Lecture by Orit Halpern, Professor and Chair of Digital Cultures and Societal Change at Technische Universität Dresden, whose work links the histories of science, computing, and cybernetics with design.

Orit Halpern is Professor and Chair of Digital Cultures and Societal Change at Technische Universität Dresden. Her work bridges the histories of science, computing, and cybernetics with design. She is currently working on two projects. The first is a history of automation, intelligence, and freedom. The second project examines extreme infrastructures and the history of experimentation at planetary scales in design, science, and engineering.

She has also published widely in many venues including Critical Inquiry, Grey Room, Journal of Visual Culture, and E-Flux. Her first book Beautiful Data: A History of Vision and Reason (Duke UP 2015) investigates histories of big data, design, and governmentality. Her current book with Robert Mitchell (forthcoming MIT Press, 2022) is titled the Smartness Mandate. The book is a genealogy of our current obsession with smart technologies and artificial intelligence. She also directs two design history and practice research platforms Governing Through Design and Against Catastrophe.

Image: Salar de Atacama, Lithium fields, 2017. Photo: Orit Halpern