Summer School: Ecological Data - Data Ecologies

Keynote presentation by: Prof. Dr. Orit Halpern

Title: Planetary Design: On the Emerging Logics of Generative AI

Date: June 30th 2025, 17:30 - 19:00

Location: PA Building (Lobby), Campus Westend, Goethe University Frankfurt

Abstract:

We arguably live in a new age of planetary design. From the training of large language models on billions of users to the rise of synthetic biology and bio-materials, life is becoming a medium for experimenting with technology at every scale. This talk traces a history of the planetary experiment and investigates how the new logics of AI governance both extend and challenge earlier histories of globalization, colonialism, and modernity in science and design. I will also discuss the ways concepts of data, representation, and evidence are being transformed in our present.

The effort to experiment at scale is not new. We might, for example,  consider colonial terraforming projects, Fascist ideas of the ‘new man’, Communist collectivization, and cybernetic ideas of spaceship earth, among many other practices and imaginaries of social planning, experimentation, and design.   This talk argues , however, that while contemporary technical practices and corporations may borrow from these pasts, the contemporary ideas and practices of design grounded in AI and notions of planetarity are radically new, and mark a separation from these legacies.

I argue generative AI reflects and advances a new idea of planetarity and design grounded above all in the concept of a planet whose survival demands increased computational power.  Contemporary planetary design imagines the planet in a state of crisis, to which AI is the answer. I will trace four loci to track the emergence of this new ethos of generativity: 1) transforming practices (from creativity to generativity and prompting, and from ideals of risk management to resilience), 2) new forms of computational territory (the zone and the spaceship), 3) emerging forms of rationality and perception (situational awareness rather than distraction or attention) and 4) new ideas of synthetic data and materials that transform separations between organic and inorganic at multiple scales and are producing new economies of knowledge and money (such as biomaterials, nanotech, and synthetic biologies, and the emergence of new economic models such as smart infrastructure as service).

Keynote presentation by: Prof. Dr. Susanne Bauer, University of Oslo

Title: Data critters: a partial inventory

Date: July 3rd 2025, 17:00 - 19:00

Location: SKW B, Campus Westend, Goethe University Frankfurt

Abstract: