Zootechnologies: Swarming as a Cultural Technique

Abstract

This contribution examines the media history of swarm research and the significance of swarming techniques to current socio-technological processes. It explores how the procedures of swarm intelligence should be understood in relation to the concept of cultural techniques. This brings the concept into proximity with recent debates in posthuman (media) theory, animal studies and software studies. Swarms are conceptualized as zootechnologies that resist methods of analytical investigation. Synthetic swarms first emerged as operational collective structures by means of the reciprocal computerization of biology and biologization of computer science. In a recursive loop, swarms inspired agent-based modelling, which in turn provided biological researchers with enduring knowledge about dynamic collectives. This conglomerate led to the development of advanced, software-based ‘particle systems’. Swarm intelligence has become a fundamental cultural technique related to dynamic processes and an effective metaphor for the collaborative efforts of society.

Los ecos del superhombre: ciborgs, posthumanos y sujetos contemporáneos

“…No se trata sólo de asistir a un renovado interés por el vitalismo (Greco, 2021), desplegado a partir de un creciente interés por formas de vida no-humana como plantas (Wohlleben, 2020), hongos (Sheldrake, 2020) o microorganismos (Yong, 2016). Hoy en día, de forma explícita, se comienza a explorar de modo protagónico el vínculo entre vida no-humana y técnica (Parikka, 2010), llegando incluso a hablar de la emergencia de una "zootecnología" (Vehlken, 2013) o una "atmotécnica" (Wall, 2019). Y en este emergente campo de investigación, el vitalismo de Nietzsche aún puedo resultarnos orientativo, nutritivo y enriquecedor.…”

How Algorithms Interact: Goffman's ‘Interaction Order’ in Automated Trading

“…(At a party, for example, most participants' attention is devoted to a small subset of what is going on, with only an anxious host or hostess maybe monitoring the event as a whole: see, e.g., Goffman, 1963. ) As Yuval Millo pointed out to me in a personal communication, the crucial role of a global representation in algorithmic trading suggests the need for nuance, when analysing it, in invoking metaphors -such as 'swarms' (see Vehlken, 2013) -in which there is self-organisation resulting from local interactions, for example between nearest neighbours. (There are some local interactions among trading algorithms: see Appendix 1.)…”

Sustaining the unsustainable: Wearable technologies as informing running-practice in urban schools

“…It is perhaps statements like the latter that prompt urban planners to refrain from using Deleuze and Guattari's work as a methodological tool kit to plan city-spaces. However, their theories and particularly their notion of "emergence" has been given serious consideration in architectural discourse (Eisenman, 1999;Gins & Arakawa, 2002); city planning and software programming (Johnson, 2002); as well as swarm intelligence systems in relation to social and cultural conditions (al-Rifaie, Bishop & Caines, 2012;Vehlken, 2013). Their work is often shrugged off by the disciplines as impractical, too abstract!…”