Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 35, No. 370.
        Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
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        Date: 2021-11-25 07:31:19+00:00
        From: thomas.haigh@gmail.com
        Subject: Digital Matters: free online conference Dec 1-3 @ Siegen University

For anyone out there somewhere looking forward to spending more time in
front of their computers staring at Zoom, I am pleased to bring word of
the /Digital Matters/ conference taking place at Siegen University next
week. I organized it with Valérie Schafer (University of Luxembourg),
Axel Volmar (Siegen University) & Sebastian Giessmann (Siegen University).

Details at https://www.socialstudiesof.info/digitalmatters/. Free registration by
email is required to get the Zoom links. When we had to make the call
earlier this month to go from primarily in person to primarily online a
lot of things got changed around, and one of those was that we went to a
three day format with start times each day of 13:00 or later. So that
means that North Americans can attend without having to get up absurdly
early. The timeslots are budgeted for 50 minutes per talk, with the idea
that this will allow some genuine interactivity and discussion.
(Subtract 6 hours for Eastern time, 7 for Central, 9 for Pacific).

We can offer you a wonderful and eclectic lineup of speakers. The blurb
is as follows “In popular discussion digitality is increasingly equated
with networked immateriality: disembodied algorithms float rhetorically
in an ethereal cloud of big data. Think, for example, of the “digital
edition” of the PlayStation 5 console, so called because it has no
optical drive to read games, which must instead be downloaded. The
implication is that the regular PS5 console is somehow not digital
because its storage medium is visible to the unaided human eye. This
presupposition of digital immateriality is not just a misconception to
be corrected, but a productive site for interdisciplinary scholarly
inquiry into media and data practices. In Digital Matters, historians,
media theorists and information scholars come together for three days to
examine the socio-material constituents of digital systems and
artifacts. How and why did people come to deny the materiality of the
digital? What can we learn by recovering it? What if we rethink digital
materialities as ongoing cooperative accomplishments?”

The current lineup is as follows, but _/please rely on the online
program in case of any last minute changes/_. Most speakers will be
online, but as of the last tally three of the four organizers and three
speakers plan to brave Germany’s biggest ever Covid wave to be there in
person. If any of you happen to be close by and would like to risk being
in the same room as other humans then let me know and I’ll pass on the
physical details.

*December 1:*

13:45: Conference introduction and welcome

Moderator:  Valérie Schafer (C^2 DH, University of Luxembourg)
14:00-14:50: “Travelling machines,” Camille Paloque-Bergès (CNAM, Paris).
15:00-15:50: “Dimensions of Materiality,” Kyle Stine (Johns Hopkins
University).

15:50-16:30: Break for virtual coffee.

Moderator: Miglè Bareikytè (Siegen University)
16:30-17:20: “Dance Notation: Grammars for Understanding and Controlling
the Body,” Quinn DuPont (University College, Dublin).
17:30-18:20: “Modularity, Materiality, and the Political Order of the
Stacks,” Jean-François Blanchette (University of California at Los Angeles).

**

*December 2: *

Moderator: Susanne Förster (Siegen University)
13:30-14:20. “Looking for Oil (and Finding It) in the History of
Computing,” Cyrus Mody (Maastricht University).
14:30-15:20. “Digital and Nature in the Anthropocene,” Felix Stalder
(Zurich University of the Arts).

15:20-16:00: Break for virtual coffee.

Moderator: Sebastian Giessmann (Siegen University)
16:00-16:50: “The Great eBook Conspiracy: eReaders, Publishers, and
Price Competition in the Early 2000s,” Gerardo Con Diaz (University of
California at Davis).
17:00-17:50: “Rematerializing Money: Payment as Palimpsest,” Lana Swartz
(University of Virginia) 17:50-18:30.

Break for virtual coffee or, for the adventurous, virtual cocktails.

18:30: Keynote lecture, “Some Species of Materiality.” Jonathan Sterne
(McGill University). Moderated by Axel Volmar (Siegen University).

**

*December 3:*

Moderator: Thomas Haigh (University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee & Siegen
University)
13:00-13:50. “The Politics of Technical Systems,” Bernhard Rieder
(University of Amsterdam).
14:00-14:50. “Digital Materiality and Historical Innovation,” Ulf
Hashagen (Deutsches Museum).

14:50-15:15. Break for virtual coffee.

Moderator: Tatjana Seitz (Siegen University)
15:15-16:15. “Web Materialities,” Valérie Schafer (C^2 DH, University of
Luxembourg).
16:20-17:00. Closing roundtable featuring the organizers pondering
lessons learned.

Please feel free to forward this far and wide.

Best wishes,

Tom


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