TEACHING

UNIVERSITÄT BASEL

My teaching in Basel was connected to the Seminar for Media Studies under Markus Krajewski’s professorship and included the following courses:

2024 · Machine Visions: Deep Learning as Infrastructural Technology and Optical Instrument. Spring semester. Course description: This seminar explores recent developments in AI-driven machine vision through a historic lens, focusing on long-standing efforts to transform ways of seeing with the help of optical instruments. How do contemporary technologies such as facial recognition algorithms and generative image models work and both extend/differ from older visual techniques? What kind of visions are produced by today’s optical machine learning models, and how can we understand such visions from a cultural, political, and aesthetic viewpoint? By locating contemporary desires to enhance vision with the help of machines within a longer history of technology-assisted ways of seeing, this seminar provides the tools to critique, understand, and problematize the current visual turmoil produced by machine learning.

2023 · Geologies of Media: Material Histories and Environmental Politics of Communication Technologies. Fall semester. Course description: From the large-scale production of cellulose to make paper, to the use of liquid beetle secretions in the manufacturing of gramophone records, and the use of water to cool and power modern data centers, information technologies have always been closely associated with the extraction and exploitation of natural resources. This seminar explores the environmental histories of media and highlights how past and present media systems depend on planetary flows of matter and energy. Throughout the semester, we will study the material epistemologies and life histories of everyday communication tools, starting from their birth out of substances such as oil, wood, metals, and rare-earth minerals, and ending with their death as information rubbish and toxic electronic waste. What is the place of nature and the earth in digital tools, media devices, and global communication infrastructures? And how can we understand the multiple ways in which media and the environment are entangled?

2023 · Media Infrastructures, Hidden Labor and Fantasies of Automation. Spring semester. Course description: This seminar explores the hidden human labor that makes media infrastructures appear as autonomous. Throughout history, media infrastructures have often been portrayed as automatic systems that erase challenges of time and space and remove the need for manual human work. However, media infrastructures are rarely fully automatic and frequently require extensive manual labor to function. Just like messenger boys were covertly employed to transport handwritten messages within the electrical telegraph system in the late 19th century, today’s social media platforms are maintained by hidden human content moderators who monitor and keep online platforms “clean.” What cultural, political, and economic logics characterize historic and contemporary infrastructural “ghostwork”? How has the concealment of certain types of human labor shaped conceptions of media infrastructures and technologies? By studying how fantasies of automation are maintained by selective displays of labor, the seminar will provide opportunities to discuss the politics of media infrastructures in relation to topics such as class, gender, and ethnicity.

2021 · Introduction to Sound Studies. Fall semester. Course description: This seminar provides an introduction to the interdisciplinary field of sound studies and explores how sound has been captured, designed, controlled, and utilized for multiple purposes throughout history. The seminar will explore topics such as eavesdropping, psychoacoustics, functional/programmed music, and the use of sound/music in warfare. Students will also discuss the cultural history of concepts such as noise and silence and study how the cultural role of sound has transformed in tandem with social, economic, political, and technological developments.

2021 · Software Studies. Spring semester. Course description: This seminar introduces key texts in the field of software studies and explores different ways of studying code, algorithms, and computer programs from a humanistic perspective. The seminar literature will discuss the functionality and nature of individual software features (such as protocols and if… then statements) and highlight the role and function of software in a range of human domains such as cities, homes, medicine, finance, and art. How can computational and networked digital media be theorized? What conditions of possibility do different software technologies establish? And how does the increased delegation of mental processes to software systems affect our ways of living, being, and generating knowledge?

2020 · History and Theory of Information Filters. Fall semester. Course description: This seminar explores historical and contemporary efforts to filter and regulate flows of information, focusing on both manual and automated efforts to sort and govern communication. The seminar will whighlight how information filters work on a practical and hands-on level, but also provide opportunities to reflect on the political dimensions of attempts to separate signals from noise. We will read texts that highlight filtering logics from a broad range of perspectives, stretching from state censorship in the colonial British Empire, the history of spies and central intelligence bureaus in early modern Venice, historical efforts to purify spoken language and its connection to urban sanitation projects, and struggles to industrialize the filtering of news around the turn of the 20th century. These readings will also be paired with discussions concerning contemporary filtering techniques, such as spam filters, search engine filtering, ‘smart’ noise-cancellation devices, and efforts to remove violent and obscene content from social media. What is an information filter? How does information filtering work? And what fantasies of informational purity and order do different filtering efforts promote?

2020 · Music, Power, and Digital Technology. Spring semester. Course description: The aim of this seminar is to explore and critically discuss how digital technologies shape people’s ways of interacting with music online. Since the 1990s, the distribution of music has increasingly moved into the digital domain, and music applications such as Spotify, SoundCloud, and YouTube now play a significant role in regulating how audiences reach music. How are digital platforms for music similar and/or different from the distributive systems that came before them? What cultural ideas and norms are built into online services for music, and how do they shape listener’s ways of finding, enjoying, and engaging with music? What role do formats, protocols, and compression techniques play in deciding how music moves and circulates in the online domain? And what happens when important decisions regarding music are increasingly outsourced to algorithms, software technologies, and ‘intelligent’ machines? In the seminar, we will discuss topics such as the politics of music recommendation systems, the cultural and financial dynamics of music interface design, and the hidden means by which user data is monetized and transformed into value on online platforms for music.

UMEÅ UNIVERSITY

My teaching at Umeå University took place at the Department of Culture and Media Studies and consisted of the following courses:

2017-2019. Methods for Exploring Digital Environments. Spring semester. Role: Lecturer, seminar host, and assisting examiner. Graduate-level. 120 teaching hours in total. Lectured on qualitative methods and digital ethnography. Picked out course literature, designed written student assignments, moderated forum discussions, planned/recorded three online lectures, and assisted in student examinations.

2015-2018. Digital and Social Media. Campus course. Fall semester. Role: Lecturer, seminar host, and assisting examiner. Undergraduate level. 340 teaching hours in total. Planned and held lectures + seminars on algorithmic knowledge production, big data, digital materiality, and (digital) media infrastructures. Also assisted in the examination of students. Was appointed course coordinator in fall 2018.

2016-2018. Digital and Social Media. Online course. Fall semester. Role: Lecturer, seminar host, and assisting examiner. Undergraduate level. 130 teaching hours in total. Lectured on the use of social media within private/public organizations. Also moderated online seminars and assisted in student examinations. Was appointed course coordinator in fall 2018.

2018 · Communication and Media Analysis I, Scientific method. Spring semester. Role: Lecturer, seminar host, and assisting examiner. Undergraduate level. 127 teaching hours in total. Lectured on the theory and history of science and planned, organized, and held seminars on the same topic.

2016-2018. Communication and Media Analysis II, Scientific Method. Fall semester. Role: Lecturer. Undergraduate level. 64 teaching hours in total. Was co-responsible for the design and execution of a course section on interviewing techniques, which also included student supervision.

2015-2016 + 2018. Journalism, Media & Communication. Spring semester. Role: Supervisor and assisting examiner. Undergraduate level. 130 teaching hours in total. Supervised six to eight students each year in their B-level thesis work and assisted in student examinations. The topic of my student’s essays for example included gender representations in computer games, young adult’s risk-assessments in online dating, and the effects of digitization on music consumption.