The Digital Condition: Arts and Humanities in the Digital Age

UPDATE: Due to circumstances the Winter School will be held virtually.

We ask accepted participants to join online only via the Worksup platform (https://worksup.com/winterschool/). 

Please note that the programme follows the EET Eastern European Time UTC+2 timezone!

10th Winter School of the Estonian Graduate School of Culture Studies and Arts

The Digital Condition:
Arts and Humanities in the Digital Age

Tallinn University
25–27 January 2021
2–4 ECTS

In the 21st century, there have been many rapid changes worldwide. Although discussions on novel and disruptive technology have been around since the post-war years, in the last two decades they have been central in the public debate. According to many scholars, we are in a new human condition that we could call the digital condition.

This new digital condition has been seen to redefine our relations with other human and nonhuman actors. It can be argued that our perceptions of space have shifted and our sense of time has reshuffled. First, from a cultural perspective, this new digital condition has led to the datafication of culture, i.e. the transformation of all cultural phenomena into a data format – numbers – and thus, they have become quantified, making everything countable and traceable. A second feature of this emerging cultural condition is its algorithmicity. It is characterised, in other words, by automated decision-making processes, which utilise the information extracted from the huge volume of data produced by all kinds of machines and devices. The third aspect of our contemporary cultural situation is platformisation, which refers to the penetration by the economic and infrastructural extensions of online platforms into all walks of life. This has affected the production, distribution and circulation of cultural content. And finally, but the list remains open, we are witnessing the massive digitisation of cultural heritage, a process that is altering how cultural memory is formed and shaped in contemporary society.

In this 10th Winter School of the Estonian Graduate School of Culture Studies and Arts, we will reflect on how this new digital condition, interpreted as widely as possible, is influencing our contemporary meaning-making practices as well as our understanding of the different branches of the arts and humanities.

We invite doctoral and master’s students to think critically about various facets of this new digital condition and to discuss datafication, algorithmicity, platformisation, digitisation, etc. so that we can better understand the potentialities and risks of this digitally mediated human condition.

Plenary speakers:
Prof. David Berry (University of Sussex)
Prof. Dominique Cardon (Sciences Po, Paris)
Prof. Lina Dencik (Cardiff University)
Prof. N. Kathrine Hayles (Duke University)
Prof. Lev Manovich (City University of New York)
Prof. Jussi Parikka (University of Southampton)

Programme directors:
Prof. Indrek Ibrus (Tallinn University)
Prof. Marek Tamm (Tallinn University)

Film programme curators:
Dr. Carlo Cubero (Tallinn University)
Daniel Allen (independent scholar)

Programme manager:
Kristiina Sirkel (Tallinn University) ksirkel@tlu.ee

Slam and student seminar coordinator:
Tiiu-Triinu Tamm tiiutriinu@gmail.com