Centre for Digital Inquiry
Artificial Intimacies
On this upcoming episode of CDI-TV, we explore the intimate ties between humans and machines, looking at how AI is generating new forms of love and companionship. We discuss the potential implications of different nuances of techno-romance, and ask what kind of fantasy is at stake when our object of love becomes a chatbot.
Speakers:
- Francesco Barchiesi (University of Birmingham)
- Alfie Bown (King's College London)
- Erinne Paisley (University of Copenhaghen)
Location: FAB1.16 and CDI-TV (live online, worldwide, subscribe to YouTube)
Time: 04.02.26, 4:30pm GMT.
StreamArtNetwork (SAN) Archipelago @ Transmediale
CDI joins SAN Archipelago: a dispersed studio-chain spanning Krakow, Kyiv, Budapest, Warwick, Leeds, Munich and Vilnius, linked by converging streams and shared currents. This pop-up collaboration will operate as a low-budget, high-intensity carrier-net for collective presence across borders, territories and time-zones throughout Transmediale Festival 2026.
Thinking with archipelago-drift, SAN leans into highly distributed, translocal communication: many shores, no centre; relation without consolidation. Over several days, the network will appear as a chill-ready, shaded locality, where visitors can drift in and out of live-streamed interviews, discussions and performances. We don’t scale, we connect. We are not hybrid enough.
Location: Silent Green, Berlin
Livestream and Schedule: https://san-archipelago.super.site/
Dates: 28.01-01.02
Blockchain vs. AI: Doing Network History in Our Current Situation
Public Talk by Sebastian Giessmann
Blockchain and AI clash and converge as distinct yet increasingly entangled network technologies; one rooted in immutability and decentralization, the other in generative acceleration and pattern extraction. Despite their differing logics, both drive extractive, energy-intensive infrastructures under late capitalism. This talk examines how their convergence, with a particular focus on cases like Worldcoin, shapes a new and contested 'seventh' layer of network culture.
Location: FAB0.08
Time: Wednesday 25th of June, 2025, 10:00-11:00
Warwick's hub for critical digital research.
The CDI brings together researchers across humanities, social sciences and sciences to think with and through our digital condition.
We use and develop digital research techniques and associated tools to advance knowledge about culture and society ('thinking with' the digital), while also taking up the digital as a substantive critical topic ('thinking through' the digital).
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Projects
Discover the research projects we have supported and hosted, covering themes such as data infrastructures, platform governance, app studies, digital intimacy and AI. Our work engages with critical questions around digital infrastructures, cultural shifts and the politics of technological change.
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The CDI interdisciplinary research network at Warwick brings together researchers, practitioners and organisations to critically examine digital technologies and pursue experimental alternatives. Find out how to join and contribute to our future research projects.