Jens Schröter gives a talk on »Electronic Noses« on the »The Odorous Object« Conference at the renowned Brown University, Providence, USA.

Here is the link to the program.

AI in Research: Predictive Practices

Final Conference of the »How is Artificial Intelligence Changing Science? Research in the Era of Learning Algorithms (HiAICS)« Research Group
University of Bonn, March 25–27, 2026

Over the past years, our transdisciplinary group HiAICS has examined how AI-based methods reshape scientific practice through infrastructures, data regimes, and predictive work. I’ve been part of this effort with Anna Echterhölter, Alexander Waibel, Jens Schröter, Markus Ramsauer and Fabian Retkowski. With our final conference, we close this project phase and invite a broader discussion across disciplines.

From March 25 to 27, 2026, we meet at the University of Bonn for »AI in Research: Predictive Practices«. The conference brings together 25 speakers from climatology, sociology, media studies, history of science, computer science, law, anthropology, economics, mathematics, philosophy, and the humanities to examine uncertainty, simulation, and the changing status of evidence in the age of learning algorithms.

We focus on predictive operations such as forecasting, modeling, and pattern recognition in concrete research settings. These practices reorganize methods, redistribute epistemic authority between researchers and computational systems, and shift validation standards. Across disciplines, uncertainties range from data quality and model assumptions to distribution shift. Simulated, augmented, and synthetic data increasingly shape training, validation, and inference—raising questions about how evidence is constituted under AI-driven conditions.

Keynotes: Gabriele Gramelsberger (RWTH Aachen), Alexander Waibel (KIT/CMU), Markus Gabriel (University of Bonn).

A panel on day 2 brings together Alexander Winkler, Christian Djefall, Gabriele Schabacher, Orit Halpern, Anne Dippel, and Christian Bauckhage.
Website: https://howisaichangingscience.eu/final-conference

Contact: contact.howisaichangingscience@gmail.com

Capacity is limited. Guests who are not registered as speakers are required to register by March 17: https://forms.gle/w3peFkQ1AsbeFVnx7
 

Here is the link to the Symposium!

Photos by Silviu Guiman.

Here is the link to the information on the lecture series!

Intercultural Dialogue and Interdisciplinary Convergence:
Toward Plural Media Studies

Wu Jingwei, Jens Schröter, Song Sijing (Translator)

Journal of Communication Innovation Research, 2, 2025, p. 1-13 + 238.

This article conducts an in-depth interview with Jens Schröter, a German media studies scholar. It attempts to define and explore the characteristics, boundaries, current significance and limitations, as well as future developments of media studies. Taking as its starting point the study of the technologies and associated institutions and practices that are necessary to store, transmit, process and display information, media studies is both distinct from other fields of study and also has possibilities that allow for dialogue and integration, presenting itself as a plural discipline. On the one hand, media studies emerge based on the overlapping of different developments, focusing on a specific object (media) with various approaches and perspectives. On the other hand, media studies, which for historical reasons focuses more on technology, can in the future incorporate economic and political issues into its research framework through dialog and integration with other fields, such as economics; German media studies can likewise engage in a dialog with media studies in other countries, such as China and France. In our current technological society, we are dependent on technological infrastructure all the time, and media studies are helping to answer the question of what is happening around us and society.

Here is the link to the paper!

The translated article is: 跨媒介性的四种话语. In 艺术跨媒介研究精粹, Li Jian & Werner Wolf (ed.), pp. 178-190. trans. Zhan Yuelan, Beijing: SDX Joint Publishing Company, 2025. (ISBN: 978–7–108–08180–3)  

Here is the link to the article from the book!

Prof. Dr. Jens Schröter organized together with Prof. Dr. Mersmann, Institute of Art History Bonn and Dr. Svea Bräunert, ZEM Brandenburg (and subsitute Prof. in Bonn in WS 25/26) a lecture series ABSTRACTION TODAY!

Here is more information and the videos! 

Here are the videos on You Tube!

From automated navigation to weather forecasts, data visualizations, and painting, abstraction has an undeniable presence in the contemporary world. Yet, it not only represents but also creates worlds. It is an operative concept that likewise possesses an imaginary thrust for perceiving things otherwise. As such, abstraction comes in many different forms: It is an aesthetic, a technology, an epistemology, and a practice. Therefore, it is also a political attitude, a mode of description, a tool of complexity reduction, and an instruction for intervention. Depending on its context and use, it can take on radically different connotations, ranging from dehumanizing to appealing, from affirmative to critical, from incorporated to autonomous.
Taking its cue from the different meanings and applications of abstraction, the international lecture series “Abstraction Today: The Real and the Imaginary” is designed as an interdisciplinary endeavor with a focus on visual media and digital culture. Most digital technologies (like networks, computer simulation or artificial intelligence) and correlated practices are closely connected to different forms of abstraction on different levels. To do justice to the complexity of the phenomenon, the series brings together a group of international scholars, artists, and curators who speak on abstraction today as it unfolds in fields such as art, photography, film, design, image science, visual culture studies, philosophy, and more. Grounding the inquiries into the contemporary conditions of abstraction are contributions focusing on its historical lineage, most importantly its emergence within the discourse of modernism to be understood in its global and postcolonial plurality.

Here is the link to the gradually ONLINE FIRST publication of the handbook!

ALREADY 39 PAPERS PUBLISHED! SOME MORE TO COME!