Another issue of "Technology and Language" has appeared, and with it a new call for contributions that appeals to interests in philosophy of technology, cultural and literary studies,  (art) history, and engineering.

https://soctech.spbstu.ru/en/issue/16/ www.philosophie.tu-darmstadt.de/T_and_L

Guest-edited by Anna Kotomina and Colin Milburn, the most recent issue is dedicated to “Speculative Technologies” with a special section on Franz Kafka's "The Penal Colony": Around the world, museums and archives contain an impressive number of models, drawings, and descriptions of technical devices that have never existed except on paper. Contemporary science centers like the Futurium in Berlin present a range of technologies as „endless possibilities for thinking about the future.“ This first of two collections of papers features utopian paper architecture from post-revolutionary Russia, transformative encounters with the Futurium, the use of fuzzy objects or AI-generated images in design processes, the long history of AI visions, and the fusion of woven materials and digital coding in the tradition of textiles as texts. More papers on this range of topics will be accepted for issue 6:1 (deadline January 10, 2025). On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Franz Kafka‘s death, six essays on „The Penal Colony“ highlight different aspects – technical, theatrical, political, experimental, and moral – of Kafka’s speculative technology.

New Call for Contributions: „The Language and Poetics of Machines“ (Deadline: June 5, 2025) — The intelligibility of mechanical processes lends a peculiar expressive power to the machine. This became explicit in the late 19th century when engineering scientists like Franz Reuleaux or Carl Bach articulated a compositional grammar of mechanical elements. To construct a machine became a way of expressing an idea and promoting cultural development, thus implicated in labor and gender relations and questions of power. According to Ernst Kapp, humans understand themselves in and through the language of machines. We welcome papers from the point of view of philosophy, culural and literary studies, (art) history, or engineering - expanding the discussion to machine theories in western, islamic, and chinese contexts, moving beyond the constructions of mechanical engineers to organic or cellular machinery and the mechanics of digital language processing. Since the intelligibility of the language of machines also affords subversive and reflective approaches in literature and art, the poetics of machines in the works of  Lars Gustafsson, Jean Tinguely, or Rube Goldberg should also be considered. — Selected texts from this special issue may be invited for subsequent inclusion in a special issue of the Chinese journal Academia Ethica.  (guest editors: DENG Pan and Kevin Liggieri)

Other open calls (shortened):

“Translation - Theory and Technology” (inquire ) —A mechanical device delivers faithful translations of rotary motion into the vertical back and forth of a beam - and vice versa. Ludwig Wittgenstein analogized translation to the ways in which a musical performance can be mapped onto the grooves of a gramophone record as well as a score - no interpretation involved. And if only the data set is big enough, new computer applications for translating between natural languages require nothing but the discovery of correlations in the occurrence of words in phrases - again, no interpretation involved. To be sure, there are other conceptions which highlight gains and losses, proximity and distance, inventiveness and transformation in the process of translation. If one thinks of translation as a kind of transport from the one bank of a river to the other side, this would be akin to the work of engineers who transport knowledge of functional regularities in biological systems into the sphere of human devices. And if one thinks of the techniques and collaborative arrangements for rendering old meanings in new settings, one will appreciate how new works and new ideas are created. — Considered for its linguistic as well as technical dimensions, the art of translation will be of interest not only to philosophers, linguists, and literary scholars, but also to cultural studies, biomimetics, mathematics and engineering. (guest editors: Andrea Breard and Marco Tamborini)

mediaopera. Recomposing Agency (deadline: Dec 15, 2024), guest editor:

Cheryce von Xylander. The word „opus“ refers to a technically or artfully produced work. The plural form „opera“ refers to an art-form that draws together many artists and technicians - musicians, singers, dancers, architects and builders of the space, costume and light designers, and then writer(s) and composer(s), conductor(s) and stage-director(s) who bring all this together. Not only the cinema has been transformed by video which is now routinely incorporated in opera stagings and, most recently, spawned a whole new genre of „mediaoperas“

• such as „Einstein and Margarita,“ „Theremin’s Last Secret,“ or „Pink Mouse“ by Iraida Yusupova. Akin to the medieval and renaissance Cathedral, modern opera and cinema enable assembly — and the „Gesamtkunstwerk“ finally constellated is arguably never completed. — We invite contributions from history, art theory, media studies, data science, sociology, philosophy, and related fields to consider more generally the configuration of aesthesis in social space: How are technical media and sensory modalities organised in spectacular art-forms which herald the historical changes they exemplify?

For the June 2025 issue of Technology and Language there is once again a general call for contributed papers (deadline March 15, 2025). All papers at the intersection of technology and language will be considered for any and all issues, of course. This is a chance also to submit small groups of papers, e.g., from workshops, conferences, summer schools, research projects. This issue can exhibit a great variety of themes: on the language of things, on human and machine voice, on resonance, on technology and tragedy – or comedy or farce. And much more.

Beyond these calls for special topics, any submitted paper and interdisciplinary exploration at the interface of technology and language is always welcome. The next deadline for submitted papers in English or Russian is January 10, 2025.

“Technology and Language” is a quarterly journal: international, peer reviewed, Scopus listed, online, open access, academic (no fees). Queries, suggestions, and submissions can be addressed to soctech@spbstu.ru or to Daria Bylieva (bylieva_ds@spbstu.ru) and Alfred Nordmann (nordmann@phil.tu-darmstadt.de).

-- Alfred Nordmann Professor em. Institut für Philosophie, TU Darmstadt Residenzschloss 1, 64283 Darmstadt, Germany (mailing address) Glockenbau im Schloss S3|15 206 (physical address)

• Adjunct Professor of Philosophy, University of South Carolina, USA
• Guest Professor Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University
• Book series www.routledge.com/series/TECHNO
• Journal Technology and Language www.soctech.spbstu.ru/en/
• Yearbook Jahrbuch Technikphilosophie www.jtphil.nomos.de

• IANUS-Verein für friedensorientierte Technikgestaltung www.ianus-peacelab.de Homepage www.philosophie.tu-darmstadt.de/nordmann

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