This panel describes a few daring projects: from the activities of Robert Rehfeldt (the first and most well-known Mail Artist of the GDR), to the political aesthetical statements of networking activists who didn’t reduce their efforts to undermine governmental restrictions and even the seemingly indestructible Wall.

Books, letters, documents and indexes are all paperbound forms central not only to literary, but also to computational culture. In his recent book, White Magic. The Paper Age (2012), Lothar Müller suggests looking at paper’s cultural significance not only from the viewpoint of its practical use, but also as a universal metaphor informing everyday culture. 

The transmediale Marshall McLuhan Lecture 2013 will be held by Ian Hacking. In his lecture Pluto, Plutocrats & Plutonium, the world renowned Canadian philosopher Ian Hacking will root out the importance of classification and naming to our ways of inhabiting and acting in the world. >> Read more.

This panel takes its cue in part from Roland Barthes’ essay Death of the Author (1967), in which he argues that one should not focus on the writer’s intentions but should pay new attention to readers’ impressions in order to understand a text’s multiple layers of meaning. 

Social Media: From Complaints to Alternative Tools. This presentation gives a strategic overview of the philosophical underpinnings of the Unlike Us project, a network of designers, geeks, activists and researchers that investigates both critique and alternatives in social media

This panel focuses on the experience of active users and developers connecting the historical adventure of cyber-core BBSes (Bulletin Board Systems), ASCII porn and early cybersex with the contemporary use of online sex chats.

Aesthetic growth: Becoming a Human, a Thing or a Piece of Code. How do we engage with the world, as it turns computational?

What are the consequences of becoming a name’s “user” when the name belongs to the country’s prime minister? And what is the meaning of name-change as artistic gesture?

By addressing specific examples related to online sex and porn, porn-sourcing, love for sex machines and fictional characters, the objective is to investigate the current state of mediated desire and reimagine critical body politics. 

Uncreative Writing with Kenneth Goldsmith in Conversation with Florian Cramer. With so much language available in the digital age, does anyone really need to write more?

With participation of Alejandro Jodorowsky through a live video stream. Through this video conversation with the infamous Chilean author, comic book writer, esoteric and filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky, transmediale directs attention to comics as a field of cultural imaginaries that has not gained much attention in discussions about new media (art).

The guests on this montage-style interdisciplinary panel each offer reflections on transmediale 2013 in relation to the notion of the Imaginary Museum.