Tracing Information Society – A Timeline

8. u. 9. Juni 2016, 10.15 - 15.00 Uhr Interface Culture Lecture Room, Kollegiumgasse 2, 3.OG

Interface Cultures lädt zum Gastvortrag von Armin Medosch im Rahmen der Interface Lectures Series.

"Tracing Information Society – A Timeline" is a project by the Technopolitics Working Group that couples artistic as well as theoretical research to create a 2D timeline which traces the emergence of information society over the past 100 years. The timeline––in its current manifestation in print measures 2 by 7 meters––shows data on six main layers, color-encoded, and annotated with keywords that are considered relevant for the coming into being of the information society. The advantage of the timeline as a format is that it provides a framework for an inquiry that is, at the same time, internally coherent and open to heterogeneous inputs and outputs. This project provides complementary and competing pathways through a deep media archeology of the information society.

The workshop starts with an explanation of the timeline and the concepts it embodies. Students will become familiar with a historical, media archeological method. In a second step, students will conduct own research and position themselves and their practice in relation to the overall historical development depicted on the timeline. The Technopolitics Working Group is an informal group which was initiated by Armin Medoch in February 2010. It currently comprises about 10 core members and about 30 contributors who work as artists, theoreticians, curators or journalists inside and outside major institutions. The workshop will be led by Armin Medosch.

Armin Medosch, PhD
is a Vienna based artist, curator and scholar working in art and media theory. He is initiator of the Technopolitics working group in Vienna and initiator and maintainer of the cooperative web-space thenextlayer.org. His book under the title “New Tendencies – Art at the Threshold of the Information Revolution” comes out at MIT Press in June 2016. 
www.thenextlayer.org