Benjamin H. Bratton

For the American fencer, see Benjamin Bratton.

Benjamin H. Bratton (born 1968) is Professor of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego and Director of The Center for Design and Geopolitics think-tank at Calit2, The California Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology. He is an American sociologist, architectural and design theorist, known for a mix of philosophical and aesthetic research, organizational planning and strategy, and for his writing on the cultural implications of computing and globalization.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]}

Biography

Bratton was born in Los Angeles, California in 1968,^[9] and holds a PhD. in the Sociology of Technology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Before moving to University of California, San Diego, Bratton taught at the Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles from 2001–10, where he taught in the XLab program with digital architect Hernan Diaz Alonso. He taught in the Department of Design | Media Arts at UCLA from 2003-2008. He was previously Director of the Advanced Strategies Group at Yahoo!. He has also worked with Imaginary Forces, and Razorfish, among others. In 2015, he founded University of California, San Diego's Speculative Design major.^[10] In 2016 he succeeded Rem Koolhaas, as programme director of The Strelka Institute, a Moscow-based think-tank and post-graduate program in architecture, media and design.^[11]

Publications

Among his most recent work, his article "On Geoscapes & Google Caliphate: Except #Mumbai"^[12] examines the correspondence of political theology and planetary computation as modes of political geography. His lecture, "Surviving the Interface: the Envelopes, Membranes and Borders of Deep Cosmopolitics"^[13] considers the emergence of new forms of sovereignty derived from shared digital and urban infrastructures, and the challenges they pose to conventional understandings of architectural partitions and national borders. In his article, "iPhone City (v.2005)"^[14] Bratton was early to demonstrate the impact that cinematic user interfaces for mobile social media would have on urban design. His current work develops a political theory of planetary-scale computation and draws from disparate sources, from Paul Virilio, Michel Serres, and Carl Schmitt, to Alan Turing, Google Earth, and IPv6.

His 2015 book Dispute Plan to Prevent Future Luxury Constitution was published by e-flux Journal and Sternberg Press in 2015.^[15] It launched publicly at the 2016 edition of the Transmediale festival in Berlin.^[16] In the description by Sternberg Press the book is " kaleidoscopic theory-fiction" which "links the utopian fantasies of political violence with the equally utopian programs of security and control."^[17]

His 2016 book The Stack challenges traditional ideas of sovereignty centered around the nation-state, and develops a theory of geopolitics that accounts for sovereignty in terms of planetary-scale computation at various scales.^[18] Its two core arguments are (1) that planetary-scale computation “distorts and deforms traditional Westphalian logics of political geography” and creates new territories in its own image, and (2) that different scales of computing technology can understood as forming an “accidental megastructure” that resembles a multi-layer network architecture stack, what Bratton calls “The Stack.”^[19][20] The Stack is described as a platform. Bratton argues that platforms represent a technical and institutional model equivalent to states or markets but reducible to neither. Bratton refers to the book as “a design brief” suggesting that the layers of this structure are modular available to innovation and replacement.^[21]

References

External links

• Bratton.info. - Benjamin H. Bratton's personal website
• D:GP The Center for Design and Geopolitics
• Bratton's page at the Department of Visual Arts, UCSD
• "Accidental Geopolitics"-Interview - Bratton speaking at The Guardian Activate Summit 2011 in New York (28 April 2011).
• "The Program is Not on The Floor" at Southern California Institute of Architecture (28 February 2011).
• "Surviving the Interface" (full transcript)
• video at University of Michigan (17 November 2010).
• "Ambivalence and/or Utopia" at University of Michigan Taubman School of Architecture (20 March 2010).
• "Peak Oil Apophenia" at Parsons/ The New School (12 March 2011).
• Bratton Speaking at Postopolis!LA reported by City of Sound (11 April 2009).
• "On Geoscapes & Google Caliphate: Except #Mumbai" in Theory, Culture & Society - SAGE Journals Online.
• "The Digital Civil Society in a Multipolar World" - Carnegie Moscow Center (18 October 2010).