Over the past three months, I have been working with the Transmediale curatorial team as a moderator of a ‘Study Circle’ on ‘Affective Infrastructures’, a term borrowed from the scholar, Lauren Berlant. The Study Circle is made up of seven other (fantastic) scholars, activists and artists: Femke Snelting (co-moderator), Marija Bozinovska Jones, Lou Cornum, Nadege, Fernanda Monteiro, Pedro Oliveira and Tung Hui-Hu.

This year’s festival does not have an overarching theme or focus but, rather, emphasises “how feelings are made into objects of technological design and asks what role emotions and empathy play within digital culture. One of the key questions of the upcoming festival is “What moves you?”, referring not only to an emotional response but also to the infrastructures and aesthetics that govern how affect becomes mobilized as a political force today.”

Our Study Circle met for a one day in-person meeting in Berlin (with three people beaming in remotely), and then continued to meet and write remotely over a few months to figure out what ‘affective infrastructures’ are and why we should think about them. Here is what we say:

“As machine reading systems increasingly capture emotions, classify behaviours, and influence collective feeling, the need for a different relation with both ‘infrastructure’ and ‘affect’ emerges. Over the past months, this Study Circle has explored and exemplified ‘affective infrastructures’ by building an inventory, or more appropriately, an ‘archipelago’ of items: Accent recognition systems, artificial companions, emojis, #metoo spreadsheets, language/s and code/s, keeping associations among them purposely loose and open. At this event, the Study Circle participants will introduce, perform, and discuss entries from the archipelago and explore how imaginative, living infrastructures can accommodate multiplicity and difference, mobilize bodies and build new worlds.”

Our Study Circle will do a workshop and a public event. Something we wrote about Affective Infrastructures is going to be up and online soon. Please come through!

Last week I was invited to take part in a performance event about black boxes, finance, and the algorithmic condition: Making The Black Box Speak, an episode in the second season of a show called The Future of Demonstration designed and produced by Gerald Nestler and Sylvia Eckermann.

I was curious about it because it was not the traditional panel/lecture format, included a choir, stunt artists, and a whistleblower ‘quant’ – one of the early architects of automated high frequency trading. It was pretty dramatic and lots of fun to be part of it. The audience really liked it too. I am not sure that it’s quite the same when you watch the recording however.

The Future of Demonstration S2E3 from The Future of Demonstration on Vimeo.

It has been a hot, busy summer. I haven’t taken a break yet except for four days in Yosemite National Park (which was stunning) after the Tech, Law & Society Summer Institute at UC Irvine in California. I spent a lot of time traveling between Berlin and Lüneburg for my fellowship at MECS. It was blissful having office space and solitude to write. I feel like I’ve made some headway with my research but its early days yet in terms of actual words on the page that will make it into a dissertation.

I synthesized some of these ideas in the 2018 State of Responsible IoT Report, titled ‘A-Words: Accountability, Automation Agency, AI’ I also worked them into a 53s video for a ‘Thoughts of the Week’ series by Deutsche Bank that you can watch here:

One of the other things I started over the summer was work with colleagues at the Centre for Digital Cultures at Leuphana to edit a new issue of Spheres. The theme for this Winter 2019 issue is the ‘Spectre of Artificial Intelligence‘. We have got some really exciting articles from not-your-usual suspects and addressing AI from diverse perspectives, from Area Studies to Sound Studies.

It has also been a pretty hectic summer for fieldwork interviews, conferences and events. I presented papers or gave talks here:

– Data Justice 2018 at the new Data Justice Lab at Cardiff University.
– Policy frameworks for Digital Platforms: From Openness to Inclusion. IT For Change and the Center for Policy Studies, IIT Bombay.
– Tech, Law & Society Summer Institute at UC Irvine, CA.
– 4S – Annual Conference of the Society for the Social Studies of Science, Sydney.

I feel like I have been listening a lot more than I have been talking (I promise! really!) and reading a lot of new things. I have spent a lot of time walking around in circles in airports and struggling with new ideas. This means I’ve got some new, challenging, interesting things to try out for size. I’m excited for Autumn. So here’s what is coming up:

– Lüneburg for the Digital Cultures Conference
– Dortmund for a small and new local event called Process 2018
– Boston for the Public Interest Tech Summit at Digital HKS (Harvard Kennedy School)
– Vienna for The Future of Demonstration
– Namur for Kikk Festival

Please come and say hello if our paths cross.

I just started a six month part-time fellowship at the MECS – Media Cultures of Computer Simulation – Institute for Advanced Study at my home institution, Leuphana University, in Lüneburg, Germany. Here is what I’m working on there. I’m in great company with some really smart PhDs and Post-Docs and am really happy to be part of this community.