The strong association of the machine with Western modernity has in fact a long history behind it. From thetool-making early humans to the Indo-European *magh(“power, force, capacity,”) to the performative andconceptual mechane of ancient Greek theater, and the Latin ex-machina, to ancient China’s mechanicalinventions, the magic and fetishistic allure of the machine seem to have accompanied the humanexperiment from its very beginnings. But what has made the “machine” a powerful signifier of modernityhas been its widespread reach, as it became inextricable integrated to the development of capitalism andcolonialism, both as a “thing-commodity,” and as worldview that accorded to the logocentrism of theEuropean Enlightenment and the new mechanistic sciences. The grafting of emotion, digital connectivity,and AI machine learning onto the industrial, financial and consumer apparatus of neoliberal modernity hasresulted in the exponential acceleration of a machinic regime of debt and desire, where design, imagesimulacra, and algorithmic dividualityhave played a crucial role. This regime has contributed to a “social subjection” and “machinic enslavement” that has fragmented the commons into isolated and commodifiedselves. – The topic studio will review elements of this history. We will study the ambiguous legacy of Bauhaus. We will revisit assorted science fiction films, representing this passage to a machine economy, further reviewing specific elements of emotional capitalism design strategies that accelerate thecommodification of the public sphere into ever more manipulated social media and monopolistic globaldigital platforms, unpacking some of the political, economic, psychological, ecological, technological,cultural, and design solutions implicit in this process, to finally aim at imagining Other Worlds, other designs,beyond the One-World vision of neoliberal modernity.

Visit Workday to view this information.