Sensing Media: Reconfigurations Between Technologies, Bodies and Enviroments

June 14 – 15, 2018

Event — International Conference  at the University of Siegen
Ever more sensors surround us and attach to us. They populate smart devices, homes, factories, cars, and cities. They register, chart, and process bodies and environments, allowing for new modes of knowledge as well as forms of control. Sensor-based media capture and analyze human behavior in order to gain a better understanding of their actions and affects. It is therefore worth asking how sensor-based media reconfigure the relation between technologies, (human) bodies and environments. By focusing on the plethora of different sensors that transform devices into smart devices, homes into smart homes, and augment our environments to produce a non-human sensorium, the conference aims to map the contemporary modes of sensor-based sense-making which are deeply intertwined with the promise of the automation of labor, mobility, decisions and knowledge production. Framed as autonomous agents, assistants, companions or surroundings, sensor-based technologies rely on as well as produce continuous data streams that are captured, cleaned, combined, distributed, analyzed and acted upon. As a result, new modes of knowing, interacting and acting emerge between humans and these sensory environments. These will be explored in the conference by addressing a broad range of questions such as: What kinds of knowledge are made possible by the data gathered, processed and enacted through sensor-based media? What types of interaction are prescribed or made possible between humans and sensory environments? How is agency redistributed and experience reconfigured by sensor-based media? How are humans implicated in the processes of automated sense-making and action.

The conference is organized by the graduate school »Locating Media« in cooperation with the collaborative research center »Media of Cooperation«. Participation is free. We however ask you kindly to register at info@locatingmedia.uni-siegen.de

Program:

THURSDAY, JUNE 14

13:30-14:00	Welcome
14:00-15:00	James Ash: Phase Media: Space, Time and Smart Objects
15:00-15:30	Coffee Break
15:30-16:30	Sam Hind: Blind Spots
16:30-17:30	Mark Andrejevic: Drone Cartographies: The Operational Map
17:30-18:00	Coffee Break
18:00-19:00	Marie-Luise Angerer: Intensive Milieus
20:00	Dinner @ Brasserie

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 15

09:30-10:30	Birgit Schneider: Environmental Aesthetics. Nature Writing with Sensor Technologies?
10:30-11:00	Coffee Break
11:00-12:00	Jennifer Gabrys: Environment as Experiment in Sensing Technology
12:00-13:00	Lunch
13:00-14:00	Fieke Jansen: Creative Methodologies for Mapping Data Flows and Infrastructure
14:00-15:00	Dawid Kasprowicz: The Instantaneous Past: On Body Images and Algorithmic Proximity
15:00-15:30	Wrap Up