Call for Papers for the conference: Sensing and Sensor Technologies – Media-Aesthetic Perspectives on Sensory Mediality and the Proximal Senses
This conference will take place from 9 to 11 April 2026 in Bonn, Germany. It is part of the project “The Computerized Palate. Digital Technologies and the Lower Senses”. We welcome contributions that explore the topic of sensing from multiple interdisciplinary perspectives.
Key information:
Organisers: Felix Hüttemann and Jens Schröter
Length: 500-word abstract, 200-word short biography
Deadline: March 1st, 2026
Contact: Felix Hüttemann, email: fhuttema@uni-bonn.de
Costs: Accommodation and travel expenses can be covered if required
About the research project
The process by which humans interact with their environment through sensory perception is being renegotiated in the present context of digital sensor technologies. Where skin, eye, and ear once functioned as the central interfaces between body and world, an increasing number of technical sensors are now being added into the process. Beyond the haptic and the visual, these technologies not only seek to imitate human smelling and tasting but also to translate smell and taste into digital processes, that is, into calculable operations. This brings into focus a dimension of media theory that has previously remained marginal: the entanglement of the “lower” senses with machinic apparatuses of perception, that is, sensors.
This development does not merely represent an expansion of the concept of the interface but also touches upon fundamental anthropological and epistemological questions—for instance, concerning the boundary between human and non-human agency or even the (technical) conditions of perception itself. In this sensor-driven situation, human and non-human operations appear to become interweaven. The relations of human–computer interaction (HCI) are renegotiated through questions of the “senses” and the quality of sensors.
The sensing of sensors thus invoked is part of a media-technological configuration of perception: sensors do not merely act as elements within a media ensemble but increasingly extend the constitution of what can be considered perceptible. This coupling of human senses and technical infrastructures shifts human–computer interaction and transforms the interface from an apparent contact surface into a sensory infrastructure. One, in which data flows, materiality, bodies, and software form relational constellations. Sensing therefore stands paradigmatically for a renegotiation of the interfaces between humans, technology, and environment, in which not only the concept of the interface is expanded but also the conditions and limits of perception are newly defined in a world increasingly permeated by sensor technologies.
About the Conference
The planned workshop investigates the entanglement of perception, media technology, and aesthetics in the context of sensory cultures. It will focus on theoretical and methodological approaches to processes of sensing as epistemic and aesthetic practices that may mediate between human sensory perception, environments, and technical sensor systems. Media-aesthetic, cultural-technical, and material-theoretical perspectives on sensory mediality will be discussed in order to reassess the role of the proximal senses—especially smell and taste—in contemporary media discourse.
The aim of the workshop is to initiate an interdisciplinary discussion on the current relevance of the sensory and to explore the theoretical connectivity of the concept of “sensing,” both with regard to processes of digitisation—for example in the culinary domain—and with regard to the mediality of the proximal senses, which is yet to be developed.