From Filtering to Imaging - MediaNatures of Plankton (1889 – 2019)

DIAS Lecture by Prof. Dr. Bernhard Siegert, Gerd Bucerius Professor for the History and Theory of Cultural Techniques at Bauhaus Universität Weimar



From Filtering to Imaging - MediaNatures of Plankton (1889 – 2019)



By giving the concept of “environing technologies” (Sørlin and Wormbs) a media theoretical twist, the talk undertakes to re-perspectivize the history of plankton research in the North Atlantic from the angle of a praxeology of media. The talk will be divided into four sections: First, the concept of “environing media” is explained. The remaining sections will be devoted to three historical epochs of plankton research in the North Atlantic, or more precisely to the media practices (or “Kulturtechniken”), by which we can distinguish these epochs, and which gave rise to three different “medianatures” of plankton.



Thus, it can be shown that the media history of microbiological oceanography proceeds through unstable distinctions between medium and message. By conclusion one could argue that plankton as such never existed, but only the "effective range" of the media systems used in each case.



About:

Bernhard Siegert is Gerd Bucerius Professor for the History and Theory of Cultural Techniques at Bauhaus Universität Weimar. From 2008 to 2020 he was co-director of the International Research Center for Cultural Techniques and Media Philosophy at Weimar (IKKM). Since 2021 he leads the project “The New Real – Past, Present, and Future of Computation and the Ecologization of Cultural Techniques” funded by the NOMIS Foundation.



Siegert has held visiting professorships and scholarships at UC Santa Barbara, New York University, University of British Columbia, University of Cambridge, Freie Universität Berlin, Stockholm University, and Harvard University.




His many publications have drawn upon disciplines including the histories of sciences and technologies, art, literature, and data processing to deconstruct supposedly ontologically or naturally given entities in terms of a history of mediums and cultural techniques. Translations in English of his work on media theory and history have appeared as Relays: Literature as an Epoch of the Postal System (Stanford University Press, 1999) and, more recently, Cultural Techniques: Grids, Filters, Doors, and Other Articulations of the Real (Fordham University Press, 2015).



The lecture takes place in the DIAS Auditorium, Fioniavej 34from 11:15 to 12:15. Everybody is welcome and no registration is needed.