20th June 2024
Berlin Open Lab
Berlin University of the Arts
Einsteinufer 43, 10587 Berlin

We live in a moment of comprehensive datafication. Due to digital technologies, ever more aspects of our lives and the planet can be measured, analyzed and shaped. This creates new ways of knowing and doing. But all too often, this development leads to a systematic devaluation of forms of knowing that cannot be quantified and processed digitally. This leads to ignorance and marginalization, enacting a form of epistemic violence.

In this symposium, we will investigate the relationship between quantifiable and experiential, abstracted and embodied knowledges. Digital data and lived worlds are never quite congruent. Technical measurement and more-than-human experience can never provide the exact same picture. Not because data is inaccurate (which, of course, it often is), but because it represents a fundamentally different relationship to oneself and the world. This brings into focus the differences between various forms of perception and the question of how we can make these differences productive.

We address these differences through trans-disciplinary dialogues between researchers in the arts and sciences, focusing on epistemological, aesthetic, and techno-political aspects.

Organizers: Michelle Christensen and Florian Conradi (Einstein Center Digital Future/TU Berlin and Weizenbaum Institute/UdK Berlin), Felix Stalder and Cornelia Sollfrank (Latent Spaces. Performing Ambiguous Data research project, ZHdK)
Team Berlin Open Lab: Michelle Christensen, Florian Conradi, Ines Weigand, Selenay Kiray