Speakers: Nik Brown (Science & Technology Studies Unit, Department of 
Sociology, University of York/GB), Andreas Lösch 8Institut für 
Soziologie, Technische Universität Darmstadt), Andrea zur Nieden 
(Post-Graduate College "Technology and Society", TU-Datmstadt), Hans H. 
Diebner (Institute of Basic Research Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe)


Panel: Technology as a Medium in the Arts

Friday, October 14, 14:00 - 15:30

Technology has become contemporary art enlarged to an object. But not 
just that: it is also a means and medium through which it develops its 
object. This is no less true for the technical sound in music as it is 
for the theatre as a three-dimensional apparatus or the models on which 
art shapes perception.

Christian Janecke,Christoph Rodatz, Detlev Zimmermann (Private 
FernFachhochschule Darmstadt)

17:00 Coffee break

17:30-18:30
Plenary Speech G. Böhme

20:00 Departure

Link:
http://www.ifs.tu-darmstadt.de/fileadmin/gradkoll/Konferenzen/abschluss/Programm.pdf

Contact:

Bruno Arich-Gerz
TU-Darmstadt
Hochschulstr. 1 / Wallhaus
64289 Darmstadt
Phone: 0049-(0)6151-16-2037
Fax 0049-(0)6151-16-3694

E-mail: tagung-graduiertenkolleg at ifs.tu-darmstadt.de

http://www.ifs.tu-darmstadt.de/gk-tagung

Fee: Fee includes coffee, drinks, snacks, and a printed booklet 
including all abstracts

Non-Students: EURO 30
Students: Euro 15

Conference location:

Residential Castle (Schloss)
Marktplatz 15
D-64283 Darmstadt /Germany

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