The journal NAVIGATIONEN is published by Prof. Dr. Jens Schröter (together with Prof. Dr. Benjamin Beil, Cologne).

The current issue, edited by Johannes Bennke and Mirjam Schaub has the topic »Media Cultures of Value«

Values don’t just fall from the sky. They are shaped by media, infrastructure, and social practices. With new protocols and media objects—such as smart contracts, cryptocurrencies, and NFTs—Web3 not only extends platform capitalism but also redefines value, labor, and community. While these technologies reinforce proprietary markets and corporate governance structures, they simultaneously open up alternative new ways of organizing life, challenging traditional economic and social models. This issue builds on the hybrid workshop “Digital Biedermeier—or Radical Democratic Utopia? NFTs as Interfaces of Cryptocurrencies”, organized by Johannes Bennke at the Humboldt University Berlin and Mirjam Schaub at University of Applied Sciences (HAW) Hamburg in October 2023. The issue brings together eight contributions by media scholars, artists, and curators who examine different media cultures of value—exploring protocols, infrastructures, labor, NFTs, art, and political stakes of Web3 governance.

Here is the Open Access Version!

The Volkswagen Foundation`s former funding initiative ›Artificial Intelligence and the Society of the Future‹ focused on integrative research approaches of the social and engineering sciences. On the one hand, the goal was to develop responsible solutions in the field of Artificial Intelligence for the benefit of society. On the other hand, fundamental questions, ethical considerations and societal settings for the usage of Artificial Intelligence was investigated. At the final symposium, the projects will provide new insights into how to shape the future of society and technology in the fields of human-machine interaction, accountability and fairness, communication and opinion-formation as well as education and science. Further, the experiences of the project teams form the basis for discussing which research questions are still open and which framework conditions are necessary for further research into the societal aspects of artificial intelligence.

Prof. Dr. Jens Schröter gave a talk: »How is Artificial Intelligence Changing Science?«

Here is the link to our project.

UFOs are a central and virulent topic of contemporary aesthetics: as objects mediated by the media, they are also touchstones for the mechanisms of mediated reality itself. This applies both to the possibility of conducting a discourse about UFOs at all, i.e. recording and documenting these ‘unknown flying objects’, and to the dissemination of narratives about UFOs in science fiction. Against this background, UFOs are understood as media-aesthetic objects that are used to negotiate what is ‘real’ and how the media contribute to the construction of reality.

Here it is!

Jens Schröter gave on 29.3. a keynote at Tsinghua University, it was called »Welcome to the Quantum Revolution«!

Here is an article in the Chinese press on the conference!

The project »The Computerized Palate: Digital Technologies and the ›lower senses‹«aims to establish the field of culinary sensorial research, contributing a new dimension to the theory of computerization. Departing from the focus on the visual and tactile aspects in the media theory of human-computer interaction, it explores the computerization of the ›lower‹ senses of smell and taste. This initiative seeks to forge an interdisciplinary domain that integrates media studies, AI and sensor research, culinary arts, and wine analytics. By bridging sensory perception with digitalization, it redefines contemporary challenges such as analog-to-digital translation, concerns about AI replacing human subjectivity, and the limits of digitalization. Research into the culinary and sensory realms, prompted by challenges posed by sensor technology, machine learning, and generative AI (such as ChatGPT), has been largely overlooked. Mathematics now captures human situational and seemingly incomputable aspects. Developments suggest that culinary recommendations will increasingly rely on seemingly objective computerized scaling and mathematical means, rather than narrative descriptions based on subjective sensory perceptions. Does this new technological premise alter human culinary-sensory perception, not only in gastronomy but also in daily life? How sensory does digital mediation become, and how can cultural studies reflect on this phenomenon?

The project was conceived by Dr. Felix Hüttemann and Prof. Dr. Jens Schröter and will start 1.4.2025.

Here is the official announcement by the university of Bonn!

Here is the link to the gradually ONLINE FIRST publication of the handbook!

ALREADY 31 PAPERS PUBLISHED! MANY MORE TO COME!

Here is the link to the issue!