My research

I’m a literary scholar with an interest in the relation of literature and science and the literary, poetic and aesthetic elements in scientific knowledge itself. In my current research I investigate the emergence of pattern as a key symbolic form and worldview of the (post)digital age. In a 2008 WIRED article Chris Anderson infamously predicted that digitization and big data would soon make scientific theory obsolete since large computing clusters can “find patterns where science cannot.” Intriguingly, however, patterns now increasingly acquire symbolic meaning that points far beyond the mere flattening out of theory and interpretative depth into large scale statistical empiricism. My research explores the new pattern aesthetics and its epistemic and ideological implications in contemporary works of art and literature and the human sciences.

IAS Fellowship

In my IAS project, I ask (1) how digitization shapes the cultural imagination of patterns in present day fiction, visual art and human sciences and (2) in which ways this imagination reflects a desire for connection and cohesion in a hypercomplex world. What is at stake here is the ability of patterns to make sense of the world beyond the limits of any particular field or discipline. During my time at IAS I will study the (post)digital patterns aesthetics in works of fiction and visual art (by Tom McCarthy, Ryoji Ikeda, Gerhard Richter et al.). I also intend to set up a research network for the investigation of pattern as a figure of knowledge in the present-day human sciences, with a focus on literary and media studies and social and cognitive science.