Digital Subjects
one day symposium
12 May 2016, Senate House, London
Organiser: Olga Goriunova, Royal Holloway University of London
Digital subjects can be many things: a nested set of abstractions assembled by algorithms; a dynamic data aggregate feeding upon the movement of bodies in space and time; an experiential, sensuous presence and performance online. Digital subjects are the subjects of profiles, video channels, search query histories, inboxes, logs of GPS coordinates, traded data of financial transactions or travel card usage.
The reason why it's worth calling them subjects are the new ontological
and epistemological demands placed by the rapid development of computational
infrastructures and our cyborgian lives. The question of the digital subject is
a political question wielded by the disciplinary lines of differentiation.
These lines are cut in the thick distance that joins together human, posthuman,
nonhuman and the digital (Goriunova). Some humanities regard digital subjects
from the point of view of the operation of representational data surveillance
(data gathered forms a shadow of the human (Raley)) and a political/legal
question (Rouvroy); some data sciences ignore the distance and claim that data
gives direct access to, in this case, humans (people are equal to their
tweets). Many contemporary art practices, especially feminist performances
online, explore the distance as a thick field of production that is not fully
determined (Scourti).
The aim of the event is to rethink the subject and think the digital subject
from the point of view of different genealogies, reasons, expressions and
logics. What we aim to work towards is not a return to any previous form of
unity, but a way to construct an understanding of computational kinds of
subjects and their ways of generation, production, and sustenance.
This is a Royal Holloway’s
Humanities and Arts Research Centre event in cooperation with the Department of
Media Arts
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PROGRAMME
12 May, Senate House, Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HU
ROOM BSQ-SH264
9.30 Registration
9.45 Introduction
Chair: Silvia Mollicchi
10.00 – 10.50 Lisa Blackman, Data are Us?
The challenges of computational cultures for theorising the subject(s)
of digital mediation
10.50
- 11.40 Luciana Parisi, The Alien Subject of AI
Coffee break 11.40 – 11.50
Chair: Nathan Jones
11.50 - 12.40 Katerina Kolozova, Subjectivity without physicality
Lunch break (lunch not provided) 12.40-13.30
Chair: Scott Wark
13.30 - 14.20 Andreas Bernard, The Knowledge of the Profile. Conceptions of the Self in Digital Cultures
14.20 - 15.10 Christoph Engemann, Declarative & Procedural Identity - Governmediality after Snowden
Coffee break 15.10-15.30
Chair: Giles Askham
15.30 - 16.20 Rózsa Zita Farkas, Feminist Performance on the Web
16.20 - 17.10 Erica Scourti, Evasive Actions: on the Limits of Intelligibility
Attendance: free. Please register by emailing Olga Goriunova at [log in to unmask]
Full description, abstracts and bios can be found at:
https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/harc/events/eventsarticles/digital-subjects1.aspx