[Athena] Appel à communication/date limite 31 Octobre

[Genevieve Massard-Guilbaud <massard AT ehess.fr>]

Title: Appel à communication/date limite 31 Octobre

Call for Papers 
 
 
“Techno-Topologies. Spatial Perspectives - Spatial Practices” 
 
Final interdisciplinary conference organized by the Graduate School "Topology of Technology" 
 
Darmstadt University of Technology 
March 3. - 5., 2011 
Deadline:  October 31., 2010 
 
 
Taking stock at the end of the first funding period, the Graduate School "Topologies of Technology", 
based at the TU Darmstadt, will host a final conference to reflect on current projects and develop 
future perspectives. Since October 2006 the School has been supporting doctoral and postdoctoral 
projects located in a diverse field of disciplines ranging from the humanities and social sciences to 
engineering, sports science and informatics. The projects are geared towards examining interrelations 
between space and technology from different disciplinary and methodological perspectives. 
 
The research clustered at the School is focussed on investigating how technologically constituted 
spaces affect the experience and understanding of both space and technology. It is one of the premises 
of the research carried out in Darmstadt to conceptualize technology as a ‘material dispositive’ which 
shapes space and place, and many of the projects focus on the social effects and praxeological 
dimensions of spatial and spatializing technologies, and in particular of current and emergent 
technologies. Researchers working at the School engage in an interdisciplinary dialogue to explore the 
possibility of developing the common methods and categories required to formulate precise 
hypotheses.  
 
The conference aims at intensifying the interdisciplinary cooperation characterizing the School's work 
by initiating contacts and debate between the Darmstadt researchers and colleagues working on 
similar topics. To discuss research projects the conference will be organized according to the format of 
a series of master classes: along the lines of seven topics researchers from Darmstadt and other 
institutions are invited to present their work in sections accompanied and chaired by two senior 
researchers. These researchers will form tandems consisting of invited specialists and supervisors based 
in Darmstadt, offering critical reflection, support and perspectives for future research.  
 
 
 
 
Class topics 
 
Section 1 Incorporation and appropriation will examine how technologies, perceptions and practices 
of space are internalized (perception of self and others, observation, mimesis, processes of 
transformation and translation, the history of consumption, logistics of goods, autonomy 
and coercion). 
 
Section 2 Normalization and subversion will look at dispositions and ideological inscriptions of 
technologically constituted spaces (discourses and dispositives of power, reversal, 
dissolution and undermining of power relations, emergence, categories of evaluation) 
 
Section 3 Mobility and interaction  will analyze interrelations between social practices and 
mobilizing technologies (discourses of mobility, the shrinking of time and space, everyday 
mobility, migration, transmigration, multilocality, varimobility, air traffic and security). 
 
Section 4 Networking and developments of infrastructures will explore dimensions and actualizations 
of the material structure of technological spatiality (visualization of networks and traffic 
infrastructures, modeling, mapping, network analysis, interdependent developments of 
infrastructures and spaces). 
 
Section 5 Persistence and discontinuity will deal with procedural/temporal aspects such as the 
genealogies, coincidences and ruptures of technological spatiality (determinacy and 
contingency, intrinsic and extrinsic logics of processes, the dialectics of continuity and 
discontinuity, tradition vs. innovation, memory and commemoration). 
 
Section 6  Navigation and orientation will address the perception of movement and practices of 
orientation in technologically constituted spaces (spatial orientation and the perception of 
movement in everyday lives, data based spatial information, virtual realities, "third space", 
direction of attention, learning movement and motion).  
 
Section 7 Imagination and construction will discuss relations of fiction and reality in discourses on 
space and technology (cultural constructions, changing social perceptions, discursive 
construction, fictionality and mediality, imagining technologically constituted spaces, 
authenticity and staging). 
 
 
 
Keynotes 
The conference will be framed by two keynote lectures. The introductory keynote will be given by the 
philosopher Petra Gehring, who will reflect on the key concept of the "material dispositive" to 
reconsider the achievements and developments of interdisciplinary research on technology at the TU 
Darmstadt. In his final keynote, the historian Wolfgang König will discuss whether concepts taken from 
the field of the history of technology can be productively applied to research on the relations between 
technology and space. 
 
Target Group 
We invite doctoral and postdoctoral candidates to apply to the conference to present their work.  
 
Information about the Graduate School 
Further informations can be found on the Graduate School website:   
http://www.ifs.tu-darmstadt.de/index.php?id=1921&L=2  
 
Application 
Please send a short CV, a description of your research project (max. 5 pages) and an abstract 
summarizing your paper (1 page).  
 
Conference fee 
There will be a conference fee of approximately 100,- Euros to cover meals.  
 
Reimbursement of travel expenses 
The Graduate School will provide funding covering accommodation and travel of lecturers according 
to the regulations of the DFG ("German Research Foundation").  
 
Application deadline 
Applications are welcome until October 31, 2010, please send them to: 
topology2011 AT ifs.tu-darmstadt.de