Failure as Opportunity: The Symposium

The aim of the symposium is to illuminate the richness of technological development processes without denunciatory intention, to show which cultural patterns are at their basis. Thus, in addition to technological development, the motif of “failure as opportunity” will be investigated in a cultural context.

The approach is transdisciplinary (i.e. not only scientific approaches are at issue, but also those from the practice of technological development and from art). In getting away from the paradigm of automatic progress through technology, it seems especially important to promote a discursive culture that brings together the various logics and forms of discourse found in the technical sciences and in technological development, in cultural studies and philosophy, in forms of use and in artistic approaches.

There is a sense in which all technical activity contains an inherent tendency toward forgetfulness. Is it not the point of all invention, technique, apparatus, and organization to have something and have it over with? (…) Technology, then allows us to ignore our own works. It is license to forget.
(Langdon Winner, Autonomous Technology, 1977)

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