Digital Epistemologies: Rethinking Knowledge the Age of Digital and Synthetic Media Exploratory workshop in memory of Jonas Ingvarsson (1966–2025)

In his book Towards a Digital Epistemology: Aesthetics and Modes of Thought in Early Modernity and the Present Age (2021), Jonas Ingvarsson argues that digital epistemology extends beyond the present and is not limited to media based solely on binary code. Instead, it encompasses distinct modes of thinking, organizing, perceiving, and interpreting the world. This opens different trajectories for further exploration:

• Shift from causality to relationships: Instead of linear, cause-and-effect logic, digital epistemology focuses on associative, performative, and recursive connections between elements.
• Emphasis on materiality and interface: Paradoxically, digital media enters a material and performative relationship with its creators and users building on tactile, visual and spatial through digitization and presence across platforms.
• Juxtaposition of pertinence versus provenance: Digital epistemology favors the principle of pertinence (grouping by relevance or association) over the principle of provenance (grouping by origin or authorship).
• Recursive historiography: Digital epistemology allows for non-linear, layered readings of history, where older media forms (like emblems or cabinets of curiosity) are reinterpreted through new forms of digital representation.
• Invention over interpretation: Ingvarsson argues that digital epistemology encourages heuristics (invention) rather than hermeneutics (interpretation). It’s about creating new knowledge configurations rather than uncovering fixed meanings.
• Congeniality with early modern modes of knowledge organization: Digital culture shares, according to Ingvarsson, distinct traits with early modern forms of organizing and representing knowledge, such as cabinets of curiosity, emblem books (image, motto and text resembling memes) or ekphrasis and energeia (rhetorics evoking strong emotional imageries). Thus, these historical forms share with digital media a non-linear, multimodal, and experiential approach to knowledge.

What we look for

Inspired by the creative, exploratory, and innovative thinking of our colleague of Jonas Ingvarsson, who sadly passed away earlier this year, we convene a workshop in his memory to explore these dimensions further. We invite to personal reflections on the life and academic work of Jonas Ingvarsson. We also invite scholars from the humanities, social and computer science as well as practitioners in art and media production to explore the concept of a digital epistemology further. How can Ingvarsson’s proposed concept of digital epistemology help us understanding media transformations in the public sphere and the role of media and information in a digitized society today?

Ideally, papers (in the format of 20-minute presentations) should engage with Ingvarsson’s characteristics of digital epistemology in various areas of the contemporary media landscape and its societal impact as above, for instance, but not limited to

• Media, truth claims and knowledge communication
• Memefication
• Synthetic synchroneity in the (re)presentations of knowledge – the end of linear search
• Posthuman communicative networks
• Encountering ‘digital humans’: avatars, digital clones, partners, digital resurrection
• Cultural, social and political consequences of generative and virtual (synthetic) media
• Non-linear relations between past, present and future
• Originality and co-creation in the age of digital reproduction
• Or any other contribution fit for discussion

Please send your submissions (title, 250-350 word abstract, five keywords, 2-3 lines of bio) no later than 22 September to beate.schirrmacher@lnu.se and andreas.onnerfors@lnu.se

NB! This event is unfortunately self-sponsored and cannot offer reimbursements.

We envisage to publish a selection of papers in an edited volume or special issue and will convene a virtual text seminar later this autumn (2025) or in early spring (2026).