Folkwang Photo Talks with Tomáš Dvorák

15.5.2025

On May 15, 2025, we will welcome Tomáš Dvorák from FAMU, Folkwang University’s partner university in Prague, for this summer term’s second of three Folkwang Photo Talks. At FAMU, Tomáš teaches philosophy, and his talk will deal with

Synthetic Media: A New Anthropological Revolution?

The talk sets out with reframing Roland Barthes’s understanding of photography or »message without a code« as a new anthropological object by (1) relating it to his concepts of the »degree zero« and the »neutral« and by (2) situating photography within a larger category of »data,« emerging around 1800. The modern (nineteenth and twentieth century) epistemology, aesthetics and politics are based on »raw« or »real« data, an elusive and often only implicitly understood entity. In the middle of the twentieth century, synthetic data (artificial data that look like real data) emerge in various technoscientific contexts and gain prominence today with the so-called generative AI. The talk will address the shift from real to synthetic data as a framework for the current transformations of the photographic medium as well as the shifting relationship between (our understanding of) the natural and the artificial.

As always, we are happy to welcome all inside and outside the university who are interested in attending. Participation is free, a reservation is not required. The talk will take place at Folkwang University’s Quartier Nord, on May 15, 2025, at 6 pm in room 2.13. Also as always, the second of three talks is on campus only.