Project Details
Projekt
Techno-sensory processes of participation. App-practices and Dis/Ability
Applicant
Professorin Dr. Beate Ochsner
Subject Area
Theatre and Media Studies
Term
from 2015 to 2022
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 258454408
In the subsequent phase of the project, we will extend our previous focus on processes of participation in Cochlear implant hearing (or non-hearing) assemblages. Thus, we will analyse techno-sensory modalities and conditions of partaking in and through contemporary app-solutions for visually impaired and deaf or hard-of-hearing persons. Yet, we will not mainly discuss the oftentimes criticized discourses on ‘enablement‘ and ‘empowerment‘ of assistive technologies, which conceptualize assistive apps or complex attendance systems as ‘neutral’ agents of normalization. In this way not only a presupposed difference between ‘abled’ and ‘disabled’ is reproduced. These discourses also obstruct the view on those techno-situational app practices, which do not invoke the differentiation between enablement or disablement in order to overcome these differences in a process of normalization. We instead intend to bring them to attention in a productive and critical manner: Based on Bachelard’s concept of phenomenotechnique we will thus identify the participatory processes within specific app assemblages and practices. In doing so, we will analyse their relations to each other, in order to deconstruct established power relations and simplistic dichotomizations. By referring to Haraway’s partial perspective on heterogeneous companion-ships, we on the one hand intend to uncover and describe the complex relationships that produce both participation and non-participation in relation to specific techno-sensory or socio-technical constellations respectively. On the other hand, we want to analyse the power relations, which produce asymmetries between agencies and ultimately between different actors. In the first phase of our sub-project, we were able to overcome the a priori differentiation of enabling and disabling everyday sensory practices with and by apps. In addition to this, we went beyond concepts based on the premise of subjects that are presupposed as acting autonomously and intentionally in contrast to objects, applications and environments. Rather, we depart from the assumption that senses, (technical) objects, human actors, practices and discourses/knowledge are inextricably interlaced and linked to each other. Because of them being reciprocally conditioned, they cannot be described as distinguishable. Consequently, all describable elements in such networks, can basically be understood as both mediatising and mediatised. In our first area of work, we will develop the basis for a theory of techno-sensory participation. In the second area we will focus on medial, ethical and social potentials as well as conditions of participation in relation to the practices of contemporary assistive app technologies. The third area will analyse and describe constellations of participation of audio (video) games and the corresponding phenomenological processes that occur in the course of auditory translations of predominantly visual/graphical gameplays.
DFG Programme
Research Units
