Technology and Language

EDI RUS 1-9 Leuphana Universität Lüneburg Xylander Cheryce von

Universitätsallee 1, 21335 Lüneburg, Germany

Premiering a Mediaopera. On-Site. Online. Mediaopera is a relatively new genre, which invites questions as to its distinguishing features and contemporary relevance. How does mediaopera differ from related forms such as classical opera, opera in video recording, film, and media art? On the occasion of the world premiere of Pink Mouse on March 21st, 2024, which took place at the Leuphana University Lüneburg in Lower Saxony, an international panel of philosophers, cultural theorists and artists approached Pink Mouse – musical-graphical translation (2021) by Tatar-Russian composer Iraida Yusupova of Victor Erofeev’s prose poem (2017) of that name – as both singular live event and epistemic object, worthy of scholarly attention. The discussion revolved around the core contradiction of the ritualized gathering that had been convened: What could be learned from premiering a mediaopera, made to be accessible online, in a real-world setting, and with in-person attendance? The papers collected in this volume offer varying answers to this question. While reflecting on the performative contradiction in terms more or less oblique, they prove the exercise to have been intellectually stimulating. Pink Mouse has had subsequent public screenings at festivals in Florence, Hemnitz and Vienna. Could it be that mediaoperas are finally best consumed offline and in company? 10.48417/technolang.2025.01.01 782: 81’22 Mediaopera Pink Mouse Iraida Yusupova Visual and musical systems of signs https://soctech.spbstu.ru/article/2025.18.1/ 1-9.pdf

SCO RUS 10-13 Erofeev V. Victor Opera as an Act of Love I have been deaf to operatic art for half my life, because I believed that opera was based on an artificial foundation of continuous singing, incompatible with living life. I have never fought against operas, I have never mocked them, like Mayakovsky, who believed that operas were made for non-smokers, in other words, for special lovers of this special dish, to which I, for my part, was simply indifferent. But one day the opera came to my house, I had nowhere to retreat, the brilliant Schnittke created an opera based on my mini-novel “Life with an Idiot.” I not only admitted my mistake – I rushed to correct it, reworking my ideas about freedom in art. Now I think that opera is the freest direction of all the arts. What used to seem conventional to me has now become an amazing absoluteness. In opera, everything is allowed. It is an almost metaphysical dimension, close to enlightenment. After Schnittke, the musicality of my prose became quite conscious, form-generating. In this respect, the novel “The Pink Mouse” became a rhythm novel, that is, a simultaneously thought-out and spontaneous musical phenomenon. Iraida Yusupova turned the musicality of the novel into music, verbal images into musical phrases. The novel went to the screen of her media opera, having lost nothing, on the contrary, having acquired stage authenticity. The opera's heroes themselves received the right to musical existence thanks to the novel's proto-heroine, the Pink Mouse. She was in the novel and remained in Iraida's opera as a clot of vital energy in all its possible manifestations, from rational to divine, from aesthetic to erotic. The Pink Mouse ignited existence. Young Marusya Mendeleyeva, her colleague in the design of the plot of the narrative, is not far behind her. No less significant a figure in the opera is the Guitarist, the chief of evil will, who, however, is in love throughout the opera, and in this state does not fully understand who he is: an agent of love or world evil. In this internal battle with himself, the Guitarist is a new rich operatic figure who finds his theme in the song composition “The Last Lover” – an undoubted pinnacle of modern opera art. None of the other heroes of the opera were created as accomplices of our favorites. Dad is a liberal, Mom is a lover of love, Klop, the first gentleman of Marusya Mendeleyeva, his dad, who is eaten as a cutlet many times in the opera – each sister has an earring. It is astonishing how Iraida's music fuses with the artistic design of the media opera. It is difficult to tear yourself away from the screen. The opera is long, like the battle of love relationships itself, like a full-fledged love act, continuing for hours without stopping. This is a love masterpiece, I have no doubt that this is exactly so. 10.48417/technolang.2025.01.02 782 Mediaopera Opera Victor Erofeev Iraida Yusupova Pink Mouse https://soctech.spbstu.ru/article/2025.18.2/ 10-13.pdf

RAR RUS 14-27 Union of Composers of Russia Yusupova Iraida

Moscow, Russia

Everything You Wanted and Didn’t Want to Know about Mediaopera: A Cryptophonic Memoir 10.48417/technolang.2025.01.03 782: 81’22 Mediaopera Conceptualism Cryptophonics Principles of composition Visual and musical systems of signs https://soctech.spbstu.ru/article/2025.18.3/ 14-27.pdf

RAR RUS 28-41 Institut für künstlerische Forschung Lianskaya-Lininger Evgeniya

Wien, Austria

From Eisenstein to Einstein: The Ultimate Guide to Mediaopera Mediaopera is a new syncretic genre that inherits opera‘s ability to constantly change or adapt and thus prove its relevance to the times. The article examines the evolution of opera in the modern technological era, its relationship with cinema, video art and the digital technologies of the 21st century. The analysis covers key examples: from the early experiments of Georges Méliès and Sergei Eisenstein to Fausto Romitelli's psychedelic opera The Metal Index (2003) and the documentary projects of Steve Reich. Particular attention is paid to the Russian context: the role of Soviet cinema for the musical avant-garde (Schnittke, Artemyev), as well as the innovations by Iraida Yusupova whose mediaoperas combine cryptophony, mockumentary, and eclecticism of styles. The genre balances between irony in relation to operatic clichés and fidelity to its main themes – life, death, social problems. Mediaopera rethinks the elitism of traditional opera, using technology to expand accessibility while remaining a Gesamtkunstwerk – a total work of art that engages the viewer in a multisensory experience. The work highlights the interdisciplinary nature of the genre, its role in maintaining the relevance of opera through a synthesis of academism, pop culture, and media art, demonstrating new ways of dialogue with the audience in the digital age. 10.48417/technolang.2025.01.04 782 Opera Mediaopera Gesamtkunstwerk Syncretism Multimedia technologies Iraida Yusupova https://soctech.spbstu.ru/article/2025.18.4/ 28-41.pdf

RAR RUS 42-53 0000-0003-4471-0381 Moscow State University of Civil Engineering Bernyukevich Tatiana

Moscow, Russian Federation

Mediaopera and Digital Opera: Musical Conceptualism and Modern Technologies The purpose of the study is to determine a number of features of mediaopera as a form of musical conceptualism and an innovative genre, the genesis of which is associated with information technologies – digital opera. The study is based on a comprehensive approach that allows to identify the ideological and artistic foundations of mediaopera in Russia, the influence of conceptualism on it, and compare it with the actively developing digital opera. The genesis of mediaopera is connected with the formation of musical conceptualism, the center of which is the idea. Such concepts as cryptophonics, synthetism, performance are associated with the phenomenon of “mediaopera” in the Russian art space. Information technologies can be used to solve technical problems of creating a stage space. However, digital opera is becoming an independent art form, where the place of the viewer changes. Digital opera includes a number of innovations: from the use of performative elements to a digital quest (games on a personal device, smartphone, in a special application, etc.). In Russian research literature, the genres of media and digital opera are not always distinguished. However, despite some similarity between these types of musical and stage art, they differ significantly. This is due to their genesis, understanding of the main goal of the work and the use of artistic means. In conclusion, this underscores that trends in the development of modern art forms can be determined not only by the growth of digitalization tools themselves, but also by the change in the role of the viewer with the help of these tools, with an emphasis on pressing social issues. 10.48417/technolang.2025.01.05 782+004 Mediaopera Digital opera Conceptualism Digitalization Contemporary opera Contemporary art https://soctech.spbstu.ru/article/2025.18.5/ 42-53.pdf

RAR RUS 54-69 The Open University Sellors Anthony

Milton Keynes , UK

The Piano as Therapeutic Participant in the Drama of Pink Mouse Out of the multitude of imagery in Pink Mouse, both visual and aural, one feature is picked out for close examination: the piano. This instrument is seen at the very opening and it reappears at significant moments as the piece progresses. In an opera notable for its colourful animations, most of the appearances of the piano are presented in black and white and are filmed from the life. In this essay, encounters with the instrument are traced in the order in which they occur, and the suggestion is made that the pianist seen in the opening shot is in fact Maroussia as a slightly older woman, composing the opera and reliving the events from childhood within it. Following a hint offered in the opening placard, where she vows “if a miracle occurs and I have a lucky escape,” the suggestion is made that composition has something of the therapeutic quality of an ex-voto. Maroussia is seen putting together the musical imagery at her piano, attempting to make it her own, still suffering horribly from the memories of her traumatic ugliness, struggling also with Pink Mouse in the form of the dancer, who is her collaborator, fellow-rememberer and often awkward muse. 10.48417/technolang.2025.01.06 782 + 780.616.432 Pink Mouse Piano Composer Imagery Memory https://soctech.spbstu.ru/article/2025.18.6/ 54-69.pdf

RAR RUS 70-81 17344631600 0000-0002-2173-4084 Institut für Philosophie, Darmstadt Technical University Nordmann Alfred nordmann@phil.tu-darmstadt.de And the Band Plays On – Remarks for an Aesthetics of Persistence Iraida Yusupova‘s mediaoperas appear only at the end of this consideration of philosophical aesthetics from the mid-19th century onwards, that is in the industrial age where „everything solid melts into air.“ To the extent that aesthetics is concerned with how things appear to human perception and experience, it is not well suited to trace processes of evanescemce or dissolution. And to the extent that this philosophical bias results from the spectatorial perspective of a human mind that views the world and makes sense of it, this bias can be corrected only by beginning in the midst of things as do the philosophy of chemistry and the philosophy of technology. When everything solid melts into air, these solids might disappear in the sense of ceasing to exist, perhaps giving rise to something different or new. These solids might also end up suspended in a solution, lingering on or persisting as modern subjects do in an anonymous crowd. – All this has implications for musical aesthetics as well. Hermann von Helmholtz set the tone by beginning in the midst of things with the interaction on a par of three simultaneously analytic and synthetic technical devices: musical and scientific instruments as well as the physiological ear. As music moves out of the sacred spaces of the opera house or the concert hall, composers like Charles Ives incorporate the lives of things into the flow of musical action. This holds also for the Theremin as a musical and technical instrument that knows no beginnings and ends, no appearance and disappearance, but fuses the roles of player, conductor, and creator in the endless modulation of a stream of electrons, setting the stage for Iraida Yusupova‘s cryptophonic mediaoperas. 10.48417/technolang.2025.01.07 18 Hermann von Helmholtz Charles Ives Iraida Yusupova Schopenhauer and Theremin Aesthetics of disappearance Aesthetics of persistence https://soctech.spbstu.ru/article/2025.18.7/ 70-81.pdf

RAR RUS 82-128 Leuphana Universität Lüneburg Xylander Cheryce von

Universitätsallee 1, 21335 Lüneburg, Germany

Recombinant Agency. Divine Comedy Meets Upcycled Comics Art in Pink Mouse, a Meta-Mediaopera A prose poem adapted to the ›mediaopera‹ format as interpreted by participant spectating – this paper reflects on metric composition in generative fields of practice across varied technological modalities. It seeks to characterise workings of ›agency‹, conceived in both embodied-human and disembodied-machinic terms. Pink Mouse (2017) has been translated by composer Iraida Yusupova into a pictorializing aural-optical digital idiom. The resulting artwork can be read as meta-mediaopera in that it affords opportunity to explore form-theoretical features of the genre it instantiates. Besides being an object lesson in how to interpret virtual artwork, this interpretative exercise also addresses a more general challenge of pressing urgency in the post-pandemic era, namely how to extract sensual order from the virtual noise of online communications. The metrics in play in this case study encompass lyrical, graphical, and social articulation, i.e. cadences seemingly inflected by intentionality. Except metric inflection no longer vouches for subjective cogency. Now that reflexivity has taken an instrumental turn, we essentialize agency as an expression of purposiveness, be it immaterial or material, at our peril. This paper attempts to decipher agency by recourse to an objective ground of material practices rooted in constructive semiosis – here dubbed ›recombinant agency.‹ This concept takes agency to be emergent patterning made up of myriad vectors of functionality, merged in tool-use, bound by inculcated social context. Factored together, these parts yield a whole in the moving target of felt lucidity. Yusupova’s mediaopera holds agency to be irreducibly human. She upholds an analogue sense of cultural reproduction within the extant, digital logics of cultural annexation. Yet, a participant spectator, viewing Pink Mouse online, might well reckon that the piece strikes a more speculative chord, perhaps inadvertently, that preferably can enlist users, facing inexorable automation, in the service of creative autonomy. 10.48417/technolang.2025.01.08 782: 81’22 Mediaopera Recombinant Agency Digital Imaginary Participant Spectator Semiotic Surround Socio-Kinetics Kayfabe https://soctech.spbstu.ru/article/2025.18.8/ 82-128.pdf

EDI RUS 130-134 Polytechnic Museum Kotomina Аnna

Novaia Ploshad, 3/4, 101000, Moscow, Russia

37026794300 0000-0002-6019-3284 University of California, Davis Milburn Colin

Davis, United States

Speculative Technologies: Further Dreams of Technical Reason Speculative technologies emerge at the intersection of imagination and scientific knowledge. The second part of this special collection provides further testimony to this. If the dream of reason gives rise to monsters, the dream of technical reason gave birth to the perpetuum mobile along with the mechanical and artistic obsessions or compulsions that came with it. It stretches all the way to the right software app that will select a soulmate to cyberfeminist theories that seek to break through ways of thinking that foreclose technological horizons. As in the first part of this special issue (the September 2024 issue of Technology and Language), speculative technologies serve as provocations and inspirations, pointing to new possibilities, alternate horizons, and different worlds beyond our current reality. They are not just products of speculation; they are also generators, drivers, and focalizers of speculation, instruments of subjunctivity, heralding an aesthetic transformation of society. The thirteen papers (plus several essays about Kafka’s killing machine) collected in this two-part special issue examine speculative technologies through historical reconstruction, philosophical reflection, cultural-technology assessment, museological engagement, and literary experiments. 10.48417/technolang.2025.01.09 167.5 Speculative technologies; Imagined futures; Alternative worlds https://soctech.spbstu.ru/article/2025.18.9/ 130-134.pdf

RAR RUS 135-152 Lichtenberg Gesellschaft Kalka Joachim

Göttingen, Germany

„About Orffyreus' gift I have been keeping, / at the same time laughing and weeping.“ The Perpetuum Mobile – A Small Phantasmagoria from the Eighteenth Century The perpetuum mobile reappears throughout history as a dream of technical reason. On the face of it, it relieves us for good of the drudgery of work but it signifies more generally the quest to get something for nothing, to achieve benefits without cost. This pervasive desire informs technical optimism, it is frustrated in the most mundane ways, but it never gives up. Inventors imagine that there is always just one small missing cog that would save the design, in the meantime they employ hapless laborers to secretly drive their machines. These are the ones that finally present the bill to the visionary dreamers. This becomes evident in a survey of mostly 18th century proposals, most famously that of Johann Ernst Elias Beßler or Orffyreus. Even before the age of thermodynamics and proof of the impossibility of the perpetuum mobile, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg was among the majority of 18th century scientists who would meet any such proposals with incredulity. Accordingly, he engaged with such claims with an in equal parts curious and satirical attitude. And even after the age of thermodynamics, the perpetuum mobile persisted in the artistic imagination, for example, of Paul Scheerbart or Leonid Leonov. 10.48417/technolang.2025.01.10 167.5 Perpetuum Mobile Johann Ernst Elias Beßler Paul Scheerbart Leonid Leonov Georg Christoph Lichtenberg https://soctech.spbstu.ru/article/2025.18.10/ 135-152.pdf

RAR RUS 153-166 Polytechnic Museum Kotomina Аnna

Novaia Ploshad, 3/4, 101000, Moscow, Russia

Nikolai Chernyshevsky's Perpetuum Mobile – From Technical to Social Utopia Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky, known as the author of the utopian novel What Is to Be Done? and his dissertation on the Aesthetic Attitude of Art to Reality, worked on a perpetual motion machine project in his youth. He left notes on the project in the diaries he kept from 1848 to 1853. The article analyzes the text of the diaries in order to reconstruct the inventor's way of thinking, trace how his attitude toward the “machine” changed, and observe how those around him reacted to his idea. Chernyshevsky's mature publicist works assign the same role to technical innovations in improving the social order that the perpetual motion machine had in his youthful dreams. By carefully examining the history of the device's creation, we were able to clarify what features of the professional intelligentsia's perception of technology influenced the formation of his techno social utopian ideas. 10.48417/technolang.2025.01.11 167.5 Nicolai Chernyshevsky Diaries Perpetuum mobile Intelligentsia Utopia Social history of science and technology https://soctech.spbstu.ru/article/2025.18.11/ 153-166.pdf

RAR RUS 167-186 0000-0003-2687-9458 National Research University Higher School of Economics Kulagin Mikhail

Moscow, Russian Federation

0000-0003-2687-9458 National Research University «Higher School of Economics», Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (National Research University) Zimirev Mikhail

Moscow, Russian Federation

The Electronic Matchmaker: Finding the Optimal Couple in the Late USSR The article is devoted to the history of the discussion about the acceptability of using computers to find the optimal romantic couple. The conditions that enabled it were the recognition of loneliness as an independent problem requiring modern solutions in the late 1960s, as well as the spread of cybernetic discourse, by the early 1970s associated with effective expert judgments. The discussion unfolded on the pages of the main intelligence newspaper of the USSR, the Literary Newspaper (LG), in the 1969-1971's, and in the 1975-1978's it went beyond its borders, covering several central and local publications, the main of which were Nedelya and Moskovsky Komsomolets. The aim of this article is to identify the technocratic shift in the problematization of family and marital relationships in the 1960s–1980s. Special attention is paid to the design of the speculative technology of the “electronic matchmaker” by prominent Soviet cyberneticians Viktor Pekelis and Axel Berg directly in the pages of LG. “electronic matchmaker”. His opponents pointed out the uncritical nature of belief in expert mathematical models loaded into computers. The analysis of correspondence sent to LG by Novosibirsk sociologist Vladimir Shlyapentokh confirmed the high level of trust of single people in a technical way to solve their problem. However, after the publication of an anonymous note in Pravda, the discussion was closed. The second stage of the discussion, which began after four years of silence, is described by the authors as the result of the articulation of algorithmic rationality and psychology. The initial attempts to create the “electronic matchmaker” during this period were linked to the work of an experimental dating service led by psychologist Arkady Egides and the self-report questionnaires he developed. Designed according to the template of psychological personality tests, the questionnaire, serving as a tool for translating personal qualities into quantitative characteristics, became the cornerstone of computer-based dating services that emerged in the early 1980s. In conclusion, the discussion surrounding the “electronic matchmaker”, conceived as a modern method for combating loneliness, did not stimulate a radical rethinking of family norms and gender orders in late Soviet society. Instead, its technological design and epistemic framework served to conserve traditional notions of the family. 10.48417/technolang.2025.01.12 007:001.32(09); 378.4 Loneliness Cybernetics Dating service Computer Speculative technology Subjectivity Sociotechnical imaginary https://soctech.spbstu.ru/article/2025.18.12/ 167-186.pdf

RAR RUS 187-204 Mitrofanova Alla Philosophy of Technology from a Cyberfeminist Perspective Along with the transformations of technology itself, the philosophy of technology is continuously redefined epistemologically and ontologically. The prospects of further development, conceptual vectors, anthropological effects are always difficult to grasp. Among the now dominant mainstream approaches to the field there is a theory of technology of corporate utopianism, and there is a critical theory of technics with a dystopian ending. There is a large body of leftist critical studies on the corporate capture of technological opportunity and missed alternative possibilities. The goal of this paper is to show that the philosophy of technology exhibits not only historical, economic, ideological differences, but also under-explicated gender differences. A gendered approach will be offered for consideration which is based on a corpus of feminist philosophy, epistemology, and critique of science and technology, along with feminist critiques of the cultural canon. Feminist theory consistently problematizes invisible gendered frames of representations of reality. It allows us to notice the gender bias not only in the obvious, perhaps superficial facts of role inequality, but also in the formulation of scientific tasks and the organization of practices. The gender bias reaches deeply into the metaphysical attitudes and epistemological frameworks that determine the rational and irrational, the significant and the excluded. This is revealed by the questions: Whose science is this? Whose knowledge? What/whose experience matters? How are the meaning and purpose of the search defined? What rationality do they implement? The intersection of feminism and technology was a core concept of early cyberfeminism in the 90s and continues to be developed by contemporary researchers, writers, and data analysts. From feminist theory developed a specific critical and heuristic method that has a general significance much deeper than the gender-relations as we know them in everyday life. 10.48417/technolang.2025.01.13 14 Feminist epistemology Cyberfeminism Xenofeminism Gender and metaphysics Cognitive assemblage Algorithms and social practices Feminization of machines https://soctech.spbstu.ru/article/2025.18.13/ 187-204.pdf

RAR RUS 205-222 ITMO University Kolozaridi Polina

St. Petersburg, Russia

Unstable Users: Coordinating the Configuration of Digital Objects and Projects Digital objects are inherently unstable and dependent on user interactions and other infrastructures. At the same time they serve as search engines, libraries, calendars, shops, etc. The user also acquires multiple roles, like being a reader, a visitor, or a participant. The future they suppose is connected with specific tasks that configure both users and digital machines themselves. However, the roles of the user are often not explicit. This article aims at revealing the imaginaries of the user’s intentions and aims in digital humanities projects. Digital Humanities projects are supposed to be a part of scientific transformation. The scholars from this field transform the “traditional” scientific knowledge into the forms that suppose transformation of the materials as well as the practices of dealing with them. We analyse interfaces and instructions, also including some context of those projects. The results demonstrate that the projects’ user is supposed to have some task from the institutional or disciplinary knowledge outside the digital milieu. The digital instruments might serve as tools for the same tasks that can be supported via interface or instruction. If we consider also the plans and the intentions of the DH researchers, we see that the instruments and the user configure each other. The content is transformed itself, becoming adjustable for users’ tasks. At the same time the user can act in either way, and the ways of interaction with DH projects are yet to be researched, in order to understand whether the latter configure some digital scholar. 10.48417/technolang.2025.01.14 304.44 Digital objects Imaginaries Infrastructure Instrument User studies Digital Humanities https://soctech.spbstu.ru/article/2025.18.14/ 205-222.pdf

RAR RUS 223-251 UC Davis Center for Artificial Intelligence and Experimental Futures (CAIEF), University of California, Davis Álvarez Aramo

Davis, CA, USA

UC Davis Center for Artificial Intelligence and Experimental Futures (CAIEF), University of California, Davis Villalba Mercedes

Davis, CA, USA

0000-0002-9709-4650 UC Davis Center for Artificial Intelligence and Experimental Futures (CAIEF), University of California, Davis Dumit Joseph

Davis, CA, USA

Speculative Trainers: Large Language Models and Techniques of Affirmative Speculation This article proposes a reorientation of large language models (LLMs) towards “affirmative speculation,” exploring possibilities of speculative representation within the glitches of current chatbot implementations. Embracing LLMs’ sociohistorical and stochastic approach to language, we suggest that the serendipitous nature of word-by-word prediction affords innovative ways to experiment with discursive conventions. We present techniques of prompt engineering that test semantic limits and generate unexpected turns of expression. These techniques are designed to train LLMs and their human companions for co-speculative interactions, including: roleplaying beyond the LLM “helpful assistant” persona; translating concepts and discursive features from one disciplinary field to another, exploring conjectural mashups; simulating expert roundtables and hypothetical research conferences; encouraging associative navigation of obscure topic connections; appreciating LLM “hallucinations” as creative fictions rather than as errors, embracing their potential for speculative insights; and creating innovative, as-yet inexistent theoretical frameworks, blending real and fictional elements. By treating LLMs as co-speculative companions, we propose alternative ways to engage with AI in interdisciplinary research and creative thought. We also attend to the ethical and environmental consequences of speculating with LLMs and argue that the measurable costs of speculation are far outweighed by the immeasurable costs of failing to speculate at all. 10.48417/technolang.2025.01.15 1: 004.89 Speculation Large language model Prompt engineering LLM–human companionship https://soctech.spbstu.ru/article/2025.18.15/ 223-251.pdf