19. Nov. 20 - 17-19h CET

Annette Vee on Coding Literacy:

How Computer Programming Is Changing Writing

Annette Vee is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Composition Program, at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in writing, digital composition, materiality, and literacy. Her teaching, research and service all dwell at the intersections between computation and writing. She is the author of Coding Literacy (MIT Press, 2017), which demonstrates how the theoretical tools of literacy can help us understand computer programming in its historical, social and conceptual contexts. Her work is read in dozens of university courses in literacy, composition, textual studies, digital humanities, and computer science education.

03. Dec. 20 - 17-19h CET

Stefan Püst on Coding Practices and Music:

Towards a Textual Language Interface for High Level Composition

After earning his B.Sc. in Computer Science at the University of Applied Science in Brandenburg, Stefan Püst worked as Android App developer for telematics system at the IBM Client Innovation Center in Magdeburg, next to pursuing a master’s degree in the digital media program at the University of Applied Science in Brandenburg. Since 2016 he has worked as IT admin at the Film University. He was responsible for managing the computer lab infrastructure for the Animation, Set Design and Creative Technologies programs. Since 2019 Stefan is a research associate in the Creative Technologies group and pursues a PhD and researches music interaction mechanisms.

07. Jan. 21 - 15-17h CET

Pierre Depaz

On the Role of Aesthetics In Understanding Source Code

Pierre Depaz practically, writes software for arts and media organizations, such as museum pieces, interactive installations, machine learning or live performance, amongst others. Conceptually, he wrote versions of augmenting the gallery, politics of code, software art (image + text) , alternate realities, communications lab at new york university, digital culture at sciences po and computational representations at the Film University. He currently teaches some of these.

Weaving it all together, he’s writing a doctoral thesis on the role of aesthetics in the understandings of source code.

25. Feb. 21 - 17-19h CET

Eleni-Ira Panourgia on Constructing Behaviour from Physical to Digital:

Form, response and playability across sound and sculpture

Eleni-Ira Panourgia is a Teaching and Research Fellow (ATER) at Gustave Eiffel University (former Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée). She recently completed a PhD in Art at the University of Edinburgh as a Scholar of the Onassis Foundation. Her research focuses on intersections of sculpture, spatial dimensions and sound. She is working simultaneously on physical material and sound and is interested in developing an understanding of such complex morphologies and their potential within artistic, design and social processes. Her research interests also include material exploration, audio-visual relationships, participatory and interactive design.

11. Mar. 21 - 17-19h CET

Juliane Ahlborn on the Computation of Arts

Aesthetics - Subject - Education

Juliane Ahlborn completed her studies of Media Education - Audiovisual Culture and Communication at the Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg in March 2020. She works as a research assistant at the Centre for Teacher Training at the Otto-von-Guericke University. Furthermore, she is holding a scholarship of the State of Saxony-Anhalt since July 2020. In her dissertation on Aesthetics - Subject - Education: The computation of arts, she is concerned with changed structural conditions for education and subjectivation that owe their existence to digital mediality.

29. Apr. 21 - 17-19h CEST

Anna Xambó Sedó on collaborative live coding

Insights into MIRLCAuto: A virtual agent for music information retrieval in live coding.

Anna Xambó Sedó is a researcher and musician with background in computer science engineering, digital humanities and digital arts. She is currently a Senior Lecturer in Music and Audio Technology at the Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Media (CEM) at De Montfort University (DMU) and work as the principal investigator (PI) for the EPSRC HDI Network Plus funded project MIRLCAuto: A Virtual Agent for Music Information Retrieval in Live Coding at the Music, Technology and Innovation - Institute for Sonic Creativity (MTI^2) in Leicester, UK. She is also the programme leader of the BSc Digital Music Technology programme. Since 2019, she is an Associate Fellow at the Higher Education Academy.

In 2015, Anna Xambó Sedó completed her PhD in computer-supported collaboration on interactive tabletops for music performance at The Open University (Milton Keynes, UK). Her thesis is entitled Tabletop Tangible Interfaces for Music Performance: Design and Evaluation.

13. May 21 - 17-19h CEST

Nick Seaver on Refiguring the Black Box:

The Ethnography of Algorithmic Systems

Nick Seaver is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at Tufts University, where he also teaches in the Science, Technology, and Society program. Before that, he got his undergraduate degree in Literature at Yale University, a Masters of Science in Comparative Media Studies from MIT, and his PhD in Anthropology from UC Irvine.

He is writing a book about the makers of music recommender systems and how they think, about music, listeners, and listening. Computing Taste: The Making of Algorithmic Music Recommendation draws on years of ethnographic fieldwork with researchers, engineers, and others in industry and academia. Nick Seaver also wrote the significant contributions on the ethnography of algorithmic systems and the history of player pianos.

17. June 21 - 17-19h CEST

Winnie Soon and Geoff Cox on Aesthetic Programming

A Handbook of Software Studies

At this closing event, Winnie Soon and Geoff Cox will talk about their recently published book project: Aesthetic Programming: A Handbook for Software Studies. The project explores the technical as well as cultural imaginaries of programming from its insides. It follows the principle that the growing importance of software requires a new kind of cultural thinking — and curriculum — that can account for, and with which to better understand the politics and aesthetics of algorithmic procedures, data processing and abstraction.

Born and raised in Hong Kong, Winnie Soon (she/they) has a background in Information Systems and Computing (City University of Hong Kong), Media Cultures (School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong), Digital Art and Technology (University of Plymouth), and has a PhD in Software (Art) Practice (Aarhus University). Her research and practice focus on software publishing, critical technical-art practice, and aesthetic programming. Researching in the areas of software studies and computational practices, she/they is currently based in Denmark and working as Associate Professor at Aarhus University.

Geoff Cox is Associate Professor/co-Director of the Centre for the Study of the Networked Image, London South Bank University (UK) and Associate Professor in the Dept. of Aesthetics and Communication (DK), currently engaged on a 3 year research project The Contemporary Condition funded by the Danish Council for Independent Research (with Jacob Lund). As part of this, he published (with Jacob Lund) The Contemporary Condition: Introductory Thoughts on Contemporaneity and Contemporary Art, as the first in a series of small co-edited books published by Sternberg Press. With Alex McLean, he wrote Speaking Code: coding as aesthetic and political expression (MIT Press 2013), and amongst other things is currently working on a book project about live coding.