Media - Knowledge - Education 2019 – University of Innsbruck

Media – Knowledge – Education:
Augmented and Virtual Realities

International conference at the Leopold-Franzens-University in Innsbruck (April 25-26, 2019)

Models and applications of augmented and virtual realities are booming: They come across as apps on smartphones, as avatars and assistive technologies, in the form of virtual communities, soundscapes, organizations, operating rooms, games and products of all kinds. On the one hand, the paradox here is that in many spheres of life, the information and communication technology conditions of processes of medialization, mediatization and normalization are becoming so obscure that alternative options of development hardly seem conceivable. On the other hand, pragmatic motives of routine practices, medial convenience, or monetarizability cannot hide the fact of a widespread discomfort in media cultures of digitality.

Digital technologies of extension, enhancement and virtualization are increasingly being tested and developed in learning and educational contexts. The spectrum ranges from early media education to virtual universities, from workplace learning to the use of photorealistic 3D replica of one's own person in relationship-ecological contexts. As in the context of fundamental historical media shifts, euphoric and skeptical perspectives can also be identified here.

Central questions in this context are: What significance can augmented and virtual realities have in educational contexts? How do dynamics of the mechanization of educational and knowledge spaces relate to tendencies of normalization and naturalization of media usage contexts? To what extent can learning potentials and educational values be identified in the networks of virtual infrastructures and in the repertoires of media-cultural practices? Which epistemological and normative aspects of relations of 'reality' (Realität), 'reality' (Wirklichkeit), 'possibility', 'potentiality', 'digitality' and 'virtuality' are relevant in this context? Which conceptual views are helpful with regard to future-oriented descriptions and target images? Which shift of emphasis in the field of tension between the experience of mediated realities and the medial realities of experience are emerging? And what are the consequences for the description, analysis and design of educational, learning and knowledge processes?

Further information about the event can be found by clicking on the adjacent links.

Conference program

Book of Abstracts

Call for Papers - deutsch

Call for Papers - english