The 5th European Culture and Technology Lab+ Annual Conference

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” (Arthur C. Clarke).

The 5th Annual Conference organized by the European Culture and Technology Laboratory ‘ECT Lab+’ and this year hosted by Baltan Laboratories, Eindhoven, Netherlands aims to bring together experts from the Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences, Technology, and other fields exploring ways of enquiry that enrich (non-)positivist ways of knowing as well as post-structuralist critiques. The digital age is transforming the nature and practice of interpretation raising questions that range from the status of digital objects to the challenges of ethical practice.

Informed by the attitude of the alchemist as a proto-scientist, bridging disciplinary boundaries as well as the mystical and the rational, this conference explores our planetary computational condition and the not-yet-possible (improbable) in an indisciplinary manner. Can proto-science, long discarded as primitive, be an inspiration for making sense of our rapidly transforming socio-technical environment? At the very least, it can stimulate us to overcome the limitations of disciplinary siloing through a recognition of the complex and interconnected nature of our predicament and the need for embodied approaches. The figure of the alchemist also elicits the question of how to deal with its “more than” (or maybe ir-) rational heritage. What role does epistemic diversity play in a world that is increasingly ruled by technical rationality?

Under these premises, we invite papers, panels, performances, workshops, seminars, poster presentations, artistic submissions, artist talks, installations, and interventions that address the challenges of digital hermeneutics in the 21st century. The open call is directed to scholars, philosophers, scientists, artists, designers, and creative practitioners. 

Please submit a 500-word description/ abstract (excluding references) for your proposed artistic intervention/ paper presentation etc. before May 15th, 2025.

Please use the PDF-file format for submission and render your text completely anonymous (metadata included) to allow for blind refereeing. Please send your title and abstract to: ectlabconference2025@univ-tech.eu

Notification of acceptance will be communicated by June 20th, 2025.

An edited volume of conference proceedings will be published in 2026. Previous proceedings can be found here, here and here.

Possible interventions or responses could consider but are not restricted to:

• The changing nature of interpretation in the 21st century
• The figure of the alchemist, human and more than human
• The limitations of alchemy today
• The role of expertise and Critical Pedagogy Frameworks
• The mystification of digital systems by their complexity
• Indisciplinarity / Interdisciplinarity / Transdisciplinarity
• The siloing of research and the hierarchy of disciplinary knowledge
• Situated/Indigenous knowledge and digital hermeneutics
• The intersection of different epistemic approaches such as sociology, economics, engineering, art and philosophy
• The ir/rationality of technical rationality or: the dialectics of enlightenment,
• Digital ‘objects’ as fetishes
• Embodied Research
• The power of global corporations and the limits of state regulations
• Myths of inductivism and positivism
• Technoscientific epochal change in the humanities

Keynote Speakers

• Ianis Dobrev (Chimerical Intelligence Lab)
• Laura Tripaldi (NYU Shanghai)

For queries please contact connell.vaughan@tudublin.ie

This project has received funding from MSCA SE programme under grant agreement No.101129655.