Transtechnology Research Seminar Series 2012/2013
Transdisciplinarity: Deep History, Contingency and the Sublime
“The breadth and indeterminacy of the term [sublime] are central to this project. Rather than address the sublime head on as a category seeking definition… [i]n this context, the sublime is not offered either as a veiled religiosity or as a mandate for nihilism. Rather, it is seen as a means of defying conceptual rules and, in the process relating insights that were formerly unknown to each other.” (Hoffmann & Whyte, 2011, p. viii)
This series takes as its starting point the idea of the sublime as a category of the unknown that is accessible through the imagination, and which can impact on our conscious construction of the world as a contingency of our presence. The emerging discussion of deep history in the last few years will be used to ground this starting point in a process of thinking through objects in order to expand the use of the document as an evidential trace of the incomplete and partially understood. In a series of structured presentations researchers at Transtechnology Research will situate their current research in this intellectual framework to extend the discussion of deep history and test its viability in the context of transdisciplinarity as it is understood as the identification of new research topics and concerns (Nowotny).
Hoffmann, R. and Boyd Whyte, I. (eds.) (2011) Beyond the Finite: The Sublime in Art and Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Shryock, A. and Smail, D. (2011) Deep History: The Architecture of the Past and Present. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Smail, D. (2010) On Deep History and the Brain. Berkeley: University of California Press
The seminar series this year will be constructed in the form of an archaeological dialogue in which the concerns and topics that emerge will be used to stimulate subsequent presentations in order to engage with the incomplete and partially understood with breadth and rigour. What follows is an indicative roadmap of the intended range of the series. Reading material, references will be published on the Transtechnology Website and abstracts will be circulated prior to the seminar.
SEMINAR DATES AND WORKING TITLE / ABSTRACTS:
- September 26 2012: Michael Punt and Martha Blassnigg,
Cinema, Film, Experience: Deep History, Contingency and the Sublime [seminar outline] - October 17 2012. Hannah Drayson,
Objects, Subjects and Objectivity: Objectivity, Divination and the Sublime [seminar outline]
- November 14 2012. Amanda Egbe, Claudy Op den Kamp, Jacqui Knight and Martyn Woodward
Practices of Inscription and Recollection [seminar outline] - December 12 2012. Marcio Rocha,
Hope and Reality in Artificial Intelligence [seminar outline] - January 16 2013. Martyn Woodward,
A Bewildering Confusion of Line:
Some Deep-Time Aspects of Modern Visual Style [seminar outline] - February 13 2013. Amanda Egbe, Rita Cachão,
Mediating the Infinite Object [seminar outline] - March 13 2013.2013. Jacqui Knight,
The Incomplete and Incoherent Fact
- April 17 2013. TBC
This seminar coincides with the HERA TEF/CIM KT event and will take place in Amsterdam [seminar outline] - May 15 2013. Edith Doove and Martyn Woodward
Categories of Partial Knowledge [seminar outline] - June 12 2013. Business Meeting
SEMINAR ARCHIVE:
Transtechnology Research Seminar Series 2011/2012
Transtechnology Research Seminar Series 2010/2011
Transtechnology Research Seminar Series 2009/2010
Transtechnology Research Seminar Series 2008/2009