Art Science Technology

Art Science Technology: Theories and Concepts for the Emergent Technological Universes
Hydra Part II

This Think.Zone offers theoretical tools to navigate the contemporary techno-scientific scenario and a conceptual framework to investigate the current rapid changes shaped by new technologies. The goal is to explore diverse understandings of, and theories on, current practices in art, science, and technology, and to grasp the depth of nascent “digital thought” as a philosophy that aims to find a novel language for emergent technological universes.

The conceptual premise of the Think.Zone concerns the ubiquitous complex—variously known as the digital, post-media, virtual, or hybrid condition—that defines our time. This is the transition to a computational space, and the shaping of our sensorium by digital technologies: devices and software, communication and information infrastructures, and the media environments and platforms that result.

Drawing on the thought of philosophers and media thinkers, with particular attention to an emerging generation that is trying to define a new theoretical agenda and language for a radical technological thought, the Think.Zone embraces a transdisciplinary mode of investigation that will allow an understanding of the techno-scientific scenario in its complexity, including its aesthetic, social, cultural, economic, and geopolitical implications.

We will examine how the spectrum of today's digitality and technicality, in its connection to scientific developments, allows us to rethink categories such as time, space, nature, artificiality, representation, mimesis, objecthood, authorship, and circulation. We will consider the legacy of 20th-century approaches, including cybernetics as a science which foreshadowed our present era, and the current need to think in holistic, ecological, and systematic terms, as anticipated in media ecology and post-humanism.

Moreover, we will also explore notions and forms of intelligence—natural, “non-human,” and artificial. From machine vision to the realm of materials intelligence, the Think.Zone investigates notions of ecology, hybridity, and trans-disciplinary queering as propositions and pathways for today’s artistic creation and exhibition making. It traverses keywords such as “alliances” and “non-human” agency and companionship.

Seminal essays from the tradition of art criticism will find new positions within this spectrum, including writings by artists who anticipated these discourses. The intention is to decipher the transformative potential of emerging technologies as well as their opacities and dysfunctions, and to connect these to the tropes of contemporary visual aesthetics as informed by advanced technologies—including computer-generated imagery, machine vision, AI, virtual, augmented and mixed reality, artificial textures and new materials—while engaging with reflections on their generative and ontological power.

The aim is to offer a conceptual framework to navigate the contemporary complex by exploring critically articulated modes of thinking and creating through experimental avenues in artistic practice, curating, and theory.

Part of Cybercultures
This Lab.Zone is held in English. Course credit is given based on attendance and participation.