Media Theory and Biomedia

The chair for media theory (Prof. Ingeborg Reichle) engages with many different media in their role as fundamental techniques for mediating reality. Structural, historical, and phenomenological aspects of media together with their conditions of production and effects are interrogated, as well as contemporary media theories and experimental fields in art (media art, digital art, transmedia art, BioArt). Questions relating to aesthetics, technology, and history and archaeology of media are in the foreground, and also innovations that are currently referred to as “biomedia”: The technological and media framing of biology using techniques from biotechnology leads to exchangeability of code and matter, and opens up biology for new design applications, which are also entering the art context as biological and technological constellations of media technologies. The investigation in research and teaching of the concomitant changes in artistic and social processes from an interdisciplinary perspective aims to analyse contemporary art trends (BioArt, Transgenic Art) as well as present-day social and economic processes. Forms of artistic production are explored as well as relevant scientific discourses to enable the development of a critical understanding of the roles of media and the arts in the 21st century.