Synthetic Data & In/Visual Culture

3. 12. 2025

We are pleased to invite you to the lecture "Synthetic Data & In/Visual
Culture," delivered by doc. Mgr. Tomáš Dvořák, Ph.D. (Academy of Performing
Arts in Prague), on December 3rd at 16:00 in the Hans Belting Library. This
event serves as the keynote lecture for the international PhD conference
"Crossings: Visual Studies Across Borders."

The lecture examines the shifting boundaries between the "real" and the
"synthetic" in the age of generative computation, exploring how these
transformations reshape the study and experience of visual culture. Drawing on
recent analyses of the transition from the visual to the invisual – that is,
from what is made to be seen to what operates beyond visibility – the talk
considers how culture, aesthetics and power are reconfigured when data, rather
than depiction, becomes the primary medium of vision.

doc. Mgr. Tomáš Dvořák, Ph.D. is an associate professor in the Department of
Photography, FAMU in Prague. His research and teaching focus on history and
theory of photography and visual culture, theory of new media and digital
culture, archaeology of media and media arts. His recent publications include a
special issue of the journal Philosophy of Photography on cameraless imaging or
a co-edited book, with Jussi Parikka, Photography Off the Scale: Theories and
Technologies of the Mass Image (Edinburgh University Press 2021).