* my preferred contact email is: clukman [at] uni-koeln.de
** I am always happy to meet like-minded scholars for a coffee in Berlin, or a virtual one over Zoom.
I am a media scholar based in Berlin with a focus on the history, phenomenology, and epistemology of algorithmic images. Currently on a Walter-Benjamin position (DFG) for Media Studies at the University of Cologne, I investigate the shifting role of the film frame in the regimes of animation, digital algorithms, and subsymbolic AI. By tracing labour structures, interfaces, infrastructures, and the operative media of frame construction, I show how the frame assumes different epistemic operations across different regimes of ‘film synthesis,’ mobilizing the moving-image as a resource for understanding the physical world.
I first worked on movement and algorithmic images in my dissertation project, where I developed “Plaything Phenomenology,” a theory centering on play as the lively transaction between movement and playthings, in a physical or virtual domain. By drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s body intentionality, I studied how videogames exist in the development of movement figures, making them comparable to dance or skateboarding, and unfolding alongside an algorithmic, virtual environment.
You will also find me around IMAGINARY gGmbH, my collaborator for realizing interesting science communication projects on AI literacy. Many of our projects emerge as continuations of the I AM AI exhibition, endorsed by the Stifterverband in the Wirkung Hoch 100 initiative. Lastly, I am also regularly organizing stuff for the Network for Good Labor in Academia (NGAWiss) to keep the debate around the precarity of academic employment in Germany alive.