Alan Prohm PhD
New Proposal: Materializing Attention Topologies
Current affiliation: NEEEU Spaces GmbH
Previous affiliations: 2024 Ishibashi Foundation/Japan Foundation Research Fellow; 2023 Studio TheGreenEyl, projects for museums and cultural institutions
- Experimental Architecture and Embodiment
- Visual Poetics and Intermediality
- Culture Media and Concept Design
Experimental Architecture and Embodiment
Book
ANOTHER KIND OF KNOWING: on ARAKAWA & GINS
with Jondi Keane and Don Byrd
Summary: A coordinated non-monograph offering 3×3 ways into the work of Arakawa and Gins; my section: “On Procedural Architecture and Efficacy”Abstract: “On Procedural Architecture and Efficacy”Outline
- Don Byrd
- Alan Prohm
- Jondi Keane
Status: independent research and writing, expected completion late 2024; proposed publication with Punctum Books 3Ecologies Imprint, Series Directors: Erin Manning and Brian Massumi
RELATED ACTIVITIES
Research Fellowship: „Architectural Body Tracking & Diagramming“ – research travel grant to sites of Arakawa and Gins‘ architecture in Japan, 01-23.10.2024, Ishibashi Foundation/Japan Foundation Fellowship for Research on Japanese Art; in coordination with Pr. Dr. Naohiko Mimura, Director of the Architectural Body Research Studies Group, Dep‘t of Occidental and Oriental Studies, Kansai University, Osaka, Japan, and the Reversible Destiny Foundation and A+G Tokyo Office.
Talk: “Arakawa & Gins and the Future of Philosophy” in the panel “Art and Philosophy in the 22nd Century: after Arakawa and Madeline Gins”, 25th World Congress of Philosophy, Università la Sapienza Rome, August 2024
Recent Panel: “Towards Another Kind of Knowing” with Jondi Keane and Don Byrd at “AGxKansai 2022: Art and Philosophy in the 22nd Century After Arakawa+Gins” Kyoto, March 2022
PUBLICATIONS
Book project (final English editing and co-authored chapter):
Art and Philosophy in the 22nd Century: After Arakawa and Gins (Kyoto: Ratik, March 2023)
Papers
“On Procedural Architecture and Efficacy in the Work of Arakawa and Gins”, in Art and Philosophy in the 22nd Century: After Arakawa and Gins (Kyoto: Ratik, March 2023)
“From Literary Device to Architectural Procedure: on Arakawa and Gins and the Becoming-Architecture of Literary Method“, in the Journal of Poetics Research, Sept. 2015
“Building Body – Two Treatments on Landing Site Theory”, in The Funambulist Papers: Vol. 2 Body ed. Léopold Lambert, Punctum Books April 2015
“Constructing Poesis: Storyboards for an Immersive Diagramming”, in Inflexions: a Journal of Research Creation , no. 6: the Arakawa and Gins issue, Montreal, Jan. 2013
“Architecture and Poetic Efficacy: Part 1 Architectural Poetics”, in Architecture and Philosophy: new views on the work of Arakawa and Madeline Gins, Rodopi, 2010.
Journal:
Procedures Journal – notes for a procedural architecture, eds. Alan Prohm and Jondi Keane, 2015, (2 issues) at proceduresjournal.com
Teaching:
2015 – 2017 Technische Universität Braunschweig – Institute for Architecture-related Art
IAK – Institut für architekturbezogene Kunst – Grundstudium; program co-creation, coordination, foundations course and seminars, with Interim Prof. Tomás Saraceno; Institute website
2016 Seminar: Architectural Body – seminar on the body and/as architecture
2015-16 Semester Workshop: Landing – some phenomenology for architecture-related artists
2004- 2008 University of Art and Design, Helsinki (TaiK), now Aalto U. – MA Program in Environmental Art
Masters Program core faculty and co-development (w/ Prof. Markku Hakuri), MA research and thesis supervision, curriculum development, core course teaching, special theory-studio courses (2004-2008)
BodyBuilding – Procedural Architecture and Embodiment, full-year theory-studio (2006-2007
Architectural Poetics – MA theory seminar (2004)
Visual Poetics and Intermediality
“Cut Paper Thinker – a few Thoughts with Klaus Peter Dencker”, in Klaus Peter Dencker, Visuelle Poesie II, Bibliothek der Provinz, 2016.
„Visual Poetries: Some Palette Analysis for the Renegade Anthology“ in Renegade: a collection of international visual poetry & language arts , ed. Andrew Topel (San Diego University Press, in publication)
“Visual Poetry: Writers’ Art in a Para-Literary Age” in Avain: The Finnish Review of Literature, eds. Mikkonen and Käkelä-Puumala, 2008.
“Resources for a Poetics of Visual Poetry” in Orientations: Space/Time/Image/Word (Word & Image Interactions no. 5) Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005.
Dissertation: Visual Poetics – Meaning Space from Mallarmé to Metalheart Stanford 2004 (Supervisor Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht)
Develops a reception theory of visual poetries and text cultures in terms of the perceptual and cognitive resources at their disposal, in particular spatiality as a body-based semantics. Covering visual poetry and graphic design from 1897 to 2001 (print, digital, and architectural), it investigates the expanding role of 3-D space, and of embodied visual ‘reading’, in the experience of this work. Combines methodologies from literary theory, theory of language, art history, empirical aesthetics, psychology of perception and cognitive science.
Culture Media and Concept Design
KULTURWISSENSCHAFT – KULTURTECHNIKENFORSCHUNG
zu Sprache Bild und Raum
Materialität Modalität und Medialität
Kulturtechniken
- der Medien-Konzeption im Zeitalter der Digitalisierung
- der digitalen Sammlungspräsentation im Zeitalter der Dekolonialisierung
- der Aufmerksamkeitserziehung in Zeiten von Medienflut und Technologiewandel
- der Visualisierung von Geist, mentaler Inhalten u. Prozessen als Wissensprojekt
- der experimentellen Raumgestaltung als transformative Wissenspraxis
- des intermedialen Schreibens, Lesens und Denkens
PROJECTS – Digital Concept Design and Cultural Production
- Book MS – The HUMBOLDT FORUM: a DIGITAL CONCEPT
- Prototype Web Project – GLOBAL PROVENANCE TIMELINE
Book (project)
independent research & writing; proposed 2021, advising with Prof. Dr. Claudia Mareis 2021-22
HUMBOLDT FORUM DIGITAL CONCEPT on Concept Design and Cultural Production in the 21st Century
Summary: Chronicle, Case Study and Critique of the Humboldt Forum Digital Concept 2015-2025
Related Conference paper: “Decolonizing Online Collections Presentations” at CIDOC MX23 Frontiers of Knowledge, Museums, Documentation and Linked Data, Ciudád de México, UNAM Sept. 24-28 2023
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MS Structure:
I Scope & Methodology
a culture-technical critique
II Chronicle
- 2015-2020
III Case Study
- Taskings
- Solutions
- Results
IV Critique
- HF-Specific
- General
V Counterproposition
- Global Provenance Timeline
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Prototype Web Project
(w/ Studio TheGreenEyl) 2023/2024
GLOBAL PROVENANCE TIMELINE
Webviewer for acquisitions data of the complete ethnographic and anthropological collections of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (SMB)
Summary: working from an analysis and critique of current projects of online presentation of digitalized collections, including the Humboldt Forum’s Sammlungen Online, this prototype materializes exemplary potentials for an alternate, proactive mode of digital presentation commensurate with the need of the moment for decolonization in cultural practices, techniques and infrastructures.
Status: Prototype; proposed to the DDB for their relaunch of the federal platform Collections from Colonial Contexts expected in 2024.
MVP: complete South America data set visualized and made accessible (playable, searchable, saveable) as proof of concept for global SMB/Berlin/German acquisitions data.
Data resources: online collections presentations of the SMB, HU and other museums and institutions, aggregated and accessible via open API at the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek (DDB)
Developed in dialogue with a broad network of experts in Berlin and abroad (incl. SMB Collections, SMB Zentralarchiv, Inst. für Museumforschung; HU Lautarchiv, Humboldt Forum Global Community Assembly, Open Restitution Africa)
RELATED ACTIVITIES
Talks:
“Decolonizing Online Collections Presentations: Historical Challenges and Lost(?) Opportunities of the Humboldt Forum“, CIDOC MX 2023 “Frontiers of Knowledge, Museums, Documentation and Linked Data”, International Committee for Documentation of the International Council of Museums ICOM, Universidad Autónoma Ciudad de México
“5 Possible Machines of Truth and Knowledge” – on Digital Concept and Cultural Production in the Humboldt Forum project, Digital Truth-Making: Ethnographic Perspectives on Practices, Infrastructures and Affordances of Truth-Making in Digital Societies 7-9 October 2020; Institute for European Ethnology & Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage (CARMAH), Humboldt University of Berlin (Germany)
Seminars:
“CultureMediaConcept” – Humboldt Universität zu Berlin – Institute for Cultural Studies – WS 2022/23
“Digital Concept and Cultural Production in the 21st. C.” – Humboldt Universität zu Berlin – Institute for Cultural Studies – SS 2021
Papers:
“Double Humboldt: Thoughts on a Digital Twinning for the Humboldt Forum“, in Conference Proceedings EVA BERLIN 2018 Electronic Media and Visual Arts, Nov. 2018
“Digitally Remastering Worldviews: some Tasks for a Semantic Web“, in Addendum to the Conference Proceedings EVA BERLIN 2017 Electronic Media and Visual Arts, Nov. 2017
“Worldview-Interface – Content-Strategies in Humboldt Forum 2019 and Today” – Talk at EVA BERLIN 2016 Electronic Media and Visual Arts
“Media Strategies for the Humboldt Forum“, Bettina Probst, Nathalie Keurmeur, Alan Prohm, in Conference Proceedings EVA BERLIN 2015 Electronic Media and Visual Arts, Nov. 2016
Alan Prohm 