Our research projects investigate the role of software, data and algorithms for the design of the contemporary. The case studies focus on selected issues like practices of curating digital displays and digital mimicry in arts, logistics and data work in migration management, predictive policing, boundary work in science in social media, programming labor or public broadcasting and many more. As an STS laboratory we actively participate in the worlds we are examining while reflecting theoretical and methodological stances and experimenting with new methods in our empirical research. Learn more about our research projects outlined below.
Computer Simulations
Form, Matter, and Pragmatics
The ascent of computer simulations in scientific modelling coincided not only with the rise of the digital computer as such but also with the advent of data visualisation technologies capable of representing the dynamics of a “target system”. [Read more...]
Digital Art on Display
Exploring the Practices of Curating and Exhibiting
Museums, galleries, and the art world have long been oriented mostly toward material, original and static objects and have configured themselves to accommodate the exhibition, presentation, collection, and preservation of such works of art. Like other art forms before it, digital art challenges the traditional notion of what constitutes an art object. [Read more...]
Engineering Problems
On Creating and Transforming Problems for ‘Optimizing’ Solutions in Software Culture
While it seems quite easy to find it plausible that people come up with clever ideas and solutions for certain problems, given that those problems are actually there, in front of the person who is dealing with the problem, it is quite hard to imagine the process of coming up with, finding, creating a new idea seemingly out of nothing. [Read more...]
IMPROVE
Taking Tacit Knowledge into Account by Using Problem Cases as Guidelines in HMI Development for I4.0 Projects
IMPROVE is aiming for developing a more efficient way of providing plant field maintenance in highly complex industrial facilities. Therefore, knowledge based models and devices for data mining and processing are to be created in order to support the facility’s maintenance operators who keep the system running in a good condition. [Read more...]
Logistics of Flows
Managing Migration and its Sociotechnical Infrastructures
“Hotspots” is the EU Commission’s new vision for how to control migration flows, support member states and re-stabilize the Schengen system. Behind this buzzword is the concept of a registration and redistribution (as well as a repatriation) camp, which serves as a bottleneck for entry into the EU and selects which human beings will be allowed to apply for asylum and which will be directly deported, if possible, to non-EU-countries. [Read more...]
Programming Labor
How Process Management Systems reconfigure Sociotechnical Assemblages
When Frederick W. Taylor published “The Principles of Scientific Management” in 1911, his key goal was to optimize work processes so that they would be as little time-consuming as possible. His principle held that inefficiencies should be made visible through practices of measurement. [Read more...]
Translating Knowledge
The Case of Science Videos on YouTube
Digitalization, Web 2.0 and the importance of science communication for the scientific community itself interconnect science more and more with pop culture. The leading social video platform YouTube is one example for the popularization of science and technology. During the last years the number of videos with scientific content increased dramatically. [Read more...]
Ubiquitous Datafication
Regimes of Data Processing and the Struggle for Privacy
Using digital information to organize (social) life seems to be the preferred modus operandi of contemporary society. The underlying operational process that leads to the digitization and digitalization of society materializes through forms of generating, accumulating, and processing – everything and everyone is transformed into data. [Read more...]
Upgrade?
Doing Data, Computational Culture and the Machinery of Governing
Not only etymologically “state” and “statistics” are connected. When “political arithmetic” was introduced in England around 1676 and “Statistik” in Prussia around 1749, it was a science of the state. With demographics, public health and crime statistics questions were of regulation became deeply linked to technoscientific reasoning. [Read more...]
Finished Projects
Media Centers of the Future
Public Broadcasting and the Co-production of Information Publics
In the age of digital media available on the internet users have access to abundant content and need to deal with a vast amount of information. Broadcasters and other media companies are searching for solutions to provide users with relevant content. Primarily technology-driven commercial media providers such as YouTube, Netflix or Amazon use personalization and user profiles for context and usage specific recommendations. [Read more...]
Communication between Science, Public and Media
The meaning, chances and risks of social media
The explosive growth of social media in society in general and in science in particular raises assumptions about radical change of traditionally social structures and institutions. Optimistic assessments assume that society and science get more democratic, efficient and in touch with the people. Pessimistic evaluations point out quality loss and disinformation of the public. [Read more...]
Scientific Boundary Work on the Internet
Scientific Boundary Work on the Internet
Blogs are representing a new environment for sociotechnical communication and creating new conditions for the communication of scientific topics. In contrast to the formal communication systems everybody and every content can - at first glance - take part in the selected cases. [Read more...]