Datacizing the Organic
Members:
Bettina Bock von Wülfingen, Daniela Döring, Claude Draude, Hannah Fitsch, Johanna Hartmann, Volker Hess, Nanna Lueth
Time Frame: seit Februar 2007
Research Questions
The members of the work group shared an interest in examining different processes of gathering, translating and applying data, as well as the input and processing of data that occurs at the intersection of bodies and machines. The group’s goal was to organize an international conference, for which they collectively developed a concept. Group members met regularly to discuss texts, overarching themes and specific focuses for the conference, and much more. This process helped crystalize the transdiciplinary focus of the conference: what happens to numbers as they go through different processes of application from their organic state in raw data (and dara) up to and through their normative re-formulation. This included practices of measuring and depicting data regarding the body, statistical averages and translation in and formulas, as well as the data-driven production processes of organic materials.
The concept of datazication that the work group placed in the centr of its conference differs from previous understandings of datazication: until now datazication was understood as a fundamentally dominant power that determined economic, social, political and cultural develiopment. Another understanding took a more limited definition, limiting it to only the input and processing of personal data as well as national security or health census statistics, or datacizication was discussed in the realm of media theory in relation to passive users or was turned around and spoken about as subversive cyber-feminism.
In contrast to those definitions, our conference presented datacization in processes related to mathematics and the natural sciences. The conference defined datacization processes as oscilating in a high-tension alternating field of the organic, namely between standardization and individualization, norming and appropriation. The conference the function of numbers as the platform and pivot between different disciplines, times and spaces. In summer 2007 the work group applied for additional funding from the German Research Foundation (DFG) for an international conference. Together the group selected and invited speakers, developed four panel discussions topics designed to include young researchers, and discussed the possible impact of the conference in the public sphere, calculated the budget and considered further discussion formats e.g. a podium discussion or an accompanying art exhibition. At the end of 2007 the call for papers was sent out. The DFG funding application was approved in February 2008. Afterwards the members of the work group invited guests to reading workshops at the Research Training Program to discuss texts that would be central to the conference.
Conference
Internationale Tagung: Menschen - Zahlen Transformationen. Verdatung des Organischen
Veranstaltet in Kooperation mit dem Institut für Geschichte der Medizin (Charité) und der Neuen Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst e.V. (NGBK) Berlin
Zeit: 10.-12.09.2008
Ort: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin