DIZH Bridge Professorship for Digital Cultures and Arts

M. Egli: Welcome, Roland! You are the first bridge professor between UZH and ZHdK. What do you expect from this special position?

R. Meyer: As I myself studied at an art academy, the HfG Karlsruhe, and have taught and researched in both a university and an art academy context, I am particularly interested in bringing these two worlds into a dialog. The Center for Arts and Cultural Theory (ZKK), which was newly established this May as a joint center of the two universities, provides an ideal institutional framework for this, and I will be working on its further development in the coming years – something I am very much looking forward to. Together with colleagues from both institutions and from very different disciplines, we want to take a look at the central issues of the present – the climate crisis, cultural wars and real wars and, what will primarily concern me, the role of the arts in the face of so-called “artificial intelligence”. Our aim is to combine scientific, theoretical, artistic and practical perspectives – because all these topics are too big for a narrow disciplinary approach and require the collaboration of researchers with very different methods and forms of expertise.