[Air-L] Symposium: Branding AI, Munich: March 2, 2026

[Laura Niebling]

Dear AoIR colleagues,

we would like to cordially invite you to join us in Munich or online (if you want to join the stream, just send me a short informal mail!):


Symposium: Don’t Trust the Hype?! Branding AI from the Past to the Present
Location: Deutsches Museum

Time: Monday, 2 March 2026, 17:00-19:00 (and online!)

Artificial Intelligence is currently surrounded by a narrative of unprecedented revolution—but how much of AI is its hype? And is this ‘hype’ truly a new phenomenon? What can we learn from the way AI has been branded before? The two-hour symposium, hosted at the Deutsches Museum on 02.03.2026, 5-7pm, investigates the historical and current cultural mechanisms behind the branding of AI and the idea of technological hypes and trends. By tracing the trajectory of AI marketing and public perception from its early mythical stages to the current era of Large Language Models, the event questions the cyclical nature of technological promise and disillusionment.

Bringing together experts from the history of computing, digital art, and cultural anthropology, the panel will explore how Artificial Intelligence has been packaged as a brand to serve political, economic, and social agendas—but most importantly to sell itself and automated computing. Are we experiencing yet another ‘AI summer,’ or have we entered a fundamentally new era of technological imaginaries?

The room for this event at the Deutsches Museum will be announced shortly. Please register via: https://anny.co/de-formal/book/hype-wo8pemrqyz?step=period - or if you want to join our online stream, just send an email to laura.niebling [@] ur.de <http://ur.de/>.



Panelists

Thomas Haigh 

Chair of History, U Wisconsin-Milwaukee, author of the forthcoming „The Brand That Wouldn’t Die: A History of Artificial Intelligence“

Tamiko Thiel

Product designer of the CM-1/CM-2 AI supercomputers and acclaimed pioneering media artist in VR/AR

Manuel Trummer

Chair of Empirical Cultural Studies and European Ethnology at Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, renowned scholar working on the cultural theory of popular culture and Hypes

Talk is hosted by: Thomas Nyckel (Regensburg U)



Organizers: Laura Niebling (Regensburg U), Dinah Pfau (Deutsches Museum), Rudolf Seising (Deutsches Museum), Tamar Novick (TUM).



Looking forward to hearing from you and seeing some of you there!
Kind regards,
Laura 

Dr. Laura Niebling
DIMAS
Managing Director
University of Regensburg
Bajuwarenstraße 4
93059 Regensburg
laura.niebling at ur.de <mailto:laura.niebling at ur.de>

***
UR ScienceBlog: Die Niere im Comic  <https://blog.uni-regensburg.de/die-niere-im-comic>(2026, T. Wagensohn)

Handbuch Digitale Medien und Methoden <https://link.springer.com/referencework/10.1007/978-3-658-36629-2> (Springer, 2025; w. F. Raczkowski & S. Stollfuß)
„Because you look like our favorite type of book boyfriend“ <https://mediastudies.hypotheses.org/7008> (Open Media Studies Blog 2025)
Consent Capital <https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/14614448251375107> (New Media & Society 2025, 1-18)
Escape from the Glass Prison <https://dspace-backend.ub.uni-siegen.de/server/api/core/bitstreams/a716236c-7b04-42f5-80e7-c0e3f11e2033/content> (Navigationen 25/1 2025, 117-127)