Humanist Discussion Group

Humanist Archives: Jan. 13, 2022, 7:41 a.m. Humanist 35.455 - pubs & cfp: Technology & Language

				
              Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 35, No. 455.
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        Date: 2022-01-13 07:33:41+00:00
        From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
        Subject: Call for Contributions: Mimesis and Composition - Anthropological Perspectives on Technology and Art

[From Mersenne, thanks to Alfred Nordmann (alfrednordmann@GMX.DE)]


The fifth issue of Technology and Language has now appeared, and with it
a new call for contributions that appeals especially to philosophical
anthropology, cultural studies, and the philosophy of technology.
Individual papers and the whole issue are freely available:

https://soctech.spbstu.ru/en/issue/5/

Guest-edited by Alexander Nesterov and Anna Denima, "Technology as
Language – Understanding Action in a Technical Condition" discusses how
technology provides hermeneutic access and affords understanding for
example of biocitizenship through genetic technology and language.
Discussions include the grammar of behavior, Günther Anders' conception
of promethean shame, and our understanding of language for human and
machine neural networks. (Among the contributed papers, one concerns
Derrida and the politics of usernames, another discusses the languages
of mechanical engineering.)

New Call for Contributions:

Mimesis and Composition - Anthropological Perspectives on Technology and
Art (Deadline September 12, 2022): The making of a humanly built world
involves many ways of weaving and drawing things together, of joining
and splitting, molding and fitting. These invite perspectives from
archaeology, cultural  and cognitive anthropology, history and
philosophy of technology, art theory, media studies, and STS.  Mimesis
and composition are two, perhaps complementary principles of artful
production in technology and the arts. Mimesis seeks patterns for
imitation and repetition, creating affective routines somewhat as
rituals or games do. Composition refers to a grammar of things. In
painting and poetry, music and photography, in mechanical and software
engineering composition appears inventive and “natural” at once as one
finds the right way of putting things together. This complementarity can
be discerned in processes or making and building but also in patterns of
use and the linguistic production of representations. And when it is
said that we became human by virtue of technology, what are the
pertinent modes of production, what kinds of thinking and social
practice is implicated in mimetic and compositional tinkering, making
and building, speaking, signing and writing? (Guest editors: Natascha
Adamowsky and Fabio Grigenti)

Beyond this special topic, /Technology and Language/ invites
interdisciplinary explorations at the interface of technology and
language - contributed papers in English or Russian are welcome at any
time. Other open calls:

Robot Constructions (expressions of interest until January 31, 2022):
The word "robot" is a Czech invention. As the word traveled to English
speaking areas and from there to other languages and cultures, did the
robot on this journey become something else? For robots and AI, more
generally, we want to explore how they are imagined, defined, described,
comprehended, constructed or even misunderstoodbefore and after they
become a technological reality – how they are constituted in language,
how cosmopolitan or intercultural they are. We are hoping for
contributions from linguistics, philosophy, cultural and gender studies,
history of technology, STS, and literature. (Guest editor: CHENG Lin)

Instructions (Deadline April 4, 2022): Do technical processes unfold as
instructed in that they execute a program or in that their parts perform
prescribed motions? But what is a program anyhow, be it a computer
program or the program of a musical concert or a wedding - or is the
notion of ‚instruction‘ too narrow here? Can the blueprint for a device
be compared to the notation of a choreography? Inversely, do
technologies instruct the behavior of users in that they establish a
script which users need to follow? - And what is instruction in the
first place: Does the case, for example, of language instruction follow
a technical paradigm as well? (Guest editors: Jens Geisse and Marcel
Siegler)

Technologies in a Multilingual World (Deadline July 5, 2022):
Technological creativity has been described as active adaptation to the
world. What if this world is a multilingual world - an environment in
which we are surrounded by a multiplicity of languages and codes, more
than anyone can produce or understand but which have to be navigated
nonetheless? Aside from all the „natural languages“ such as the many
variants of spoken, written, or signed English and all the pidgins and
local dialects, these include the language of the ticketing-machine as
well as the language of powerpoint, the language of traffic signs as
well as technologically enhanced communication means known as
augmentative and alternative communication. (Editors: Larissa Aronin,
Daria Bylieva, and Alfred Nordmann)

Queries, suggestions, and submissions can be addressed to
soctech@spbstu.ru or to Daria Bylieva (bylieva_ds@spbstu.ru) and Alfred
Nordmann (nordmann@phil.tu-darmstadt.de).

--
Alfred Nordmann
* Professor am Institut für Philosophie, TU Darmstadt
Karolinenplatz 5, 64289 Darmstadt, Germany (mailing address)
Glockenbau im Schloss S3|15 201 (physical address)
* Adjunct Professor of Philosophy, University of South Carolina, USA
* Guest Professor Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University
* Book series www.routledge.com/series/TECHNO
<http://www.routledge.com/series/TECHNO>
* Journal Technology and Language www.soctech.spbstu.ru/en/
<http://www.soctech.spbstu.ru/en/>
* Yearbook Jahrbuch Technikphilosophie www.jtphil.nomos.de
<http://www.jtphil.nomos.de>
* IANUS-Verein für friedensorientierte Technikgestaltung
www.ianus-peacelab.de <http://www.ianus-peacelab.de>
* www.lehre-interdisziplinaer.tu-darmstadt.de/nag
<http://www.lehre-interdisziplinaer.tu-darmstadt.de/nag>
Homepage www.philosophie.tu-darmstadt.de/nordmann
<http://www.philosophie.tu-darmstadt.de/nordmann>



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