BMBF Collaborative Research Project "Embodied Information"

FU Freie Universitaet Berlin (Institue of Philosophy) and KHM Academy of Media Arts Cologne (Media Science Department)

Prosthetics - Outlines of an object of knowledge (associated project)

Karin Harrasser, Science Department, KHM Media Art School Cologne

Prosthetics as a field of knowledge and as practice is a deeply interdisciplinary endeavour and also a phenomenon of multiple interfaces: It operates at the interface of medicine, engineering and information technologies, between high-tech products, the craftsmanship of orthopedics, and the 'techniques of the body' exercised in physical therapy. And of course prosthetics is all about developing new interfaces for seemingly incomplete bodies. But only at first glance is prothetics a mere medical/technical practice: It is an assembly, consisting of institutional, discursive and technical elements, that organizes all kinds of knowledge-particles concerning 'the human'. Therefore the project is interested in the historical and symbolic preconditions of the production of prosthetic knowledge, and especially in the interdependencies of prosthetic knowledge and theories of culture and media, as well as in the changing political and epistemological frameworks of prosthetics of the last 100 years.

Contact

Dr. Karin Harrasser
Science Department
KHM Media Art School Cologne
Peter-Welter-Platz 2
D-50676 Cologne

Tel: ++49 (0)221 20189 409
Fax: ++49 (0)221 20189 230
Email: harrasser[at]khm.de
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