The Time of Critique: On the History of Predictive Media
If we anticipate that something different—an algorithmic other—will determine future actions, questions on the limits and possibilities of critique arise. Such questions about the algorithmic other and how it redefines the conditions of critique set the scope for this dissertation project. Warnsholdt defines the algorithmic other as predictive media.While prediction operates within a temporal order of past, present, and future, it is exactly this temporal order that is challenged by predictive media. Taking into account the interconnectedness of temporality and critique, particularly in the sense that the distance and reflection necessary for the articulation of critique stems from the notion of an open future, social constructions of time will be examined in regard to the modern project of critique. Starting at the Urszene of predictive media, this project draws an arc from Norbert Wiener’s work on the anti-aircraft predictor to German historian Reinhart Koselleck’s notion of the time semantics of modernity. It shows how the phantasms of control and prediction have inscribed themselves in temporal structures of digital cultures and how that challenges the project of critique.
Lotte Warnsholdt is a Ph.D. student in the DFG-funded research group “Cultures of Critique” and a research assistant at Leuphana University Lüneburg. Her research focuses on memory studies, media history, and forms of critical practice. Her doctoral project examines the genealogy of predictive media and asks how prediction challenges the conditions of the modern project of critique. Warnsholdt studied European Ethnology, Philosophy and Cultural Studies in Copenhagen, Hamburg and Lüneburg. She holds a Master’s degree in Culture, Arts, and Media (Kulturwissenschaften) from Leuphana University, where she graduated with a thesis titled “Loops of the Present: Time Patterns between Remembrance and Oblivion.”
gem. mit Liza Mattuat und Heiko Stubenrauch, „Is Code Law? Kritik in Zeiten algorithmischer Gouvernementalität“, in: Laura Hille und Daniela Wentz (Hg.), Kritik in Digitalen Kulturen, Lüneburg 2020; „Critique as Method“, Position Paper, Terra Critica Workshop Utrecht 2018, http://terracritica.net/publications/.
Marius Hanft, Judith Sieber, Lotte Warnsholdt (Hg.), Weiterschreiben. Anschlüsse an Rebecca Ardners »Affirmation und Negation als Figuren der Kritik«
Erich Hörl (ed.), Nelly Y. Pinkrah (ed.), Lotte Warnsholdt (ed.)
Critique and the Digital
Softcover, 296 pages
Die Moderne ist gekennzeichnet von der Vorstellung einer offenen Zukunft – einer Zukunft, die qua Kritik gestaltet werden kann. Was geschieht, wenn sich die Offenheit der Zukunft unter den gegenwärtig ubiquitären Vorhersagetechnologien aufzukündigen scheint? Welcher Kritikbegriff und welche Formen kritischer Praxis stehen unter diesen Bedingungen zur Disposition?