Second Padua Summer School on Philosophy and Cultural Studies of Technology

zusammen mit Fabio Grigenti (Padua), Alfred Nordmann (Darmstadt) und Astrid Schwarz (Cottbus)

Mimesis and Composition: Anthropological Perspectives on Technology and Art

___September 27–October 01, 2021

The making of a humanly built world involves many ways of weaving and drawing things together, of joining and splitting, molding and fitting. These invite perspectives from archaeology, cultural and cognitive anthropology, history and philosophy of technology, art theory, media studies, and STS.
Mimesis and composition – two principles of artful production in technology and the arts. Mimesis seeks patterns for imitation and repetition, creating affective routines somewhat as rituals or games do. Composition refers to a grammar of things. In painting and poetry, music and photography, in mechanical and software engineering composition appears inventive and “natural” at once as one finds the right way of putting things together. With mimesis and composition do we exercise a playful what-if or do we reproduce the life and liveliness of things?
Anthropological perspectives on technology and art – When it is said that we became human by virtue of technology, what are the pertinent modes of production, what kinds of thinking and social practice is implicated in mimetic and compositional tinkering, making, building? But also this: If humans and humanity shape and reshape themselves through technology and art, in which way are technological designs and aesthetic programs designs on human nature?
Mimesis and composition – complementary principles of artful production. And the priority of one over the other in the transition from animal to human being.