[liberationtech] WIAS Seminar: Critical Theory in the Digital Context: Search Engine Labour and Creative Production

[Westminster Institute for Advanced Studies]

WIAS Seminar: Critical Theory in the Digital Context: Search Engine Labour
and Creative Production


Wed 28 June 2017
18:00 – 20:00

University of Westminster
309 Regent Street, UG04
London, W1B 2HW


Critical Theory in the Digital Context: Search Engine Labour and Creative
Production

A WIAS Seminar with International Research Fellows Paško Bilić and Ergin
Bulut

How are major search algorithms produced? How is their global relevance
sustained and promoted? What is the role of creativity in digital games
production? How do creative producers cope with contradictions in their
precarious workplaces?

Focusing on search engines and the digital games industry, the speakers
will explore various angles of critical theory. Concepts such as
technological rationality, alienation, bio-political production and
exploitation will be evoked to understand the specifics of labour processes
in digital contexts.

Paško Bilić is Research Associate at the Department for Culture and
Communication, Institute for Development and International Relations in
Zagreb, Croatia. Paško is based at WIAS from 2 May to 31 July 2017. During
his fellowship, he will be focusing on algorithms, their role in sustaining
and shaping capitalist social relations, and global digital economy. He is
currently co-editing a book for Palgrave Macmillan entitled “Technologies
of Labour and the Politics of Contradiction”.

Ergin Bulut is Assistant Professor at the Department of Media and Visual
Arts at Koc University, Istanbul. His research interests cover political
economy of media and media labour, critical/cultural studies, game studies,
and philosophy of technology. He is based at WIAS in June and July 2017.
His is currently working on an ethnography of labour practices in the game
industry, which will be published by MIT Press in 2018.

To register:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/critical-theory-in-the-digital-context-search-engine-labour-and-creative-production-tickets-34113161384

For further information, events and research news, sign up to the WIAS
newsletter: https://www.westminster.ac.uk/newsletter

We still have seats left for Digital Objects, Digital Subjects – An
Interdisciplinary Symposium on Activism, Research & Critique in the Age of
Big Data Capitalism on May 20-21 in Little Titchfield Street, London:

http://icts-and-society.net/events/digital-objects-digital-subjects-a-symposium-on-activism-research-critique-in-the-age-of-big-data-capitalism-the-6th-icts-society-conference/
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