

# Event Details

- **Event Name**: Coded. A Somewhat Emotional State
- **Event Start and End Date**: Wed, 12 Nov, 2025 at 09:30 am – Fri, 14 Nov, 2025 at 05:00 pm
- **Event Description**: Everything is about technology, only technology is about emotions.

Coded-ness is a material quality, a trace of a process already past. It is also a process that is not only meant to embed technologies in things, but emotions, memories, and imaginaries. That means that treating code, coded or coded-ness as merely technologically defined falls short in an attempt to adequately analyze its emergence, its processes, or its effects.

In times where the developments of artificial intelligence are outmoded faster than they can be described, and where algorithms are interwoven with daily life at every turn, the question of whether “technology” is still the right term is a core concern of this symposium. Therefore, this call poses an ontological schism: modern technology critique, we argue, cannot address code in our present and future. Whether the cyborg-critique of Donna Haraway or technology critiques of modern thinkers since 1850, they all no longer hold when what “coded” means increasingly is inseparable from “crafted” for human senses and minds. One can, equally, no longer speak of the disenchantment—or re-enchantment—of the technological since their mutual entanglement is so total that there is no longer room for a Blochian critique of one toward the other. At the same time, art historical categories such as “semblance” and “likeness” gain new relevance when work created by humans, neural networks, or both is indistinguishable from one another. Asked differently, when the goalposts are constantly and desperately being moved to preserve what is “human,” the stakes in making such distinctions shift, as well. 

How then can one meaningfully engage with questions of code in art or architecture history, with algorithmic customizations or large language models when one cannot distinguish their art, their output, and their coded-ness with human faculties? What if probed disciplinary methods are no longer sufficient for this technology? This symposium consequently looks elsewhere: it looks for insights from the history of emotions, for empathy as core quality of technology, for sensorial feedback or nostalgic projections, for expanded readings in disability studies or for alternative histories of architecture, art, technologies, or their objects. Whose needs for comfort and which desires does code (potentially no longer as technology) answer? Which does it create? What need for communication, what wish for permanence, what desire for transparency is motivating the coding efforts of each time or question? Embracing the awareness raised in the field of archaeology that the long-standing separation of matter (often “dirt”) from “artefacts” has long led to irreversible destruction of information begs the question whether a potential de-coding of objects in the future might hold more promise than unearthing them in their present illegibility. 

As follow up to the symposium on objects and their emergence by the Lise Meitner Group “Coded Objects” in October 2024, this iteration turns to the motivations that will coded-ness into material existence: We hope to discover moments of euphoria and friction, of resistance and reinterpretation, and moving forward positively and critically—together, as humans.

Program
Wednesday, 12 November
9:30 – 10:00am – Introduction
Anna-Maria Meister, KHI and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

10:00am – 1:00pm
1: Recoding Narratives
Chair: Anna Luise Schubert, KHI

Ludo Groen, ETH Zurich
Codes of Swiss Banking Secrecy and the Automation of the Female Telephone Operator, 1921–34

Michael Faciejew, Dalhousie University
Wirelessness and Colonial Affectivity

Ana Miljacki, MIT
Affective History: The Pilgrimage / Pionirsko Hodočašće

Coffee Break

12:00pm – Response: Enrique Ramirez, Columbia University
&amp; Discussion

Lunch Break

2:00 – 5:00pm
2: Close Bodily Encounters
Chair: Julia Tarling, KHI

Oliver Arellano-Padilla, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Haunted Interfaces: Codedness and the Threshold of the Synthetic Voice

Christopher Williams-Wynn, Freie Universität Berlin
Bodies of Code, Affects of Execution

Heewon Kim, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
The Coded Face: From the Facial Science to Behavioral Screening Programs

Coffee Break

4:00pm – Response: Virginia Marano, MASI Lugano and KHI
&amp; Discussion

Break

5:30 – 7:30pm
3: Multivalent Constructs
Chair: Eva Schreiner, KHI

Evangelos Kotsioris, MoMA New York
Encapsulating Affect: Cultural Coded-ness in Kisho Kurokawa’s Nakagin Capsule Tower

Theodora Vardouli, McGill University Montréal
Coded Ambivalence

Coffee Break

6:30pm – Response: Laurent Stalder, ETH Zurich
&amp; Discussion

Thursday, 13 November
9:30 – 12:30pm
4: Charged Matter
Chair: Alejandro Nodarse, KHI and Harvard University

Ruth Hung, Hong Kong Baptist University
Cuteness as Code: LABUBU and the Emotional Machinery of Digital Capitalism

Ellen Reeve, Independent scholar
Encoded Longings: Orphan Artifacts, Bureaucratic Code, and the Sensory Reclamation of Identity

Nachiket Chanchani, University of Michigan
Coded Cups: Agents of Anticolonial Struggles

Coffee Break

11:30am – Response: Karina Pawlow, KHI
&amp; Discussion

Lunch Break

1:30 – 4:30pm
5: Feeling Landscapes
Chair: Anna-Maria Meister, KHI and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

Azar Emami Pari, TU Berlin and KHI
Coded by Cut: Fragmented Carpets and the Tactile Illegibility of Devotion

Samuel Stewart-Halevy, Pratt Institute
The Mechanics of Vibing

Mo Zhang, University of Pennsylvania
Push Out the Awning: Coded Perception and Emotional Topographies in Tuipeng Painting of Early Modern China

Coffee Break

3:30pm – Response: Mimi Cheng, KHI
&amp; Discussion

Break

5:00 – 8:00pm
6: Visceral Technologies
Chair: Alessandra Failla, KHI

Inge Hinterwaldner, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
Net Art Strikes Back! Where Digital Design Gets Your Guts

Hansun Hsiung, Durham University
Mental Illness and Machine Punishment in Late Modernity

Thomas Moser, TU Wien
Cadillac Kinship: Affective Machines and Cinematic Reproduction in Julia Ducournau’s "Titane"

Coffee Break

7:00pm – Response: Maryia Rusak, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
&amp; Discussion

Friday, 14 November
9:30 – 11:00am
7: On-Site Presentation, Accademia di Belle Arti (Via Ricasoli, 66)
Robert Zamboni &amp; Sara Onofrietti, Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze, in collaboration with the Academy staff
From Plaster to Data. Gypsum Casts as Coded Objects (A Possible Research Trajectory)
Meeting point: Under the portico at the entrance, just after the first gate, 9:15am

11:30am – 12:30pm
Tour of the Exhibition Armin Linke: The City as Archive. Florence
with curators Hannah Baader &amp; Costanza Caraffa, KHI
Meeting point: First floor of Palazzo Grifoni

Individual Lunch Break

1:30 – 4:30pm
8: Deviations, Rerouting, Failures, Breaking Codes
Chair: Joshua Silver, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

Cansu Curgen &amp; Avşar Gürpınar, Loughborough University
Ambiguous Standards Institute: The Agency of Everyday Objects

Farzin Lotfi-Jam, Cornell University
Coded Humans: The Institute for Creative Technologies and Sada for Contemporary Iraqi Art

Joseph Henry, CUNY Graduate Center
The Glitch Aesthetic of 1907

Coffee Break

3:30pm – Response: Rafael Brundo Uriarte, KHI
&amp; Discussion

4:30pm – Closing Remarks

This Symposium is organized by the Lise Meitner Group “Coded Objects” led by Anna-Maria Meister at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut. "Coded Objects" as method of refraction questions any assumptions of "neutral" technology or immaterial bureaucracy. Instead, the Lise Meitner Group examines how processes form values through objects—and how objects inform processes in societies.

The building can be entered about half an hour before the event. Ring the bell at “Photothek” if the door is not open yet. The event space is located on the first floor, reachable with 3 steps of stairs at the entrance and a large stairway or elevator (with limitations for wheelchair users). The location can be accessed with a wheelchair via an alternative entrance from Piazza della Santissima Annunziata, but advance request is necessary. During the presentations, automated captioning through Zoom will be available. If you have any access needs, e.g. verbal descriptions or alternative seating, please let us know in advance via info@khi.fi.it, and we will try to accommodate those.

Organized by Anna-Maria Meister, Anna Luise Schubert and the Lise Meitner Group “Coded Objects”.

This will be a hybrid event.

VENUE
Palazzo Grifoni Budini Gattai
Via dei Servi 51
50122 Firenze, Italia

To participate online please register in advance via Zoom:
https://eu02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/iYZaOPN5T8ejDuufUnByIQ#/registration
--
Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut
Via Giuseppe Giusti 44
50121 Firenze, Italia
+39 055 24911-1
info@khi.fi.it

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- **Event URL**: https://allevents.in/florence/coded-a-somewhat-emotional-state/200029182602215
- **Event Categories**: art, meetups, it, exhibitions, fine-arts, artificial-intelligence
- **Interested Audience**: 
  - total_interested_count: 4

## Ticket Details

- **Ticket URL**: https://eu02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/iYZaOPN5T8ejDuufUnByIQ?utm_source=AllEvents.in&utm_medium=event-discovery-platform&utm_campaign=florence-events

## Event venue details

- **city**: Florence
- **state**: TO
- **country**: Italy
- **location**: Palazzo Grifoni Budini Gattai
- **lat**: 43.77616
- **long**: 11.26013
- **full address**: Palazzo Grifoni Budini Gattai, Via dei servi 51,Florence, Italy

## Event Organizer details

- **affiliate_id**: 2
- **organizer**: Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz (https://allevents.in/org/kunsthistorisches-institut-in-florenz/26224272)

## Event gallery

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- **Alt text**: thumbnail
  - **Image URL**: https://cdn-az.allevents.in/events5/banners/326e0f3780a1064bc0ca9068a8760ff23792e24885980c8547a5f5eeefb219a7-rimg-w300-h300-dceaeef0-gmir?v=1762933755

## FAQs

- **Q**: When is the event happening?
  - **A:** Wed, 12 Nov, 2025 at 09:30 am
- **Q**: Where is the event happening?
  - **A:** Palazzo Grifoni Budini Gattai, Via dei servi 51,Florence, Italy
- **Q**: Who is organizing the event?
  - **A:** Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz
- **Q**: What type of event is this?
  - **A:** art, meetups, it, exhibitions, fine-arts, artificial-intelligence
- **Q**: Where can I find ticket details about Coded. A Somewhat Emotional State ?
  - **A:** You can find ticket details about this event on AllEvents.

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