[Air-L] The Digital Condition: An Experiment in Mediated Dialogue

[Mark Carrigan]

[image: pietro-jeng-sQVXS8HBPPc-unsplash.jpg]

What does it mean to speak of a digital condition? How can we describe,
explain and understand our digital condition? What is it, that we are
trying to come to terms with? Where exactly does ‘the problem’ of
technology lie? Beginning in October 2019 we will embark on an experimental
discussion group centred around those questions.

Each week we will collectively engage with one text before moving on to a
jarringly different take on ‘the digital condition’ in the following week.
Instead of presenting a syllabus with a canon of text, our intention is to
produce a participatory anti-canon that doesn’t follow a straight line but
disorients, refracts, shocks and meanders.

We are therefore asking anyone interested in participating to send us their
suggested reading. What text do you think is important to make sense of the
digital condition? What text would like to introduce to and discuss with a
larger, interdisciplinary group?

To participate please send a *suggested text, *a  and *100 word
description *off your choice and a *short biographical note *to
mark at markcarrigan.net and contact at milanstuermer.com by August 31st 2019.

We will select 10 texts from contributions on the basis of the following
imperatives. Our intention is to produce an *anti-canon*, assembled in a
participatory way through the juxtaposition of submissions:

   1. Maximising the disciplinary diversity of contributors
   2. Maximising the disciplinary diversity of *contributions*
   3. Minimising thematic and substantive replication amongst contributions

If your suggestion is selected, we would ask of you to write a short
article about it to kick off the week’s discussion, as well as to give a
brief, five-minute audio introduction to the text which addresses the
following questions:

   1. What is the text?
   2. Why does it excite you?
   3. How does it connect to broader debates?
   4. How does it reflect a particular tradition?