John von Neumann Salon

A co-production of Formatlabor Berlin, transmediale Berlin and the Collegium Hungaricum Berlin.

Created and directed by:  Till Nikolaus von Heiseler and Jan-Peter E.R. Sonntag.

The János von Neumann Salon is an interdisciplinary meeting place of science and art as well as an intersection for theory and practice. The Salon was named after one of the most distinguished and controversial minds of the 20th century, John von Neumann – who was born as János Lajos Neumann in Budapest in 1903. With his work Neumann contributed fundamentally to both the development of the hydrogen bomb as well as to that of the computer (two inventions that are in fact closely related to one another). Throughout his life the relationship between the human brain and the computer was Neumann’s pivotal interest.
Today we find ourselves in the terrain of Neumann’s legacy by addressing the relation between the act of thinking and the machine as well as by understanding that historical processes as such are contingent and unpredictable. Media epistemology is the umbrella term under which we intend to trace this unpredictability.

The Salon will address the following topics: media epistemology; the future of media society; contingency and social evolution; the machine and cognitive processes (thinking); artists and their material; and, last but not least: the ingenius (Genialität)