Digital Materiality

In this workshop we will analyse digital technologies from their material properties to help grasp what they are, how they are changing us and how we can change them as well. We will explore the ever diversifying, discipline-melting realms of creative digital practices, which may be art, design, propaganda, engineering or all at once.

Digital technologies and processes are increasingly integrated in all aspects of our lives: from ubiquitous all-at-once social media, high frequency trading and smart cities to the instruments we use to make art and express ourselves. They open up new realms of experience and open up questions about who and what we are. In this seminar we will analyze digital technologies from their material properties to help grasp how they work, what they are, how they are changing us and maybe how we can change them. Our crash course will reference thinkers from the ancient physicists through the scientific revolution to today’s quantum physics, from Plato to Marx to contemporary political economy and out into speculative new Materialism and post-history. We will explore the ever diversifying, discipline-melting realms of creative digital practices, which may be art, design, propaganda, engineering, and all at once. We will discuss, research and prepare small presentations for each other, as we attempt to synthesize our understanding in texts, performances and objects.

This workshop is presented in cooperation with the Studium Generale at the University of the Arts. This means the course will be open to students of the University. Thus the workshop-group is a mixture of regular students and international participants.

Baruch Gottlieb trained as a filmmaker at Concordia University, has been working in digital art with specialization in public art since 1999. He has exhibited and produced permanent works globally including: Prince Takamatsu Gallery Tokyo (2005), ZKM Museum for Art and Media Karlsruhe (2011) Dakar Biennale (2002, 2004, 2006) transmediale, Berlin (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015,2016). Gwangju Biennale (2004), Yeosu World Expo (2012), ISEA Istanbul (2011), LABORAL (2011), Canadian Embassy Berlin (2011), Rauma Biennale (2014), AND Festival (2013) etc. 

From 2005 to 2008 he was an assistant professor of Media Art at Yonsei University Graduate School for Communication and Arts in Seoul, Korea. He is an active member of the Telekommunisten, Arts & Economic Group and laboratoire de déberlinisation artist collectives. Author of “Gratitude for Technology” (ATROPOS 2009) and “A Political Economy of the Smallest Things” (ATROPOS 2016), he currently gives lectures in philosophy of digital art at the University of Arts Berlin and is fellow of the Vilém Flusser Archiv. He is curating the exhibition series “Flusser & the Arts” based on the philosophical writings of Vilém Flusser, which premiered in ZKM, Karlsruhe and has traveled so far to AdK Berlin and West, the Hague. He writes extensively about digital media, digital archiving, generative and interactive processes, digital media for public space and social and political aspects of the networked media.