Discussion with Robert Willim: Mundania - How and Where Technologies Are Made Ordinary

Background image

Welcome to discuss with Robert Willim (Lund) how and where technologies are made ordinary!

When: Friday Oct 25, 10.15-11.
Where: TAU Päätalo, E326 opetustila, Tampere University

“We are in the midst of yet another pivotal technological shift. Now it is AI and a range of digital technologies that are gradually becoming integrated into our lives. It goes from hype and heated debates to technologies being woven into the unnoticed fabric of daily routines, imaginaries, and practices.

To understand this, we need not only new knowledge but also new ways of imagining how technologies become ordinary. My proposal is to use the concept Mundania. What if we approach everyday life as a life in Mundania? What if we imagine that we all live in different variations of this realm? A realm characterized by ambiguous circumstances. Here, emerging technologies are continuously made ordinary, while they also stay out of grasp and beyond control. In Mundania technologies become simultaneously banal and uncanny, ordinary and weird.”

 

Robert Willim

Bio: Robert Willim is an Associate Professor of Ethnology and a Senior Lecturer in Digital Cultures at Lund University. He is also active as an artist. This positions his work at the intersection of art and cultural analytical research. He has extended his research through electronic music, video essays, and installations. In recent years, he has used the concept of Mundania to explore and illustrate how emerging technologies intertwine with people’s everyday lives and imaginaries.

See more: www.mundania.se/