The Poetics of Computation

Dear Colleagues,

Profound and dramatic changes in contemporary society's technological foundation, with its substrates of codes and digital processes, have created in many artists and critical thinkers increased sensitivity to the interdependency between what we might call technological “knowledge” and the values typically associated with humanism. At the same time, the problems of technological positivism, with its impulse toward a fully rationalized society that is geared towards efficiency and functionalism, continue to challenge humanists to engage critically the ongoing barrage of technical innovations affecting every discipline. This Special Issue of Humanities, in delving into these innovations, while remaining grounded in the fundamental insights that the field of technology studies provides, will explore how recent developments in digital media (including explorations in big data, artificial neural networks, and augmented reality tools) have been adapted and theorized by philosophers and artists to promote a variety of projects, so as to give rise to a new way of thinking about technology in general, and perhaps about creativity and thinking per se.

Linking such developments, the Special Issue will focus, in particular, upon the current appropriation of the term and concept of computation within arts and letters, in an effort not only to explore long established confluences between technology and humanist principles (keeping in mind historical notions of computation), but also to note how recent advances in coding have provided writers and artists with key insights into how linguistic structure may influence, and may even possibly determine, cognitive and emotional conditions in a work of art. To this end, the two terms, computation and poetics, will be considered in relation to one another in order to show how a “computational” approach to writing and the arts can support a wide range of language-oriented experiments in philosophy, literature, and digital media in general. In doing so, the issue may shed light on how the term and idea of computation need not preclude certain aspects of what philosophers typically refer to as the life-world, such as doubt, perplexity, and open-ended reasoning, and thus may reveal a more sophisticated symbiosis between what are thought of as natural processes and newly emerging technological processes that need not dissolve the humanities as a category of inquiry.

Prof. Dr. Burt Kimmelman
Dr. Philip Andrew Klobucar
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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