Demons in the Machine
Orit Halpern and David Riff in conversation

Scholar of digital cultures Orit Halpern and steirischer herbst senior curator David Riff discuss the potentials and pitfalls of today’s increasingly algorithmic reality and the demons that inhabit its apparatus. Both AI and smart cities are reactions to mounting crises and accumulating traumas, designed to handle an information overload and enforce a securitized reality. How can we prevent digital augmentation from acting as a malignant force, how can we better understand its (predigital) roots and predefined structures?

Orit Halpern is professor and chair of digital cultures at Technische Universität Dresden. Her work bridges the histories of science, computing, and cybernetics with design. Halpernʼs first monograph, Beautiful Data: A History of Vision and Reason (Duke University Press, 2015), investigates histories of big data, design, and governmentality. Her latest book The Smartness Mandate (MIT Press, 2022), cowritten with Robert Mitchell, traces our obsession with smart technologies and artificial intelligence.

7.10., 17:00

Forum Stadtpark
Stadtpark 1
8010 Graz ♿

Free admission

Registration: tickets [at] steirischerherbst.at

In English

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