Drone Vision

I published a paper on Drone Vision in senseAbility – Mediale Praktiken des Sehens und Hörens, a volume published by Beate Ochsner and Robert Stock. The paper draws upon a functional shift of images from a medium of visibility and visualization towards a medium that guides operative processes. On the basis of a case study about the visual architecture and navigation of the MQ-9 Reaper drone it argues that real-time video technology and the mobilization of camera technology in remote warfare have produced a type of intervention, in which interaction is increasingly shaped and organized by imaging technology. This form of visual practice corresponds to a hybrid concept of agency, in which the stabile, subject-centred realm of rep­re­sen­ta­tion that belonged to clas­si­cal aes­thet­ics of per­cep­tion, is replaced by a cooperation between humans and machines. (Image: Bryan William Jones, CC BY-NC 3.0)

Bildoperationen

Angesichts der zunehmenden strukturellen Verschaltung von Mensch und Maschine in der chirurgischen Praxis selbst genügt es nicht mehr, pathologische Veränderungen auf der Basis eines entsprechend theoriegeleiteten Bildwissensauf in medizinischen Visualisierung „lediglich“ zu erkennen. Bildkompetent müss ChirurgInnen inzwischen nicht mehr nur als DiagnostikerInnen sein, sondern Bilder gestalten zunehmend auch die Therapie. Visualisierungspraktiken lenken, steuern, führen und gestalten inwischen auch den Behandlungsprozess und etablieren ein verändertes Verhältnis zwischen ChirurgIn und PatientIn, zwischen Körper und Bild, zwischen Mensch und Maschine. Der Beitrag untersucht dieses Gefüge von Anschauung, Operativität und Bildlichkeit in der minimal-invasiven Chrirurgie anhand der medialen Produktionsbedingungen des roboter-assistierten Operationssystems Da Vinci. Dabei wird anhand konkreter Fallbeispiele der Architektur, Navigation und Steuerung des Systems gezeigt, dass dem Herstellerversprechen erhöhter medizinischer Effizienz und Präzision bildgeführter Operationssysteme eine praktische Kenntnis der Differenz zwischen Körper und Bild entgegenstehen muss, die nicht in Abrenzung zum Maschinellen verhandelt werden kann, sondern als Synthese von Chirurg und Operationssystem gedacht werden muss. (Bild: Endowrists, Haptisch-visuelles Steuerungsinterface, Intuitive Surgical Inc.)

Im Bildlabor der Neurochirurgie

Wie bestimmen Bilder ärztliche Handlungen und Entscheidungen? Warum kann es für die klinische Praxis produktiver sein, wenn ein_e Medienwissenschaftler_in und ein_e Neurochirurg_in gemeinsam dasselbe MRT- Bild betrachten? Wie können die »blinden Flecken« der medizinischen Bildpraxis interdisziplinär reflektiert und epistemisch für das jeweilige Bildverständnis fruchtbar gemacht werden? Am Beispiel einer typischen Falldokumentation aus der neurochirurgischen Praxis werden grundlegende Stationen im Behandlungsablauf in Form eines Dialogs zwischen verschiedenen bildpraktischen Disziplinen beleuchtet. Dabei treffen das diagnostische Interesse des Arztes am Bild auf kultur- und medienwissenschaftliche Prozessanalysen, in denen die medizinische Bildarbeit selbst zum Gegenstand wird. Gemeinsam wird der Ablauf von der ersten MRT-Untersuchung des Patienten, die für die anatomisch- morphologische Beurteilung so wichtig ist, über die funktionelle Diagnostik wichtiger Hirnfunktionen, die diese Bild-Erkenntnisse entscheidend erweitert, und die präoperative Planung bis in den Operationssaal verfolgt, wo der Patient schließlich auf der Grundlage der diskutierten Bilder behandelt wird. Die dabei auftauchenden bildkritischen Fragen und Beobachtungen sollen einen Einblick geben, wie sich verschiedene disziplinäre Perspektiven auf Bilder so ergänzen können, dass in einem derartigen »Bildlabor« längerfristige Synergien für Theorie und Praxis entstehen, die auch die Vermittelbarkeit neuerer, bildgeführter Therapien für den Patienten im Blick behalten und schlussendlich die Behandlungsqualität verbessern sollen. (Intraoperativer Screenshot des navigierten Mikroskops, Brainlab)

  • Download Im Bildlabor der Neurochirurgie (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 DE).
  • Citation: Kathrin Friedrich, Thomas Picht, Moritz Queisner, Anna Roethe (2015) Im Bildlabor der Neurochirurgie. Ein interdisziplinärer, bildgeführter Fallbericht. In: Wolfgang Schäffner / Horst Bredekamp (Hrg.): Haare hören – Strukturen wissen – Räume agieren. Transcript. S.31–43.

Automated killing and mediated caring

Robot-based intervention in clinical contexts establishes new forms of collaboration between physicians and medical agents. In particular, image-guided robotic intervention such as radiation cancer therapy relies on cooperation between human and robotic actors. This setting comprises an epistemic and a pragmatic dilemma: if the tools and devices increasingly shape, impact and govern medical decisions and actions, how do we describe this form of hybrid agency? What are the implications for medical practice if robots and non-embodied artificial operators gain authorship and autonomy from their human counterparts? The paper will discuss how the kill-chain in radiation therapy relies on black boxing its functions and politics through visual surfaces by comparing it to the mediating role of visualization technology in remote warfare. It argues that the reference to the autonomy of weapon systems could help establish ethical guidelines for the medical field that would complement the demand for an applied iconic knowledge in clinical environments. (Image Credits: United States Air Force, 2013, PD-USGov)

  • Download: Automated killing and mediated caring.
  • Citation: Friedrich, K., & Queisner, M. (2014). Automated killing and mediated caring How image-guided robotic intervention redefines radiosurgical practice. In S. Torrance, M. Coeckelbergh, J. Soraker, B. Whitby, & A. van Wynsberghe (Eds.), Proceddings of the 50th Anniversary Convention of the Soci­ety for the Study of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence and the Sim­u­la­tion of Behav­iour. London.

Click Social Activism? A Localisation of Political Participation After Networks

The paper reconsiders the category of space for the forms of political protest, arguing that there is a correlation between the transformation of social interaction and the current turn of the notion of „place“ through location-based media.

Das Bildnerische Denken

Gemeinsam mit Tullio Viola und Franz Engel habe ich den Band 5 der Reihe Actus et Imago – Berliner Schriften für Bildaktforschung und Verkörperungsphilosophie herausgegeben. Über den Band: „I do not think I ever reflect in words: I employ visual diagrams […]” Diese Selbstbeschreibung von Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914) bildet den Ausgangspunkt für eine neue Sicht auf das Denken des amerikanischen Naturwissenschaftlers, Philosophen und Begründers des Pragmatismus und der Semiotik. Peirce war ein obsessiver Zeichner. Neben einer graphischen Logik entwickelte er eine zeichnerische Praxis, die untrennbar mit seinem Denken verwoben war, in ihrer philosophischen Relevanz aber bislang übersehen wurde. Der Band versammelt konkrete Fallstudien zu zahlreichen hier erstmals publizierten Zeichnungen von Peirce. Auf der Basis dieses Materials fragt er nach der allgemeinen Bedeutung dessen, was es heißt, in Bildern zu denken. Mit Beiträgen von John Michael Krois, Helmut Pape, Sun-Joo Shin, Frederik Stjernfelt u.a.

  • Download der Einleitung: Viertheit: Peirce’ Zeichnungen. Der Beitrag bildet die Einleitung des Bandes und stellt Peirce‘ Zeichnungen als ästhetisches Verfahren vor, anhand derer sich zeigen lässt, wie nicht nur über, sondern auch in Bildern gedacht werden kann.
  • Citation introduction: Franz Engel, Moritz Queisner, Tullio Viola (2012) Viertheit: Peirce’ Zeichnungen. In: Franz Engel, Moritz Queisner, Tullio Viola (Hrg.) Das bildnerische Denken: Charles S. Peirce. Akademie Verlag. S. 39–50.
  • Citation book: Franz Engel, Moritz Queisner, Tullio Viola (Hrg.) (2012). Das bildnerische Denken: Charles S. Peirce. Akademie Verlag.

CFP: Political Agency in the Digital Age

Call for Papers for ECREA Symposium “Political Agency in the Digital Age: Media, Participation and Democracy” taking place in the context of the „Communication and Democracy Conference“ 2015 9-10 October 2015, at Copenhagen Business School: „Research on media and politics has traditionally tended towards separating the sphere of politics from political processes in other societal spheres, focusing on parliamentarian politics and formal, institutionalised interest group politics (e.g. unions). At the same time, there has been a tendency to focus on elites, whether political, corporate, media or cultural. With the emergence of digital media, the research agenda within the field of media and politics research is shifting towards exploring interrelations between institutionalised politics and political processes in other societal spheres, and moving beyond elites to also include “ordinary” people. The personalization of digital media and the rise of user-generated content have led to an increased interest in personal self-expression of citizens at an individual level as a political act. While this represents an important development, it also warrants fundamental questions about what counts as politics and who count as political actors. At the same time euphoric accounts of the potential of digital media for political agency are questioned critically both in terms of actual potential and the wider structures in which they are embedded.  We are seeking for contributions that address questions of shifting agency in connection with changing media technologies, while considering a dialectical relationship between social and media-related change.“

Deadline for submission is 1 May 2015

Plants, Androids and Operators – A Post-Media Handbook

I wrote a paper about “Click Social Activism? A Localisation of Political Participation After Networks“ for the volume „Plants, Androids and Operators – A Post-Media Handbook“ edited by Clemens Apprich, Josephine Berry Slater, Anthony Iles & Oliver Lerone Schultz. The paper reconsiders the category of space for the forms of political protest, arguing that there is a correlation between the transformation of social interaction and the current turn of the notion of „place“ through location-based media. The book documents the first life-cycle of the Post-Media Lab (2011-2014). Taking up Fèlix Guattari’s challenge, the Lab aimed to combine social and media practices into collective assemblages of enunciation in order to confront social monoformity. It draws together some key essays, images and art projects by the Lab’s participants, as well as a close documentation of its associated events, talks, and exhibitions, to create a vivid portrayal of post-media practice today.

Digital Tailspin

Neue Ausgabe des INC Network Notebooks Ten Rules for the Internet After Snowden. Michael Seemann published is crowd-funded book Das neue Spiel last year. This is a shorter and updated english version of it. About the publication from the INC website: Privacy, copyright, classified documents and state secrets, but also spontaneous network phenomena like flash mobs and hashtag revolutions, reveal one thing – we lost control over the digital world. We experience a digital tailspin, or as Michael Seemann calls it in this essay: a loss of control or Kontrollverlust. Data we never knew existed is finding paths that were not intended and reveals information that we would never have thought of on our own.
Traditional institutions and concepts of freedom are threatened by this digital tailspin. But that doesn’t mean we are lost. A new game emerges, where a different set of rules applies. To take part, we need to embrace a new way of thinking and a radical new ethics – we need to search for freedom in completely different places. While the Old Game depended upon top-down hierarchies and a trust in the protective power of state justice systems, the New Game asks you to let go of all these certainties. Strategies to play the game of digital tailspin rely on flexibility, openness, transparency and what is dubbed ‘antifragility’. In Digital Tailspin: Ten Rules for the Internet After Snowden Michael Seemann examines which strategies are most appropriate in the New Game and why.

Virtual nose and simulator sickness

Besides all the hightech opportunities of Augmented Vision people tend to forget about the fact the visual erception is a bodily experience, it’s not something we can completely virtualize: David Matthew Whittinghill, Bradley Ziegler, James Moore, and Tristan Case have found that a virtual nose may reduce simulatir sickness in virtual reality video games. Read on at the university website / Abstract: „Simulator sickness is a phenomenon experienced in virtual reality applications that causes users to experience an intense sensation of vertigo and, in extreme cases, nausea. Our team has discovered a simple technique for reducing the intensity of simulator sickness. Anecdotally we have observed that placing a fixed visual reference object within the user’s field of view seems to somewhat reduce simulator sickness. To more formally test this observation, we placed a three-dimensional model of a virtual human nose in the center of the fields of view of the display of an Oculus Rift: the left display seeing only the left half of the nose model in the lower right corner, the right display seeing only the right half of the nose in the lower left corner. Two groups were tested, the Nose experimental group and the No-nose control group. Forty-one subjects were asked to operate a number of different virtual reality applications of varying motion intensity and user control. Users in the experimental group were able, on average, to operate the VR applications longer and with fewer instances of stop requests than were users in the control group. Galvanic skin response was also measured, however a statistical comparison of the groups is complicated by the necessarily shorter play duration of the subjects in the control group who opted out of the experiment due to vertigo. We observed an unexpected effect in that subjects reported being unable to consciously perceive the nose model. These findings reveal a practical, inexpensive means of reducing simulator sickness in virtual reality applications.“