After being introduced to the main concepts and discussions, the students broke into smaller groups that developed “disaster apps,” defined as imaginary apps that produce or stave off future catastrophes through algorithmic intermediation. Instructors suggested that the groups should “Be Evil!” (a play on Google’s motto “Don’t Be Evil”), meaning that groups should seriously consider the deleterious consequences that would follow from introducing smartness ubiquitously, and should not shy away from the potentially inhuman results. Another instructor explained this imperative by suggesting that rather than circumventing the deleterious consequences of a smart world, imaginary disaster apps should attempt to “go through” the world of smartness and come out the other side. Teams were encouraged to draw broadly on the diverse expertise of group members to produce the most imaginative and evocative applications.

From among the results of these projects, a selection of three are presented here. The report on “KAIROS Earthquake Early Warning Application” by Svenja Schüffler is a literary and technical investigation of the potential to design automated smart systems to detect earthquakes and warn the citizenry in advance of disasters. Equipped with “innumerable sensory devices and objects found underground and on the surface […] MEMS accelerometers, cameras, RFIDs, and GPS,” the proposed “KAIROS” system imagines the introduction of smart sensing technology into future megacities to forestall environmental catastrophes before they arrive. By contrast, “CANARY TM” imagines the installation of singing, canary-like voices throughout a city whose purpose would be reminiscent of the “canary in the coalmine,” whose death signalled a threat to human miners. “CANARY TM” imagines the introduction of such canaries on a (mega)citywide scale, based on equipping cities with speakers whose melodic chirping apprises residents of the environmental safety of the city. Finally, “I prefer not to” offers a critical and performative record of refusal to accept the parameters of the intermediated smart world. Comprising the stark, rudimentary documents of the responses made by the class to a group that refused to accept the parameters of the assignment, it queries how humans respond to the radical withdrawal of the technological and technocratic imperatives of the intermediated world.

Each of these projects (as well as other projects not included here as they remain in draft form) join philosophical and practical elements together. On the one hand, these disaster apps aim at imagining the kind of needs and challenges that might confront the technosphere in which we are destined to live. Following the principles of the “smart mandate” outlined by the instructors, these apps endeavour to understand how the future management of life might proceed in circumstances where the prospect of environmental destruction overshadows all of living experience. However, there is also an existential aspect to these apps—an exploration of the mentalities and sensibilities that would pervade such a world, and where the human being locates itself in the technospheric landscape. Thus, each of these apps also grapples with ethical, affective, and aesthetic features of a future smart world. By employing exposition, visuals, multimedia, and audio, these apps imagine responses that go beyond technicity and automatisms.

Four proposed projects for continued development also spring from the seminar. Olivier Hamant has launched a project on the study of “suboptimalism,” informed by the contributions of members from the seminar. An early manifesto from that project will be delivered to the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) by Dr. Hamant. In addition, Juan Suarez of the Red Cross developed an idea for an app that would “gamify” the prediction and warning of flood systems. Efforts are being made to explore possible applications of this work. Finally, the “I would prefer not to” group is preparing an artwork and performance that more fully investigates the themes outlined above. Another participant in the seminar has approached members of the HKW to discuss the prospect of implementing an automated analysis of the audio recordings from the seminar, with the goal of producing a glossary for better understanding its key concepts. This proposal is under consideration by the HKW.

By way of reflection, participants in the seminar identified a number of areas and questions that might be helpful to direct future efforts, in order to develop these ideas in greater detail. One member of the discussion remarked that, in the case of some projects—for example, the “I would prefer not to”—there were challenges in understanding how artistic intervention concretely engages the technological problems of the seminar. Future seminars of this sort would benefit from a more sustained engagement with the bridge between aesthetic and technical investigation, as well as reflection on what group members owe to the seminar in terms of making constructive contributions that are intelligible to a wide range of participants.

Another question raised by seminar participants was how best to integrate the different types of knowledge brought to the seminar by the instructors. On the one hand, there was the concept of intermediation animating much of the course, and, in many respects, this concept borrowed from biology and related fields to discuss how it is that complexity and other problems in the technosphere may be managed. On the other hand, the concept of smartness, which was defined more in alignment with ideas drawn from design, critical theory, and their related fields. The different slants to these concepts reflects the different backgrounds of the instructors. Implicitly, this animated much of the work and discussion. Whether these ideas are best kept in tension, or whether it would have been better to have them fully integrated in advance, remains an open question.

Some seminar participants saw in the “I would prefer not to” intervention an allegory of the violence of data that reflects on the style of the campus. A number of participants did not realize that they were being recorded at all times before this intervention made clear the technospheric operations of the seminar space. A number of participants expressed unease with the fact that many of their ideas could not be expressed completely freely when they were being recorded. In future seminars, some of the participants would prefer a format that does not record conversations, in order to encourage a freer, less self-conscious dialogue.