On 22 Februray 2024, Prof. Dr. Pablo Lorenzo-Eiroa from the New York Institute of Technology will talk about his new book and give a lecture titled Digital Signifiers in an Architecture of Information – Theory through computation’s a-historic neocolonization. 

Abstract: Tracing sections between computation, language, mathematics and structures the lecture will discuss how cultural biases permeate through data and models in artificial intelligence, through excerpts from the book Digital Signifiers in an Architecture of Information: From Big Data and Simulation to Artificial Intelligence, Routledge London 2023. Computation can be understood as a form of neocolonization: from colonizing signs that structure messages through digital signals; to a Digital Feudalism of property transfer active in the training of AI; to human colonization; to misinformation partially responsible for power concentration and wealth transfer before an environmental collapse. Cultural colonization has been problematic and addressed by some architects in different ways: from problematic cultural appropriation; to a transculturation destabilizing the accepted referential linguistic expressions; to cultural decolonization; to cultural criticism; to a universal grammar as means to critique cultural values. The lecture will discuss case examples activating survey, archaeology, and forensics through indexical LiDAR and photogrammetry point clouds defining them as new architecture signifiers. History and theory become redefined as fields of study by forensics and experimentation of augmented spaces.