Bernard Geoghegan

Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan is a Reader in the history and theory of digital media. An overarching theme of his research is how "cultural" sciences shape—and are shaped by—digital media. This question spans his writing on the mutual constitution of cybernetics and the human sciences, ethnicity and AI, and the role of mid-twentieth century military vigilance in the development of multimedia computing. His attention to cultural factors in technical systems also figured in his work as a curator, notably for the Anthropocene and Technosphere projects at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt.

His current project Screenscapes: How Formats Render Territories draws on infrastructure studies and the history of technology to offer an environmental history of computational visualization. It considers multimedia digital interfaces in terms of visual articulation, i.e., the technoscientific formatting of territories and temporalities. He is analyzing how key computational instruments—nineteenth century astronomical tables, World War I ballistics, mid-twentieth-century radar, and present-day smart phones—merge visual formatting with techniques of mapping and defining territories.