How do laws, case law, and historical power relations influence the potential for the emergence of new musical forms? According to the thesis of this essay from Mel Stanfill, the copyright dispute over the song “Blurred Lines” (2013) from Robin Thicke, Pharrell Williams, and Clifford Harris Jr., which an American court found to be a plagiarism of the song “Got to Give It Up” from Marvin Gaye from 1977 demonstrates that: The legal position is one side; case law, determined by subjective factors as well as historical conditions, is another. To article...

Struggles for social justice have long since been waged in the technological sphere, above all in the Internet. In the process, the media theorist Sarah Sharma has identified an especially hostile protagonist: the Social Injustice Warrior. Often misogynistic, often male, he attempts to organize the social field according to his wishes with the aid of technology. In her essay Sharma reveals how best to combat him. To article...

Language is more than just phonetics, it is information. The literary scholar Lydia H. Lui describes how, after World War II, different scientific disciplines – from cybernetics, linguistics, and psychoanalysis to molecular biology – participated in the inscription of alphabetic written language into digital information processes, thus creating a new species, the “Freudian Robot”. To article...

What does it sound like when trees communicate? In the Berlin premiere of Conference of Trees, Hendrik Weber aka Pantha du Prince transforms the scientifically proven cellular-biological communication of forests and trees into an audiovisual composition between avant-garde music and electronic club sounds, visual poetry and speculative science. In discussion with the philosopher Melanie Sehgal, he describes his working method, reveals his sources of inspiration in nature, shamanism and historical and contemporary literature, and explains how one can become a tree. To article in German...

Around 100 years ago radio began to change our listening habits and revolutionize the cultural technique of transmitting and receiving. The term “radiophonic” refers to the emerging constellation of transmitted sound and ambient noise. For Radiophonic Spaces Nathalie Singer, Professor for Experimental Radio, has curated a walk-in archive, a listening room within which visitors can move through several decades of radio history and works from over 200 radio artists. Together with sound artist Jacob Eriksen, who will explore the archive with students of the UdK Sound Studies, she discusses the transformation of the medium, the new timelessness of the digital, and Samuel Beckett. To article...

1970 saw the start of production for an unusual vehicle under President Salvador Allende in Chile. The Yagán stood for Chilean socialism’s approach to technologies and the materialization of Allende’s utopian project. Eden Medina tells the tale of an inexpensive utility vehicle and how it entered Chile’s history. To article...

It seems that one of the defining features of the technosphere is activity around a threshold between the “real” and digital realms. In a conversation with musician and writer Annie Gårlid about his latest full-length album Hesaitix Producer James Whipple (aka M.E.S.H.) elaborates on sonic world-building, commons, and ambiguous territories. To article...

The Iranian island of Kish has a special status. A globalized free trade zone was established here, inspired by political and economic hubris. The artists Nasrin Tabatabai and Barak Afrassiabi tell the story of the island’s history and an unusual shipwreck. To article...

The binary juxtaposition of race and technology is an extremely problematic component of the Western narrative of civilization. With the aid of historical examples and science fiction, the literary scholar Louis Chude-Sokei exposes its absurdities. To article...

Culture and media theorist Benjamin Steininger from the group Beauty of Oil explains the fusion of the coal and petrochemistry industries since the 1920s and sketches the far ranging consequences from the Second World War to the present. To article...

Environmental concepts have their own time. The media historian Orit Halpern describes the engineering-driven transformations of architecture and design since the middle of the 20th century and how they led to ideas of a technological habitat. To article...

The year 1948 was a visionary moment in which antigenetics, ideology and the exploration of life in other worlds mutually inspired one another. The historian of biology Luis Campos casts light on the “avant-gardes” of breeding biology, on their ideas for the creation of new organisms and habitats. Is it just a question of time before visions of the future from back then become the reality? To article...

In the third part of its tetralogy Staat 1-4, Rimini Protokoll explores the secrets of Big Data. In the journal the Internet theorist Evgeny Morozov writes about the significance of the digital space for democratic processes, how the Internet plays into the hands of major companies with its alternative participation options, and why business and politics are virtually inseparable in the digital age. To article...

Major public construction sites are a phenomenon of our times. The costs skyrocket, politicians stumble, openings are delayed, the “general public” is no longer surprised by anything and is happy when something is actually completed (#Elbphilharmonie). On the occasion of the premier of the second part of the tetralogy series State 1-4 from Rimini Protokoll, Gesellschaftsmodell Großbaustelle (Staat 2), the American studies scholar Eva C. Schweitzer shares her thoughts on the complex network of relationships and the mythical value of major construction sites. To article...

Neurons living in a Petri dish perform duets with human musicians: Australian-based artist Guy Ben-Ary had his cells extracted and grown into a culture of 100,000 living neurons. Lined with electrodes, these neurons form output via an analog synthesizer, cellF, allowing them to “jam” with human musicians. Ben-Ary talks about the blending of art and science, joint ventures, and non-human consciousness. To article...

In this interview the editors Katrin Klingan and Christoph Rosol discuss the contents of HKW’s online Technosphere Magazine. In a series of dossiers aimed at an international readership, artists, designers, and scientists explore the concept of the Technosphere, embracing the breakdown of the categorical divisions between man, technology, and nature. To article in German...

The Mexican-American composer Conlon Nancarrow (1912–1997) lived in relative isolation in the suburbs of Mexico City, where he created an extremely innovate œuvre on a player piano. It was only at a late age that he gained international recognition with his scores that, to this day, are almost too complex for modern music technology. Some of his works will now be performed on an original player piano at the festival Free! Music. A rare treat. To article...

How is an artificial Intelligence being trained? Trevor Paglen fathoms systems of intelligence and control and challenges our understanding of the distance between us and them: he is making visible the obscure and restricted infrastructures of massively data-driven state surveillance through long-distance telephotography of military sites, scuba diving into the depth of the ocean to the sunken fiber optic cables of the internet and their NSA wiretaps, and discovering the social implications of image generators like Google’s DeepDream. Paul Feigelfeld met him in his Berlin studio. An extract from the new HKW publication “Nervöse Systeme.” To article...