Mon 1 Sep ||Recent widely used technological means which occupy our life worlds in fact lead to a banalization of both perception and activity. Because these means are formats, they are devoted to an encompassing functionalization.

When: Monday 1 September 2014
Venue: QA080, Queen Anne Court, Lecture theatre
Duration: 1 hour 3o mins
Time: 11.30am - 13.00
Panel Chair: Ulrich Gehmann
Panel members: Michael Johansson, Gianluca Mura and Martin Reiche

Abstract

This functionalization in turn leads to the prevailing mindset that the only relevant world is functionalized world. The major effect of these developments is an overall loss of evidence of space and self altogether. Since all these technical formats are results of a certain mindset of how to scientifically treat entities in general, we have to recur to their sources if we want to gain a re-understanding of what evidence means. A major consequence of this development has been a loss of real attentiveness due to the prevailing functional way of both seeing and interpreting entities like objects, humans, etc. This functional way became so deeply embedded as an everyday cultural practice that it suggests (and that we misinterpret it) to be the only way to individual freedom and true individual expression. The functional mindset also lead to the misconception that every discipline on its own is capable of creating understanding of the world. This emphasizes the importance of a multi-perspective view of space and its entities based on the idea to transcend merely scientific or artistic approaches into a more comprehensive and immediate approach and working practice. This can help to re-detect the world and its entities in all the richness and variety they actually have while at the same time transferring new and fruitful knowledge and methodology back to the disciplines. Conceiving wholes instead of fragments as a way to re-detect the world could gain new understanding in the domains of science, humanities and art and therefore increase their explanatory potentials within their already existing domains.