ANU Computational Culture Lab Reading Group

About the group

Throughout history, being human has meant being technological. But how does technology really exist and how does it shape our own being?

Join us in contemplating diverse concepts of technology to explore our complex cultural and intellectual relations with technical systems.

We meet fortnightly at 1-2pm AEST via Zoom (starting 24/6/26) to have a chat about the text assigned to each session—but reading isn’t strictly necessary to join! Our goal is to build community amongst diverse scholars with similar interests.

This group is organised and led by HDR candidates Chris Sutevski (SOAD, Chris.Sutevski@anu.edu.au) and Dylan Chng (SLLL, Dylan.Chng@anu.edu.au): send any questions their way.

2026 Syllabus

Digital Theory (2025) by M. Beatrice Fazi, Alexander R. Galloway, Matthew Handelman, and Leif Weatherby

• Meeting 1, 24 Jun: "Introduction"

1000 Platforms: Ensembles as Ontological Experiments (2025) by Adrian Mackenzie

• Meeting 2, 8 Jul: "Introducing 1000 Platforms" (ch. 1, pp. 1-17)
• Meeting 3, 22 Jul: "Embedding and Embodying" (ch.5, pp. 92-110)
• Meeting 4, 5 Aug: "Stagings and Their Closures" (ch. 6, pp. 114-133)

Sci-fi Aperitif 1

• Meeting 5, 19 Aug: "Les Xipéhuz" (1888) by J.-H. Rosny and "The Lifecycle of Software Objects" (2010) by Ted Chiang

DeepAesthetics: Computational Experience in a Time of Machine Learning (2025) by Anna Munster

• Meeting 6, 2 Sep: "Introduction: Deep Machines and Surfaces of Experience" (pp. 1-39)
• Meeting 7, 16 Sep: "Heteropoietic Computation: Category Mistakes and Fails as Generators of Novel Sensibilities" (ch. 1, pp. 40-77)
• Meeting 8, 30 Sep: "Postscript. On Models of Control and (Their) Modulation" (pp. 177-182)

Digital Modernity: Why We Need to Think Historically About the Digital Age (2026) by James Smithies

• Meeting 9, 14 Oct: "Introduction: Technology and History" (pp. 1-21)
• Meeting 10, 28 Oct: "Colonialism and Power" (ch. 5, pp. 100-118) and "Race, Technology, and History"(ch. 6, 119-135)
• Meeting 11, 11 Nov: "Conclusion: The Future of Digital Modernity" (pp. 189-198)

Sci-fi Aperitif 2

• Meeting 12, 25 Nov: "La Mort de la Terre" (1910) by J.-H. Rosny

Digital Theory (2025) by M. Beatrice Fazi, Alexander R. Galloway, Matthew Handelman, and Leif Weatherby

• Meeting 13, 9 Dec: "What Is Digital Theory?" (ch. 1)

Online Event

The reading group meets over Zoom. You only need to register once to receive the group's regular Zoom link. We will send meeting reminders and a calendar invite to your email once we have it and will continue to do so for subsequent sessions (unless you opt out). Meeting reminders are sent on Monday in the week of each session. Refer to the online syllabus to see what we’ll be discussing at each session.