How could studying the digitality, materiality and productivity of media – storing, transmitting and processing signals, values, meaning – from a CYBORGIAN (inspired by Donna Haraway) angle offer not finished solutions, but trouble in a hopeful, meaningful, helpful and empowering way?
Shintaro Miyazaki is since October 2020 a professor in "Digital Media and Computation" (W1 with tenure track W2) at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Department of Musicology and Media Studies, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. He is at the same time a senior researcher at Institute of Experimental Design and Media Cultures of the Academy of Art and Design, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, where he directs and finalizes a research project at the interference field of commoning, computation and design (-2021).
Born 1980 in then West-Berlin from Japanese classical music percussionists; raised in Basel, a town in Switzerland and socialized during the 1990s in the same city famous for its art museums, modern music (Paul Sacher) and where Terry Riley visits high-schools, I studied media theory, musicology and philosophy at the University of Basel, with an one year intermezzo in Berlin (2004/5), where I assisted Heimo Lattner, started exploring artistic practice and was responsible for the visual appearance of "Uraniwa – Magazin für japanisch-berlinerische Lebensaspekte" a short-lived magazine for the Japanese art, music and design community in Berlin. Back in Basel I finished my studies with a lic.phil in spring 2007.
My interests while studying were highly influced by Georg Christoph Tholen, an early friend of Friedrich Kittler. I then wrote a dissertation in media theory (Medienwissenschaft) at Humboldt University Berlin under Wolfgang Ernst (interview) and defended it 2012 (Dr. phil., summa cum laude). During this time (2007–2013) I mainly lived in Berlin and –besides working on my PhD– curated exhibitions, organized concerts, played at concerts and showed artworks. Back in Basel since 2013 I first worked as a postdoc fellow both at the University of Basel’s Media Studies (Ute Holl) and at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, Academy of Art and Design, Institute Experimental Design and Media Cultures (IXDM). From 2014 to autumn 2020 I worked fulltime at the IXDM as a senior researcher, lecturer and increasingly as a principle investigator. 2017-2020 I was also the programme curator of the IXDM's Critical Media Lab. Since October 2020 I am again in Berlin as a so-called juniorprofessor in "Digital Media and Computation" (W1 with tenure track W2) at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Department of Musicology and Media Studies, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
Current questions I am following: How are media technologies and their capitalist designs, techno-scientific, discursive, archaeological (Foucault), imaginary contexts – how are these entangled with fields such as cybernetics, capitalistic rationality, optimization and commodification, and how could we meaningfully transform these entanglements and situations by creating resonances with fields and topics such as alternative economies, commonism, commoning, self-design, self-organization, alternative worldbuilding etc.? And how could a critical contextualization of “innovations” such as IoT, smartness (AI), futuring, design thinking, transistion design etc. problematize, confuse and diffract these in order to start fruitful conversations? How could we do this in a practically, technologically and media archaeologically informed way, thus ideally on an equal footing with upcoming techno-scientific naturecultures and techno-environments others (more powerful) have created to lure us?