Adam Nocek
(School of Arts, Media, and Engineering and the Design School, Arizona State University)
Abstract:
This talk examines the future of work in the (post-)digital age in the context of the computational biosciences. In particular, the paper demonstrates how the emergence and popularity of time-based visual media—cellular and molecular animation—in computational and complex systems biology result from successfully integrating forms of labor and subjectivation into scientific practice that are productive for neoliberal governance. The talk examines how these labor practices take shape at the intersection of two very different genealogies over the course of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries: scientific epistemology, on the one hand, and popular entertainment media, on the other. It is the eventual convergence of these genealogies in molecular and cellular animation that makes possible a regime of scientific work and subjectivation that coincides with popular modes of consumption and production. Along the way, the paper revises Michel Foucault’s work on the entrepreneur of the self, as well as Gilles Deleuze’s late reflections on the dividual in the “Postscript,” in order to pave the way for a conception of digital subjectivation that can no longer distinguish between what’s productive for scientific knowledge and for popular entertainment.
Adam Nocek is an assistant professor in the philosophy of technology and science and technology studies in the School of Arts, Media, and Engineering and the Design School at Arizona State University (ASU). He is also the founding director of the Center for Philosophical Technologies at ASU. Nocek has published widely on the philosophy of media and science, speculative philosophy (especially Whitehead), design philosophy, and on critical and speculative theories of computational media. Nocek is the co-editor of The Lure of Whitehead and has just completed a manuscript titled, Molecular Capture: Biology, Animation, and Governance. Nocek is currently working on two book projects: the first project addresses computational governance and the emergence of new regimes of design expertise, and the second project reimagines the role of mythology within speculative design philosophy. Nocek is also a visiting researcher at the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Study and is The Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) Visiting Professor.