WHAT
The Lab focuses on theory-driven inquiries into technics and technology in the broadest sense, including material and symbolic infrastructures, machines and machine ecologies, media systems, and their consequences. Concepts are framing devices that help or hinder us in navigating decisional and material environments. Accordingly, we examine, generate, and test concepts in relation to philosophy and sociopolitics rather than treating “technology” as a narrow or neutral tool-category.
WHY
The Lab provides a shared workspace for conceptual engineering, speculative defections, and sustained explorations of novel theoretical frameworks. By suspending the ordinary pressures of academic visibility, disciplinary alignment or institutional affiliation, and professional productivity, it allows participants to engage directly with alien ideas and strange new ways of thinking. Collaborative outputs may emerge, but the Lab is structured around ideation and inquiry rather than deliverables.
WHO
Contributors have included academics, para-academics, and professional practitioners from art and design, engineering, finance, history, philosophy, political theory, security studies, and the sciences (especially the computer, environmental, and life sciences). No disciplinary or institutional affiliation is required, only sustained curiosity and a willingness to think rigorously across domains. The Lab is directed by Dr. Michael Uhall. All correspondence and inquiries can be directed to him.