Spiegel Wilks Lecture Series: Benjamin H. Bratton

Benjamin H. Bratton is an author whose work spans Philosophy, Computing and Design. He is Associate Professor of Visual Arts and Director of The Center for Design and Geopolitics, and founder of the Speculative Design undergraduate major at the University of California, San Diego in La Jolla. His is also Professor of Digital Design at The European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, and Visiting Professor of Critical Studies at SCI_Arc The Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles.

He has two new books. In The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty (MIT Press, 2015) Bratton develops a comprehensive political and design theory of planetary-scale computation. He proposes that The Stack-- an accidental information technology megastructure-- is both a computational apparatus and a model for a new geopolitical architecture. Dispute Plan to Prevent Future Luxury Constitution (e-flux/Sternberg Press, 2015) is a collection of architectural fictions. 

Bratton's current book project develops a critical design philosophy for robotics and synthetic intelligence. Other design and consulting projects focus on intersections of computation for molecular to ecological scale, machine vision/sensing/intelligence. Other design and consulting projects focus on intersections of computation from molecular to ecological scale, machine vision/sensing/intelligence, and new sovereignities and platform better suited to our Anthropogenic predicament. 

This lecture is sponsored by the Emily and Jerry Spiegel Fund to Support Contemporary Culture and Visual Arts and the Lise and Jeffrey Wilks Family Foundation Artist Residency.