Beauty, epiphany, neurons

Six hundred years ago a small group of innovators changed history. They lived in Italy, and the name of their era, the Renaissance, is delightfully compact. It means rebirth, renewal and the emergence of new character. Europe has experienced more than one renaissance, but the Quattrocento occupies a special place in the imagination. The reason is clear. Unlike comparable eras, the Italian Renaissance produced colourful characters who embody wide-ranging achievement: Renaissance people who excelled in the arts, science and engineering. The influence of Filippo Brunelleschi, Leon Battista Alberti and Leonardo da Vinci spread throughout Europe, and they continue to inspire the world. In most eras we discourage polymaths, but we make an exception for Quattrocento genius.

Header photo: View from Erte Ale volcano in Ethiopia
This was a study for the performance installation ›Epiphany: The Cycle of Life.‹ (c) 2015 Ali Hossaini

Photo below: Epiphany: The Cycle of Life
Singer Netsayi and the Young People’s Chorus of New York City perform ›Epiphany: The Cycle of Life‹ at BAM in New York City. (c) 2015 Ali Hossaini

It was not a given that 15th-century Italy would invent perspectival drawing. Euclid codified optics over two thousand years ago, and some scholars argue that the ancient Greeks applied perspective to painting, architecture and theatre. As the name implies, the Renaissance was a rebirth of classical learning. But the Italians of the Quattrocento went further than the ancients, and perspective spread across Europe from Italy, and from Europe to the world. We can describe perspective in one stroke. By applying science to art, and shaping science with art, Renaissance polymaths created the flat panel display. 

The beauty of perspectival art reveals the structure of space. Our first guide to perspective is Alberti’s 1435 treatise On Painting, a slender volume which generated incalculable economic value when its techniques were applied to new disciplines. Within a century of Alberti’s treatise, inventors used the camera obscura to automate perspectival drawing, and, within decades, Louis Daguerre and William Henry Fox Talbot industrialised it by inventing photography: drawing with light. To this day, cameras are a locus of innovation, notably in mobile handsets, that charge economic growth. At the same time, the camera is a useful metaphor in digital media. Gaming and animation developers use a ‚camera tool‘ to define the user’s point of view. Today’s 3D design software is one of Alberti’s many heirs.

We can speculate on why a spatial multiverse eludes us. Is it because polymaths invented the flat panel display? Renaissance engineers were accomplished artists and scientists; indeed, it is impossible to characterise them with a single word. Their aesthetics embodied intellectual and technical rigour, and they combined innovation with humane values. Consider Brunelleschi’s architectural masterpiece, Il Duomo. Accidents commonly mar construction, but, during Brunelleschi’s management, Florence’s cathedral was erected without a death. Renaissance polymaths studied ancient texts, but they probed nature with tools of their own invention. They envisioned modern science by creating humane environments filled with beautiful objects.

Contrast the Quattrocento with today. Contemporary professionals specialise while the paragons of the Italian Renaissance embodied wide-ranging talent. Perhaps this explains their lasting influence. Drawing in perspective was not instantly popular. Now we take the medium for granted, but 15th-century audiences treated perspective as advanced technology: difficult to learn, marginalised and controversial. Perspective’s utility did not immediately show, and its power to create illusions seemed a gift from Satan. But Renaissance paintings incorporate fine aesthetics. Their masters created paradigms for the media they invented.

Let me ask again: What lessons can we take from the Renaissance? Aesthetics and contemporary ethics should drive engineering. Technology should express its time; it should express the possibilities and necessities of the moment. Consider another great polymath. In the early 19th century, the Prussian explorer Alexander von Humboldt travelled the world in a quest for grounding principles. Arguably the founder of ecology, von Humboldt published illustrated books that demonstrated interconnections among the physical world, the biological environment and human interventions. Though celebrated while alive, von Humboldt’s star faded and his holistic, interdisciplinary theories were replaced by specialisation and linear causality.

Humanity stands at a precipice, and creative industry is both problem and solution. Our ability to create artificial environments has masked disastrous mismanagement of nature. At the same time, cultural conflicts have paralysed our capacity to act. Why can’t we save ourselves and the innocent creatures who share our planet? The answer turns on the exclusionary cultures we have created—cultures which oppose the ecologically transcendent humanism of Alexander von Humboldt and other ecologists.

Let us return to spatial media. How should the multiverse evolve? Should it sever humanity from nature, or can it bind society to ecology? Should it enable monopoly, even tyranny, or provide opportunities for all? Markets will determine the multiverse’s form but so will designers. Rather than inventing for its own sake, the multiverse’s engineers need to judge outcomes. Good intentions alone are a recipe for disaster. In the 1990s, I deployed social media into television networks. My goal was to create media for a democratic society. Massive channels, controlled by a few, should be fragmented into capillaries run by individuals. Social media would—I thought—encourage critical thought, dialogue and solidarity.

Here’s another lesson from the Quattrocento. Its polymaths did not separate thinking, making and doing. Nor did they separate ethics, aesthetics and technics. Today holism is deeply unpopular, but I think it is vital for innovators to adopt it. And I argue that holism is vital for producing commercially viable forms of spatial media. The multiverse is not an end in itself: it is the foundation for future generations to innovate. My work in developing standards for ethical design of AI and brain-computer interface has convinced me that media will converge with architecture, urbanism and biology. The next-generation Internet will transcend our current conceptions. Did Alberti imagine streaming media when he wrote On Painting? Imagine the value unleashed by 21st-century infrastructure which supports decades, even centuries, of progress.

The New European Renaissance could mesh creative industry, science and engineering with an ethos of global awareness. It would preserve the cohesion of European institutions, and it would support the relevance of European industry—and the European project—in a world of superpowers. Let us invest in a 21st-century Renaissance that starts in Europe but benefits every global citizen. Europe’s institutions, the heirs of the mecenati, can generate vast new wealth, and they can also ensure the benefits of prosperity for future generations. What illuminates this path to a bright future? Humanity, technology and ecology coupled to creative imagination.

Photo left: GROUPTHINK: The Internet of Neurons
Neuroscientist Shama Rahman and computer scientist Mick Grierson collaborated with Ali Hossaini, an AI and a cohort of artist-engineers to create GROUPTHINK. Performed at National Gallery X in London and broadcast via Ars Electronica Festival 2021. (c) 2021 Ali Hossaini

Cultural capital supports the capacities of children and young people to actively participate in society. Experiences from Finland show, however, that a generous public service provision doesn’t necessarily mean equal service offering for all. Children with a minority background and children coming from lower social classes are underrepresented among the users of the cultural programs aimed for children and young people. Recent initiatives in Helsinki, the Finnish capital, may have found a new way to tackle this challenge.

A national program for Arts education

Finland was named the happiest country in the world in 2021 by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network for the fourth time in a row. Alongside with the other Nordic welfare states, the country is well-known for its generous public services. These services include the public school system as well as the public healthcare system, but Finland invests heavily also in children’s arts education. And for good reason: arts and culture are known to have a positive impact on children and on young people and their future.

In parallel to this research work, the City of Helsinki launched a pilot phase of the Helsinki Model of arts education that brought the activities to suburbs and, thus, closer to the disadvantaged groups. Also, an arts education project called “Art Testers”, led by the Association of Finnish Children’s Cultural Centres was launched targeting teenagers.

The pilot phase of the Helsinki Model that lasted three years (2016-18), consisted of four case studies in four different suburbs around Helsinki (Lindholm & Päiviö-Häkämies, 2020). It relied on the cooperation of the cultural department of the City of Helsinki, of neighbourhood associations and of cultural institution ranging from theatres to museums and to dance and circus companies. The pilot succeeded in improving the perceived quality of life in the pilot suburbs but it taught that the local population couldn’t be reached simply by delocalising the old model of arts education. The content needed to be adapted to the setting. And yet, the most challenging groups—socially most marginalised and minorities not speaking Finnish—were still very hard to reach. This was partly because they didn’t have any previous relation to art or had even a hostile attitude toward it. City of Helsinki continues the Helsinki Model program and keeps fine-tuning it.

Art Testers integrated cultural offerings to the school curriculum initially from 2017 till 2020. Every year, it brought all Finnish 8th graders (15-year-olds) to a visit in one or two high-esteemed art attractions across Finland, such as opera or theatre performance, a concert, or an arts exhibition (Art Tester, 2021). School groups were provided with tickets and transportation to the events. Approximately 60,000 teenagers participated in the project yearly. The project ended up being so popular and successful that in the fall 2020 the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture secured the continuation of the program.

A Tribe Called Zimbabwe is a powerful Zimbabwean brand and company that celebrates Zimbabwean culture and heritage through fashion and architecture. It is the brainchild of Nomakhosazana Khanyile Ncube, known popularly as ‘Zana K’. She is a multifaceted Zimbabwean woman, former Miss Zimbabwe 1st Princess, Former Miss Bulawayo 2005, an Architect, Poet, Blogger, Cultural Activist, and Founder and Creative Director. Zana’s brand positions itself to explore creatively what being African and Zimbabwean means in today’s world, showcasing the nation’s fashion and cultural identity to both Zimbabweans and the world around it.

Zimbabwe has a broad spectrum of tribes, including the Ndebele, Kalanda, Tonga, Venda, Sotho and the Shona, the latter of which is an umbrella identity of an ethnic Bantu people that comprise the Zezuru, Rozvi, Korekore, Karanga, and the list goes on. While different in language and practices, there are commonalities, and one of the strongest is cattle. The tribes place great value on cattle and their role in society. Viewed as a symbol of wealth and royalty, cattle also carry socio-cultural connotations. A Tribe called Zimbabwe expresses the differences in ethnic roots and identities between the broad communities that make up Zimbabwe, while also amplifying the shared values that unite them as one. Drawing from the shared view of cattle, the brand’s choice material is cowhide. Handmade, the products are built on a concept of durability and recycling.

Header Picture: Zana K, Copyright by Ernest Mackina

Picture left: Zana and her mother at Zana’s graduation, Copyright by A Tribe Called Zimbabwe

The integration of architecture and fashion is potentially the most fascinating aspect of the brand. “I see no difference between the principles in architecture and those in fashion, because both are about tectonics… which is the technique of how materials come together,” says Zana. “The simultaneous transition between architecture and fashion for me is easy. The same ‘presence’ and experience I want to create in my architectural spaces is the same presence I like to invoke in my fashion garments, which is Royalty, and the celebration of rich African/Zimbabwean culture.”

Picture above: Detachable Bows, Copyright by A Tribe Called Zimbabwe

Picture left: Zana K with Sandra Ndebele at Roil Bulawayo Arts Awards in A Tribe Called Zimbabwe Outfits, Copyright by CNC Productions

Peace Prize of the German Book Trade 2021 – Acceptance Speech of Tsitsi Dangarembga, held on 24.10.2021 in Frankfurt am Main

Dear honoured guests all, I feel, standing before you here today, as I imagine Jonah must have felt when he was inside the whale.  Taken in by a great beast like a bit of plankton floating by, landing within the entrails of a massive mammal, not knowing how he will find his way out of the great churning gut, but knowing very well what the end process of being digested is and therefore, while feeling grateful at no longer being tossed in the raging sea, nevertheless also feeling highly excited.

Indeed, the award of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade 2021 is a cause for great excitement in my life.  I did not ever imagine that one day I would stand in this lovely venue in Frankfurt, a city in a country that I conceive of as having been the strong umbilical chord of western empire, in order to receive the German Book Trade’s most distinguished prize.  Therefore, I am astonished to stand before you today.  At the same time, I am delighted, and I am humbled at this unfolding of events.   I am thankful to my publishers, Orlanda Verlag, who first published my work, and then submitted it for consideration; and I thank the jury who recognised positive value in my voice, a voice from that part of the world so often described as other and so often preceded by negative qualifiers.  There are seven billion human beings on the planet.  I am now one of the few of that great number who understands what a great privilege it is to find oneself in a place that not even imagination had been capable of transporting one to.

Various forms of violence were unleashed on black bodies as the new settler state evolved.  These forms of violence included the banning of black political parties, police brutality, judicial harassment, abduction, detention and torture.  The violence of the denial of freedom was encoded in laws that determined such things as where black bodies could be at what time, where minds embodied in black bodies could obtain education, where a black body could purchase land or farm, and what kind of alcoholic beverage could be sold to or imbibed by a black body where.

In 1965, the British settler community of the country, now called Rhodesia, declared their own independence from Great Britain.  This declaration of independence by the white population was in response to the British policy of decolonisation through negotiating independence with its colonies that evolved in the 1950s.  The new policy was an imperial response to unrest in the colonies where there was political agitation for independence through majority rule.  As majority rule in a predominantly black state meant rule by black people, the settler community of Rhodesia acted to prevent it by unilaterally declaring independence from Britain.

The formative violence of the Zimbabwean nation state is not an isolated historical occurrence.  The greater part of the world has experienced the multi-faceted violence that I have described in the Zimbabwean case at the hands of western empire.  This violence is standard for all the imperial enterprise practised by the western quarter of the world on the rest of the globe, a process that began in the fifteenth century.  In fact in some cases, such as the USA the process was even more violent with entire nations being wiped out through genocide.  We should not be surprised then that violence – physical, psychological, political, economic, metaphysical and genocidal – is too often the order of the day in postcolonial countries.  These kinds of violence are structured into the global order that we live in, and have their root in the structures of western empire that began to be formed over half a millennium ago.  This is to say that the west, with all its technology and belief systems and practices, is built on these multiple ongoing forms of violence, which it exported to the rest of the world and which are now practiced as eagerly in postcolonial states as they were by imperial and colonial states.

Our current global dispensation does invest large amounts of money into influencing group behaviour.  Methods of influencing group behaviour are taught in courses for disciplines such as marketing and business studies, politics and propaganda studies all over the world.  Such courses teach students how to define a target group by segmenting a population according to a range of demographics.  The desires of this population are then manipulated with the aim of this manipulation being not the good of the people concerned or an increase in peace, but in order to maximise something that we refer to as profit.  This may be financial, political, social or any other kind of human profit.

I put it to you that this thing we call profit does not in fact exist.  In absolute terms, the notion of profit is a fallacy.  In the dimension of the human, and the world we inhabit physically, events and matter are localised in time and space.  Value that appears in one time and place is value that has been removed from another time and place.  A system based on profit, on receiving more than is given, is a system of exploitation.  Systems of exploitation result in concentration and deficit.  A system that manufactures concentration on the one hand and deficit on the other is a system of imbalance.  Such a system is inherently unstable and therefore not sustainable.  How then have we come to invest in an unstable, unsustainable system that is bound to lead to our downfall?

Let us consider the case of a mind that is not one’s own.  Let us assume that this other mind that is not one’s own, holds a different content to the contents in one’s own mind; or that it utilises a different system of evoking and arranging contents and thus of delivering meaning; or that it differs from one’s own mind in both content and process.  Those who believe that being in the world and knowing in the world is based on „I think“, may very easily come to the conclusion that a mind that uses different contents for representing and different processes of combining contents does not think at all, and therefore does not represent an „I“ at all.

Let us now go on to assume that this mind that is not one’s own is embodied.  It is easy to see how such an embodied being that is not oneself, that does not think as oneself does, and therefore is said not to think, is very likely to evoke in one’s mind the content „They do not think, therefore they are not“.  Since the thinker of „I think therefore I am“ perceives of themself as human, those who think differently are perceived of as being not like me, or not human.  As we know, this denial of the human value of other human beings has the effect of raising the human value we ascribe to ourselves; and as we also know, this mechanism of differential attribution of humanity has been responsible for much of the violence that human beings have visited on each other.

I make this point not to discredit the Enlightenment.  It is very hard for me, someone who is not personally connected directly to the history of Europe and its narrative, to imagine what life here was like during the Dark Ages through the Middle Ages, and how deeply the thought revolution that was the Enlightenment was needed.  My point is to add my voice to those who say the Enlightenment of yester-century has run its course so that we, all of us on this planet today are in great need of a new enlightenment.

The complexity and urgency of current conflict areas poses major challenges for us as a society. Digital and environmental changes are confronting us with a range of unknowns, fundamentally re-sorting our world, and doing so at an enormous speed. Automation and artificial intelligence are permeating the entire economic system, raising fundamental questions, fundamentally changing our everyday lives, and redefining human work. The consequences of global warming, from hurricanes and floods to glacier melt, are pervasive, devastating, and express the need for rapid action. The European Commission’s current work program (2021) not only puts „twin green and digital transitions“ at the top of the political agenda, but also emphasises the close intertwining of green and digital transformation. In this context, it is more important than ever to focus on their interdependencies. The Covid-19 pandemic recently showed how interdependent and interrelated everything is and how highly interconnected our world is. In a short period of time, the virus held the entire world in thrall, had an impact on all areas of our society and required cooperation across borders, institutions and disciplines.

The complexity of these challenges and the multidimensionality of networked systems require the dovetailing of different working methods, perspectives and approaches from science, business, politics, society and art. Only by entering into these synergies beyond one’s own institution, with other scientific disciplines and the integration of different actors, can novel and sustainable solutions be found. This results in a systemic change on all levels of our society. The relevance, potentials and possible practices will be elaborated in this paper using the example of higher education and the re-interweaving of art and science.

Alexander von Humboldt’s educational ideal and ideas about the university („universitas litterarum“ = „community of the sciences“) are based on holistic education in the arts and sciences and are becoming increasingly important due to current developments. Through their inherent creativity, imagination as well as execution and testing of new ideas, art and science are connected more than is generally assumed. Both are accustomed to navigating through uncharted terrain, do not shy away from complex problems, and, by exploring and creating the radically new, are the source and impetus of innovation in our society. Through shifts in perspective, mutual inspiration, and different approaches and methods, collaboration holds the potential to unleash the creativity that today forms the foundation of 21st-century skills. It is essential to focus not only on interdisciplinarity but above all on transdisciplinarity in education and research so that we do not run the risk of losing sight of the interrelationships in view of the high degree of specialisation on the one hand, and on the other hand so that new ideas can be brought into the world through mutual inspiration.

“By seeing the big picture—the interrelationships of knowledge that liberal arts offer—workers of the future can be fluid enough to adapt to changes beyond their individual control.” (Needle et al. 2007, S. 114)

This change is also clearly manifested in the change in the types of tasks occurring in the workplace. Since the 1970s, a steady increase in „non-routine analytical tasks“ and „non-routine interpersonal tasks“ can be recorded, as stated in the current OECD report. In light of the digital revolution, which is drawing a new profile of activities, „education systems must also undergo transformative change.“ (OECD 2020) The study „The Future of Employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerisation?“ by Frey and Osborn of Oxford University also caused a stir, predicting that some 47 percent of U.S. workers will be at risk. (Frey and Osborne 2013) In the study „Solving future skills Challenges“ (Universities UK 2018), the World Economic Forum and the OECD are united by the prediction that digital transformation will have a significant impact on many areas of our lives. In order to respond to these new conditions and remain capable of acting, there is a consensus that new skills will be needed, the teaching of which has been pushed too little or hardly at all to date.

The Pangolin Scales shows how new, groundbreaking inventions can be created through the collaboration of art and science. The work was realised as part of the LIT Special Call Ars Electronica of the Johannes Kepler University Linz in 2020. The call promotes the shaping of innovative ideas through the collaboration of science and art. The Pangolin Scales features an extraordinary scale dress that moves and interacts with its environment, controlled solely by the wearer’s power of thought. This is made technically possible by a world-first, 1,024-channel brain-computer interface (BCI) that is capable of extracting information from the human brain with unprecedented resolution. It was developed by researchers at JKU’s Institute of Integrated Circuits and brain-computer interface experts at g.tec medical engineering GmbH. The impetus and inspiration for the project was provided by fashion tech designer Anouk Wipprecht, who also participated in the development. The LIT Special Call Ars Electronica Festival has been held annually since 2020.

Photo: The Pangolin Scales / Thomas Faseth (AT), Harald Pretl (AT), Christoph Guger (AT), Anouk Wipprecht (NL)

This project is part of LIT-Projects, JKU Campus. The Pangolin Scales demonstrates the world’s first 1.024 channel brain-computer interface (BCI), which is able to extract information from the human brain with an unprecedented resolution to control an interactive, fashionable dress. For further information please visit: https://ars.electronica.art/keplersgardens/en/the-pangolin-scales/

Copyright Information: Tom Mesic

The Republic of Florence is considered to be the birthplace of the Renaissance. Soon other Italian city-states followed. In general, cities were the main drivers in the transition to modernity in the 15th and 16th century. Once again, cities should now play a vital role in the New Renaissance and could be the nucleus for a human-centred digitisation.

The City of Vienna aims to shape the Next Renaissance in the digital transformation of society and economy. With its Digital Agenda 2025 Vienna hat set the framework for a Viennese Way of digitisation and has defined 12 principles as guidelines for its journey into the digital future in a dialogue with representatives from companies, research institutions and civil society initiatives that was broad and, of course, digitally supported. Equal opportunities, participation, focus on service, an open culture of error, gender equality, innovation, consolidation, sustainability, openness, cooperation with the regional economy, independence and security are to characterise the Viennese path of digitalisation

This commitment of the City of Vienna is supported by the Vienna Manifesto for Digital Humanism, which leading scientists proclaimed in Vienna in May 2019. In it, they formulate a “call for reflection and action in the face of current and future technological development” and announce 11 key demands to academic communities, educators, industry leaders, policy makers and professional societies around the world.

The commitment to digital humanism also points the way forward for Viennese economic policy. The Viennese path to digitalisation was pinpointed as a central topic for economic policy in the new Viennese economic and innovation strategy WIEN 2030. Vienna is to stand for digital solutions that guarantee fairness, transparency, safety and self-determination. Vienna does not want to copy Silicon Valley, but rather quite the opposite. It wants to build on the fact that Vienna already has an excellent reputation around the world when it comes to cyber security, digital citizens’ rights, transparent and trustworthy artificial intelligence, assistive technology for older and handicapped people and the calculation of complex predictions for the future.

In this connection, Vienna’s rich tradition in art, culture and science inspires and secures the basis for a vibrant and democratic society of the future. Art and culture create social spaces that need to be open and accessible to the population as a whole and in its diversity (Stadt Wien, 2021). Through the intersection of culture and technology in the field of the creative industries, new points of access as well as innovations are created. This is at the centre of our focus on Culture & Technology in the creative industries in accordance with the motto Digital Humanism (Vienna Business Agency 2022).

As employees at the Vienna Business Agency, we ask ourselves if it is possible to position Vienna as a pioneer for digital humanism in the international race for talent and business ideas and to differentiate Vienna from other emerging centres of innovation. 

In this article, we discuss concrete developments in which digitalisation brings dynamic and sometimes also worrying changes. We believe that we have collected noteworthy ideas and concrete initiatives that show how the course for the future can be set correctly in the spirit of digital humanism.

Corresponding data competence among citizens is necessary for citizens to use and share their data in a self-determined manner. The state is also challenged to ensure the teaching of humanistic values, knowledge about the mechanisms of the data economy and skills in handling data by the publicly funded education system. Currently, many large companies are benefiting from the lack of data competence in the population.

Data sovereignty is the objective. This means the right to self-determination, the right of each individual to determine when, for what purpose and at what price his or her data can be used. Data sovereignty also enables full control over people’s data – regardless of whether this is personal data or the data of a company. 

Still, data sovereignty should also promote innovation by encouraging self-determined data exchange and a modern data economy. Data donation is an exciting idea that allows someone to actively support civil society initiatives, research projects and innovative business ideas by sharing your data. Data that is provided voluntarily can lead to ground-breaking insights and thus improve the lives of all. 

We also find the MyData initiative noteworthy. It is a global association of scientists, lawyers, software developers and political activists who wish to drive a human-centred data economy.  MyData aims to advance the discourse on data sovereignty with position papers, concrete case studies and regular meet-ups at the regional hubs: “The core idea is that we, you and I, should have an easy way to see where data about us goes, specify who can use it, and alter these decisions over time.” (MyData)

If we set the course correctly, then digitisation does not heighten human prejudices but rather guarantees transparency and fairness.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a promising technology and is already used in various areas such as image recognition, human speech processing and assistance systems. When used correctly it can improve the common good and our quality of life. However, AI also has a dark side. 

In general, applications that are based on AI use historical data. This serves as training data to teach the desired behaviour to artificial intelligence. The rules upon which these decision patterns are based on remain unrecognised and, above all, unexamined. We call it a black box. A lot of training data contains unconscious biases. In practice, this leads to questionable decisions or predictions. As decisions by AI cannot be traced there is a very serious risk that existing biases will be further exacerbated and, additionally, will be perceived as the seemingly objective decisions of a machine.

If we set the course correctly, then digitalisation will provide us with additional, healthy years of life. 

The aging of society and the increase in chronic illnesses is placing enormous demands on the health system. At the same time, digitalisation promises ground-breaking improvements, particularly in the health system. In diagnostics, some machines are already trumping what humans can achieve concerning the speed, precision and even analytical interpretation. In his book “Deep Medicine”, the cardiologist and geneticist Eric Topol shows how AI is fundamentally changing medical research. AI tools allow us to learn more about ourselves than we could ever imagine (Topol, 2020).

In their book “Die digitale Pille” Edgar Fleisch and his colleagues from the University of St. Gallen also showed how digitalisation can contribute to a healthy life and an efficient health system: Big Data and AI improve diagnostics. Standardised treatments will soon be a thing of the past because therapies can be tailored individually to each patient in the digital age. Telemedicine permits a regular exchange on an equal footing between doctors and patients and comprehensibly processed information empower us all to live a healthy lifestyle (Edgar Fleisch et al., 2021). 

However, even these rosy prospects for the future are countered by justified concerns. Doctors are already permanently overstretched and human interaction with patients comes up too short. There is a risk that pressure on the system will increase even further if digitalisation promises increased efficiency and reduced costs and is used as an argument for cost savings. Instead, the time that is freed up by machines taking over routine work should improve the individual support of each patient.

This would also incidentally mitigate a second justified concern: We have learned that AI works through pattern recognition. As a logical consequence of this mode of operation, it has blind spots where people differ from the norm, e.g. intersex people have justified concerns that they will no longer have a place in digitalised medicine. This concern can also be countered with consistent customer orientation of the health system.  

The fear surrounding the transparent person, who can only count on support from the public health system if he or she meets the expectations of a healthy lifestyle, is also quite justified. This mistrust of the public health system is the only way to explain why people in Europe cannot be motivated to use digital devices for seamless contact tracing and thus contain infections during the COVID19 pandemic. 

Solid financing of the health system, the reliable protection of highly sensitive health data and the development of capacities to provide this data in anonymised form for research and innovation must therefore be given the highest priority if we wish to use the benefits of digitalisation in the health sector.

INiTS, the Viennese high-tech incubator, has initiated Health Hub Vienna to drive digital health innovations. Pharmaceutical companies, medical product manufacturers, private and public insurance companies, health service providers, and start-ups work within Health Hub Vienna on the development of patient-centred health solutions. At Health Hub Vienna, startups receive custom support in the critical steps associated with the development of products and services and their introduction on the market within a complex health system. There is a particular focus on the fulfilment of regulatory requirements around data protection and the certification processes.

Introduction

A friend of mine recently complained that ever since his 14-year-old son Jacob downloaded the new social networking app TikTok, he can’t seem to get away from it. My friend says he hasn’t seen this happen to his son before. What has actually been happening with Jacob and his relationship with the new app? Researcher Jason Davis, who has looked into TikTok in detail, describes it very well. Once Jacob started the app, he didn’t have to define his favourite topics or hobbies. The AI algorithms immediately went to work and started analysing Jacob’s behaviour and his emotions. They figured out what he liked and disliked. What he can stand to look at and what he quickly skips over. They started offering him all sorts of content and soon they knew Jacob better than Jacob knows himself. They knew with incredible precision which videos would engage James and which wouldn’t. What content would evoke a positive or negative emotion in him. And this is exactly what plays the most important role in the new type of economy we call the attention economy. Our time and our attention is of great economic value to digital platforms and their advertising partners, as is knowing our likes and activities.

We passionately debate whether machines can have emotions and if so, what they would look like. What we completely miss is that artificial intelligence algorithms are already much better at decoding and influencing human emotions than we are. Couple this with insights from the behavioural sciences, which show that up to 85% of our decisions are based on emotion, and we can see the breadth and depth of the problem we face. How we make decisions defines us as individuals, and our collective decision-making defines our society. Whether it is making a decision in a free and direct election, deciding to buy a product, deciding on a life partner, or any other of hundreds and thousands of decisions, depends on emotions. If someone, or something, is controlling or manipulating our emotions, are we still free people? Liberal democracy and the free market are essential features of our society. But what happens to them if the free decision-making that underpins them is not free? It will not be free because the emotions that are central to decision-making will be manipulated.

What can universities contribute to rebuilding society by a novel mix of arts and science?

Europe is currently going through an unprecedented crisis. In addition to the economic, demographic and migratory challenges that have traditionally been part of the reform of this large territory, the last decade has seen the addition of the climate challenge and the upheaval linked to the COVID-19 health crisis. By now, Europe has moved into what is known as the 4th industrial revolution, a new way of organising by combining a networked organisation and digital and collaborative development tools with the means of production in the real world. The European society, multicultural and cosmopolitan, is facing a new deal characterised by new technologies such as artificial intelligence and the virtualisation of sensory experiences. Major scientific advances coincide with new global issues. Faced with these doubts, society must question its traditional categories and rethink its objectives and its organisation.

Access to resources becomes a fundamental issue. The liberation and concentration of energies is an essential pillar of any strategy and any initiative. The collective, the local anchoring, becomes fundamental not only to reactivate the creative forces, but also to ensure to minimise their environmental impacts and to refocus the questioning of tomorrow’s production modes on the human, on the sustainable. Towards a more inclusive, resilient society. Towards a more shared academy. Towards a meeting where several platforms, several laboratories, in direct access, cohabit and share their information, and several ecosystems come together by mixing artistic and scientific perspectives. The great thinkers of the historical Renaissance had established this spirit of rupture, this capacity to embrace both the rigour of artistic thought and the formidable intuitions of scientific rationality. What does this imply for the future of universities? How must university evolve—or be disrupted—to have relevance in the Next Renaissance as they have done so far for cultural and scientific driven development?

Such radical intersections of artistic and scientific experiences—as at U7+ Alliance of world universities and Université Côte d’Azur—should lead the whole of society to immerse itself in a reflection on otherness, on a certain form—in the aesthetic sense—of vision of the world, so that art can, at times, revive the place it once occupied in the Camerata Fiorentina. Or as it was described in Henri de Saint-Simon’s The Artist, the Scientist, the Industrialist (1824), „It is we, artists, who will serve as your vanguard: the power of the arts is indeed the most immediate and the most rapid. We have weapons of all kinds: when we want to spread new ideas among men, we inscribe them on marble or on canvas; we popularize them by poetry and song; we employ alternately the lyre or the galoubet, the ode or the song, the history or the novel; the dramatic stage is open to us.”

Damien Ehrhardt and Hélène Fleury recall the extent to which the great figure of Alexander von Humboldt prefigured the current challenges of history. By combining science and aesthetics, by associating observation, artistic fascination and understanding of the world, Humboldt was one of the great operators of transdisciplinarity, of the connection between the fields of knowledge, learning and art, by reviving the spirit of humanism. The place of science, art and technology in our societies is fundamental, and even more so when it is aimed at education. In a digital, globalised environment, thinking about this next Renaissance also means, paradoxically, giving meaning to local energies, to the forces that combine in proximity and in education, mutual aid, and local culture.

Today’s organisational challenge to empower novel creations in a Next Renaissance is that a global university such as Université Côte d’Azur must, first of all, interact at the level of local authorities to federate the players, to develop techniques of knowledge and education in direct access, so that everyone can access the data and the tools to transform tomorrow’s society. It is to all of these challenges that we are responding. To quote Saint-Simon again, „the power of imagination is incalculable when it takes off in a direction of public good.”

This text is a joint contribution of several colleagues at the Börsenvereinsgruppe.

„A conversation presupposes that the other person might be right.“ With this statement, the philosopher Hans Georg Gadamer formulated the basis for respectful interaction. It is a basic prerequisite for a lively culture of debate and indispensable for a democratic opinion-forming process. The book industry has set itself the task of promoting this process and making younger generations aware of its importance. Recently, the discussion about the stand of a right-wing publisher at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2021 showed that a constructive exchange of opinions cannot be taken for granted and that the current climate of debate in our society is highly heated.

This debate was triggered by the call for a boycott by the black German author Jasmina Kuhnke, who stated that she did not feel safe due to previous racist threats caused by the presence of a publisher from the right-wing end of the spectrum at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

The Börsenverein Group, which consists of the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels and its subsidiaries Frankfurter Buchmesse GmbH, MVB and Mediacampus, sees as one of its core tasks to defend the freedom of the word as an elementary human right and to guarantee freedom of expression as a prerequisite for freedom of publication and literary diversity. To allow different opinions and currents as long as they remain within the bounds of the law, and to argue one’s own values, is, in the view of the Börsenverein, the right way forward in a pluralistic and democratic society.

At the same time, freedom of expression is under threat from the state in many countries. In an increasing number of countries around the world—be it Saudi Arabia, Turkey, China, Russia, Belarus, Egypt or Vietnam—people are persecuted, imprisoned or murdered simply because they criticise the actions of the government. But in Poland and Hungary, countries in the European Union, free reporting is also restricted.

Publishers and bookstores in Germany stand up for persecuted authors, publishers and booksellers worldwide. The Börsenverein sees it as its task to draw attention to the fate of persecuted cultural workers and to call on the political leaders in Berlin and Brussels to consistently stand up for freedom of expression.

Colonialism is over, but the colonial continuities are still present. Colonial reappraisal is still in its infancy and, following the Black Lives Matter movement, is increasingly calling for clarification. In the cultural landscape, there is an increasing presence of the topic, but the media and textile and clothing industry still show restraint. In the fashion and design scene, approaches with a decolonial orientation have developed in recent years that critically question the fashion and design system. A booming fashion scene in Africa and its diaspora is gaining more and more international attention, breaking stereotypes, doing away with clichés and reclaiming narratives. What is the role of African fashion and design aesthetics in decolonisation? In an increasingly fast-paced world where tradition meets modernity and innovation is unstoppable, a new interplay is beginning.

How can a European rebirth be shaped today? The active work of decolonial thinking is a first step to create a new definition and awareness to give space to sustainable and equal perspectives. One approach is deconstruction.

The values and history of design are taught through a Eurocentric canon, accepting work predominantly by European and American male designers, which forms the basis of what is considered „good“ or „bad“. This authority has the effect of undermining the work of non-Western cultures and people from the Global South so that, for example, Ghanaian textiles are classified as craft rather than design. Classifying traditional craft as something other than modern design deems the history and practice of design of many cultures inferior. We should strive to remove the conflation of craft and design in order to recognise all culturally important forms of making.