Photo: © Lauren Lee McCarthy.
Inaugural Lecture by Prof. Dr. Nina Zschocke Professor for Art Studies with a focus on "Digital Aesthetics"
23.4.2025 // 18:00 // Lichtbrücke beim Studio // HfG Karlsruhe
Title: In favour of incomputability
Abstract: Carried by the promise of exponentially growing computing power, the computer age is beginning. Cosmos, climate, price fluctuations, cognition, cultural production: the ability to potentially calculate and model everything is the central claim associated with learning machine systems in the 21st century. This vision is contrasted with incomputability as a fundamental quality of human (and presumably non-human) experience of the world and life, language- and perception-based cultures and, not least, empirical scientific research. This lecture searches for traces and meanings of unpredictability in two works of contemporary art and architecture. How do these works relate to visions of a predictable world? What practices have these artists and architects developed against the background of the particular technological-historical situation, do they question non-calculability, do they make it productive or even make suggestions for its protection?
Porträt Nina Zschocke, Photo: © Stéphanie Gygax
About Nina Zschocke
After studying art history, ethnology and classical archaeology at the University of Cologne, Nina Zschocke received her doctorate in 2004 with a thesis on the aesthetics of effect on the subject of 'irritation'. Nina Zschocke then worked as a DFG visiting researcher at University College London and Columbia University in New York.
From 2005, she worked as a research assistant and lecturer at the Institute of Art History at the University of Zurich and subsequently as a senior research assistant and lecturer at the Department of Architecture at ETH Zurich until 2023. She has also held teaching positions at the University of Fribourg, the University of the Arts Bremen and the Bern University of the Arts.
From 2008-2014, Zschocke co-conceived and supervised the joint SNSF doctoral program 'ProDoc Art&Science' of art and science history institutes at the Universities of Zurich, Bern, Fribourg, Geneva and Lausanne, as well as the 'Doctoral Program in the History and Theory of Architecture' at ETH Zurich, 2012-2015. Book publications: 'Der irritierte Blick. Kunstrezeption und Aufmerksamkeit' (Wilhelm Fink 2006), 'Autorität des Wissens' (diaphanes 2012, co-edited with Anne von der Heiden), 'Diversität' (Königshausen & Neumann 2015, co-edited with. Andre Blum, Dario Gamboni, Hans-Jörg Rheinberger) and 'Productive Universals - Specific Situations' (Sternberg 2019, ed. with Anne Kockelkorn).
