Animals and processing of data. The animal turn in media studies

跨物种合作将挑战人类、动物、植物、文化制品和日益中介化的环境之间业已确立的分类学和认识论分歧。强调人类的岛屿地位和人类高于其他生物的卓越地位的人类中心主义立场，在这些新的条件下不再适用。由于跨学科的人-动物研究，或在各个理论领域的后和超人类主义方法，加上对代理的不断变化的理解，合作和交流的新概念开始形成。因此，植物、真菌、昆虫或微生物王国内的个体物种，以及技术人工制品，正日益被反映为行动者。随着这种对非人类行为者的关注的转移，可能已经过时的整体论概念作为一种富有成果的结构重新出现。所有这些都导致了当代文化中所谓的“多物种转向”。它位于硬科学和软科学、艺术、政治、社会等不同的社会领域。媒体研究作为人文学科的一个分支，以文化技术为重点，可以在这一转折中发挥关键作用，因为它经常反映在媒体技术的帮助下或在各种活体和非活体行动者的医疗环境中进行的合作。无论是作为癌症诊断传感器的狗，还是作为数据存储的细菌DNA，在硬科学的各个领域，生物参与者已经超越了技术变体。但是物种之间发生的事情也需要理论上的反思——这一缺陷也反映在诸如动物-计算机交互等新研究领域的建立上。在研究示范性现象的同时，我们研究的最终目标是弥合理论和认识论上的差距，同时也解决这些新环境的伦理和政治影响。

Collaborations across species are about to challenge well-established taxonomical and epistemological divides between humans, animals, plants, cultural artifacts and increasingly mediated environments. An anthropocentric position, which has emphasized humankind’s island position and man’s pre-eminence above other livin beings, does not longer work under these new conditions. As a result of the interdisciplinary Human-Animal-Studies, or post- and transhumanist approaches within various fields of theory, plus changing understandings of agency, new concepts of collaboration and communication begin to take shape. Consequently, individual species within the kingdoms of plants, fungi, insects, or microbes as well as technological artifacts are increasingly being reflected upon as actors. With this shifting focus on non-human actors, the presumably obsolete concept of holism reemerges as a fruitful construct. All of the above results in what can be described as the ‚Multispecies Turn’ within contemporary culture. It is located in diverging social fields such as hard and soft sciences, arts, politics, and society. Media studies, as a branch of the humanities with a focus on cultural techniques, can play a crucial role with regard to this Turn, as it often reflects on collaborations which take place with the help of media technologies or within medial environments of various living and non-living actors. Be it dogs as sensors for cancer diagnostics or bacteria’s DNA as data storage – biological actors have already surpassed technological variants in various fields of hard sciences. But what is happening between the species also needs theoretical reflection – a deficit which is also mirrored in the establishment ofnew fields of research such as Animal-Computer-Interaction. While working on exemplary phenomena, the final goal of our research is to close a theoretical and epistemological gap while also addressing the ethical and political implications of these new environments.