Uppsala Informatics and Media Hub for Digital Existence
~ A humanities nucleus for the study of digital media, automation and existential possibilities and challenges of our time ~
The Uppsala Informatics and Media Hub for Digital Existence at Uppsala University offers a humanities approach to digitalisation and automation. The Hub entails a unique research initiative based in existential media studies, and explores what it means to be human in an age of anticipatory systems and AI, through a holistic approach that tackles both the values, the vulnerabilities and the ethical imperatives of the massive transformations at hand. The Hub enables scholars to connect and new research to take shape, also in close collaboration with stakeholders and society.
Ongoing projects
Ongoing projects related to the Uppsala Informatics and Media Hub for Digital Existence.
- The BioMe project is part of the national research programme WASP-HS
- The Mediated Planet: Claiming Data for Environmental SDGs, more information at the project page at KTH. | The Mediated Planet – new grant in one of Formas biggest targeted calls ever
- Dismedia: Technologies of the Extraordinary Self, funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond
- Intimate AI: Young Women’s Self-perception and Embodied Knowledge in the Age of Automation, funded by Swedish Research Council
- AI Design Futures, funded by WASP-HS
- At the End of the World: A Transdisciplinary Approach to the Apocalyptic Imaginary in the Past and Present, funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond
- Assistive AI, Disability and Norms of Being Human, funded by Uppsala University
Publications from the Hub
News and activities
DIGMEX research network
The DIGMEX research network for the study of digital media and existential issues and challenges.
DIGMEX lectures: Book talk by Fredrika Thelandersson on 21st Century Media and Female Mental Health | Benjamin Peters on Smart Tech: Cold War Means, Cold World Ends
Research profile
As a home for existential media studies the Hub applies and updates classic phenomenological resources in existential philosophy to contemporary stakes of digital culture and automated media technologies.
The Human Observatory for Digital Existence
The Human Observatory for Digital Existence is a collaboration between the Hub and the Sigtuna Foundation.
Existential Media: A Media Theory of the Limit Situation
In her new book Amanda Lagerkvist:
- Offers an introduction to existential media studies and its key concerns
- Revisits what it means to be human in all our diversity and in our common humanity in the digital age
- Reframes death online research by offering a theoretical framework of existential media studies
- Remaps media/digital culture/AI in light of existential philosophy's key themes and concepts
- Reconceives media as an existential terrain that needs to be navigated and of media users as coexisting beings
Reviews
“Amanda Lagerkvist, an established scholar of media, memory and global urban landscapes, in this book breaks radical new ground, both for herself and for the whole field of media and communications research. Reflecting deeply not just on the inheritance of existentialist philosophy, but on the contemporary crises of climate change, datafication and the global pandemic, Lagerkvist's writing is fresh, precise and impassioned: this book urgently needs to be read.” Nick Couldry, London School of Economics and Political Science
“We live through media and always have. Yet rarely do scholars take the courageous and risky approach of Lagerkvist in explaining what media do to how we understand our own existence. If Sartre were to write about existentialism today, this is how he would write – or rather, he might wish HE had written this. A deep and original account of how we through media, come closer to and push away from the limits of human existence.” Zizi Papacharissi, University of Illinois-Chicago
Exhibition: Hyper Human
Since 2019, Tekniska Museet in Stockholm is an associated partner of Uppsala Informatics and Media Hub for Digital Existence. As a member of our outreach platform, the museum is represented in the continued conversations about digital media and existential issues and challenges facilitated by the hub with stakeholders in Sweden. This includes for example workshops, seminars and exhibition tours.
Through active participation in the exhibition Hyper Human, and joint work with reference groups, the museum will be one of the sites where the research project BioMe will be generating its collaborative research.
For the Hyper Human exhibition, the research team has contributed with an interactive installation and ethical dilemmas relating to biometric face recognition technology in cooperation with Visage Technologies. What can your face reveal about you? Will you be recognised? What kind of power dynamics could possible be luring behind the neutral looking façade of the screen? As part of the Hyper Human Exhibition, the installation aims to provoke ethical discussion and concern about our increasing reliance on and exposure to biometric AI in everyday living.
Hyper Human is shown from 21 March 2020 and until further notice.
The exhibition Hyper Human at Tekniska Museet’s website
Digital tour of the exhibition Hyper Human at Tekniska Museet, video at YouTube
People
Amanda Lagerkvist, Professor of Media and Communication Studies in the Department of Informatics and Media, is Principal Investigator of the Hub and Chair or the DIGMEX network.
Matilda Tudor, PhD and researcher in the Department of Informatics and Media, is coordinator of the hub and the main coordinator of the DIGMEX network and its associated activities.
The Hub on Linkedin
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Funding
