Marginalia Reading Group

  • Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus 

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    Marginalia: Technologies Otherwise Reading Group


    As a part of our Technologies Otherwise program, we invite our audience for the second edition of the Marginalia reading group. Continuing to the second iteration, after discussing God and Roborts by Adrienne Mayor, on March 26 we will delve into a gothic classic - Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

    The Technologies Otherwise program attempts to unpack, redefine and ultimately foster a healthier relationship with the technologies surrounding us. In Marginalia's reading group, we read various texts on technologies. We reexamine the old texts to revisit our understanding of technologies both captured and shaped by the literature. We will also familiarise ourselves with modern texts that relate to both timeless as well as relevant to our time questions about technologies.

    Marginalia are marks made in the margins of a book or other document. They may be scribbles, comments, annotations, critiques, doodles, or illuminations. The margins create a space where you, as a reader, mix the world you live in with the text. A note allows you to revisit the book and harvest what you found interesting again or help to memorise a passage. With the Marginalia Reading Group, we experiment with populating the margins of a text collectively. What happens when we occupy that space together? What happens if we voice all our questions, reflections, doubts and realisations and place them at the margin of a book? Will the story the book tells remain the same? These annotations (handwritten or otherwise) will become a starting point to guide our conversation during the gathering.

    Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) by Mary Shelley (208 pages/reading time: +/- 340 min)

    Suggested link to purchase book

    Book Synopsis
    The book tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a scientist fascinated by the secret of life. Victor devotes years of research to finally construct a creature out of old body parts and animate it. As groundbreaking as his experiment was, the scientist was unprepared to face its consequences. Frankenstein is yet another example of human fascination for artificial life. It, however, presents rather painful consequences of the unrestrained pursuit of knowledge and technological inventions and warns us against losing control and care for what we create.

    Practical info
    Date: 26 March, 18:30 - 20:00
    Location: online on Zoom, you will receive a link to join closer to the event date
    Registration fee: €5 (students for free)
    Registration is available here

    About Technologies Otherwise

    Marginalia is a program developed as part of Technologies Otherwise, developed in partnership with Design Academy Eindhoven, Centre for Philosophical Technologies (CPT) or Ars Electronica, among others. Technologies Otherwise is declarative in its hopeful approach towards technology, a way for which its users re-evaluate their part as technology users; defy and unlearn notions of what technology means and for whom it’s made and ultimately, craft new stories around the topic. Within this framework, Marginalia is one of the trajectories that fall under the New Narratives in Technology trajectory. Here, we will develop stories that could lead to different technologies based on diversity, hope, solidarity and collectivity. Stories to change “a reality system [that] shapes the world in a certain way, and endows it with a particular destiny: [a reality system] is the cosmological form that defines a historical age’ (Campagna, F. (2018), Technic and Magic. The Reconstruction of Reality. p.5.). The reading group will delve into, dissect and discuss a selection of fictional, mythological and fantastical stories dealing with technology, its promises and risks.

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