PROGRAM: Values in Technological Design

Join us Friday, April 12th from 6-9pm for “Values in Technological Design” with speakers Geoffrey Bowker (Informatics, UC Irvine) and Sara Hendren (School of Design, Harvard University).

Values in Technological Design
19 University Place, Great Room
New York, NY 10003
Map: http://goo.gl/maps/f2ad3

http://www.programseries.com

Free, open to the public

“PROGRAM” is an interdisciplinary event series organized by graduate students within New York University’s Media, Culture and Communication, English and Comparative Literature Departments. Intentionally broad in scope, the series presents events that explore the cultural, historical, aesthetic and political impact of software and programming logic. This third event in our year-long lecture series explores the ways in which values become embodied in technological design and what efforts we might make to address such structures.

Geoffrey Bowker (UC Irvine, Informatics)
The End of the Article
In this talk, Bowker analyzes the development of the scientific article as the coin of the realm for the transmission of knowledge. He argues that the database, over the past two hundred years, has grown into a form of transmission and exploration which has been largely under-recognized. He then discusses examples of new forms of knowledge expression which both deploy databases more effectively and move from a largely logocentric model to one engaging a wider set of senses. Finally he explores the possibilities for developing these new forms within the academy.

Sara Hendren (School of Design, Harvard University)
Political Physics, Public Arts: Skateboards, wheelchairs, and a digital-material exploration of Galileo’s Inclined Plane
In this talk, artist and researcher Sara Hendren speaks about Galileo’s inclined plane, or ramp, in urban environments—its aesthetics, its politics, its history and iconic form—in her ongoing “networked architecture” project, Slope: Intercept. Examining the ramp’s overlooked cultural history and its contemporary use as technology, she will present her project’s architectural prototypes and its evolving online “database documentary” as a digital-analog hybrid of design research and making.