Reading List # 119
An entirely subjective list of things happening in Berlin
March 30
AI from Nowhere. On living and computing
This panel brings together three leading theorists of computing, biology, and speculative philosophy – Giuseppe Longo, Lindsay Lerman and Adam Nocek – to weigh in on the limits and possibilities of artificial intelligence and computing more broadly in the context of organismic complexity. Critical of deeply entrenched views (in science, engineering, and now philosophy) that reduce living and thinking systems to computational processes (even when computing is stretched to its mathematical limits), the panelists nevertheless reflect on what computing might be capable of expressing, if not the underlying functions of living systems. From design and somatic practices to theoretical biology and speculative engineering, Giuseppe Longo, Lindsay Lerman, and Adam Nocek draw on a range of discourses to investigate the real, albeit porous and politically negotiated, boundaries between what lives and what computes.
(EN)
7 pm | Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, Straße der Pariser Kommune 8
April 1
Esther Schüttpelz: Grüne Welle
Book launch moderated by Marie Kaiser.
After going to the cinema with her best friend, a woman gets into her car and drives home – until a diversion takes her off her usual route. She misses exit after exit, straying further and further from home, where her husband is waiting for her. Within a night and a day, everything becomes clear: perhaps it would be better if she never went back to him. Because as unsettling as the darkness of the highways and gas stations may be, the true danger is waiting for her at home.
(DE)
8 pm | Volksbühne, Linienstraße 227
April 4
3. Berliner Preis für Science-Fiction – Finale
For the third time, Radiator Verlag has announced the Berlin Prize for Science Fiction Short Stories. This time, the theme is: 404: Error Code. We usually encounter the message 404: Page not found as a dead end during our forays through the World Wide Web. The code 404 indicates that the content of a website has been removed, a file has been deleted, or a URL, the Internet address, has been changed. But we encounter “system errors” everywhere. In the entries for the prize, this idea is therefore developed far beyond the Internet and linked to various themes in the speculative and socially critical narrative tradition of science fiction.
A preliminary jury has selected a total of eight finalists from the submissions: Toi Tautorus, Lotti Spieler, Leo Lemke, Maria Orlovskaya, Tim Slagman, Joe Otim Dramiga, Kerstin Hörig.
At the final reading evening, the invited authors will present their exciting texts in short readings. An independent jury consisting of author Zara Zerbe, the owners of the sci-fi bookstore Otherland, and author and journalist Philipp Böhm will select the winning text. The event will be moderated by publishers Nikolas Göllner and Iphigenia Andreou.
(DE)
7 pm | Lettrétage, Veteranenstr. 21
April 4
Zu Gast im Automaten: Aufstieg und Fall der Automatenrestaurants
Lecture with Alwin Cubasch.
The restaurant is a central place in the modern metropolis. It is here that people become city dwellers. Who am I? Who do I want to be? Who do I want to meet?
But in the restaurant, city dwellers do not merely encounter themselves. They also experience new technology. Around 1900, the vending machine restaurant was such a new culinary-technological testing ground.
In the dining area of the vending machine restaurant, central questions regarding the order of modern society were addressed: Who is the consumer? And what is a consumer object? What value does anonymity hold? How automated do we want to live? And what do we mean by comfort? Behind the vending machines, the restaurant reorganized the engine room of society. Who spreads the butter on the rolls, and at what cost? Who cleans the machines? Whose work becomes redundant? And who becomes invisible behind the machine?
(DE)
6.30 pm | Deutsches Theater Berlin, Schumannstraße 13A