Daniel Irrgang is a scholar in media, art, and culture with a focus on the enactment of knowledge, e.g., in exhibitions, diagrammatic depictions, or algorithmic practices in art and design. His current focus in research and teaching is on environmental humanities, particularly on artistic or aesthetic approaches towards climate science representation, as well as on technological and ideological structures of digital inequalities.
He is a postdoctoral researcher within the ‘Climate Futures in Digital Cultures’ research section of the wider program ‘Embracing Transformation’ at Leuphana University of Lüneburg, where he is affiliated with the Center for Digital Cultures and the Institute of Culture and Aesthetics of Digital Media (ICAM). Here he is conducting research on artistic representations and aesthetics of digital data in climate science, with a focus on investigations into the critical zone. Daniel is also an associated researcher with the ‘Design, Diversity und New Commons’ section at the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society in Berlin.
Daniel is currently associated researcher at the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society, Berlin. For the 2024/25 winter term he was visiting professor at the Institute of Culture and Aesthetics of Digital Media (ICAM), Leuphana University of Lüneburg, where he represented the chair for Media Aesthetics and Media Technology.
Previously, he was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Copenhagen’s Centre Art as Forum, where he conducted research on Bruno Latour’s and Peter Weibel’s concept of ‘Thought Exhibition’ (EU Horizon 2020, grant agreement no. 101028379).
He is an affiliated researcher with the Einstein Center Digital Future and the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society, both in Berlin. At the Weizenbaum Institute he was, until August 2022, senior researcher and deputy head of the Berlin University of the Arts research group ‘Inequality and Digital Sovereignty’ (now: ‘Design, Diversity, and New Commons‘).
Daniel Irrgang completed his doctorate at the University of the Arts Berlin at the Chair of Media Theory/Archaeology of Media on diagrammatics and expanded mind theories. His research topics include visual representations of information from a media theory, art studies, and cognitive science perspective; historiographies and archaeologies of art and media; critical investigations into the premises of human-computer interaction and its roots in Californian Ideology; investigative practices in the field of art and technology; aesthetics of computer-generated imagery; exhibition and curatorial concepts; and epistemological problems in connection with corporeality and media technology.
From January 2018 to November 2019, Daniel coordinated the research seminar “Critical Zones” with Bruno Latour at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design and ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe. He has contributed to the exhibition catalogue (MIT Press) and edited the research section of the ZKM exhibition website.
From May 2016 to July 2019 he was research associate in the Media Philosophy and Art Studies section and between May 2016 and March 2018 assistant to the rector at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design. From 2013 to 2016 he was a research associate at the Chair of Media Theory (Siegfried Zielinski) at the Institute for Time-Based Media and supervisor at the Vilém Flusser Archive, Berlin University of the Arts.
Daniel Irrgang is the author and editor of numerous books and papers on the history and theory of media, communication and the arts. Together with Florian Hadler and Alice Soiné, he is also editor of the journal Interface Critique and, together with Siegfried Zielinski and Marcel René Marburger, of the book series International Flusser Lectures. Additionally, he has organised various conferences and other events as well as (co-)curated exhibitions at venues such as the ZKM Karlsruhe, the Einstein Center Digital Future, and the Berlin Academy of Arts.
From 2008 to 2016, Daniel was a founding member of the communication agency AFKM in Berlin.