Research Projects
P04: Precision Farming: Cooperative Practices of Virtual Fencing (WP1)
Subproject within the Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) 1187 Media of Cooperation (University of Siegen)
The subproject Precision Farming: Cooperative Practices of Virtual Fencing investigates sensor-based processes of semi-autonomization in grazing management and precision farming from a media-theoretical perspective. Against the backdrop of current socio-political and ecological challenges in the agricultural sector, the project examines the emerging technology of virtual fencing, in which virtual geographical boundaries are produced through the coupling of sensors with animal bodies and mobile interventions via user interfaces. Employing a co-operational analysis, the project explores terrain-modulating bordering practices, their use-specific forms of media interaction, and their implementation as closed-loop sensing. In doing so, it reflects on the media conditions and affordances of an agricultural practice that is likely to shape future developments in farming and global agricultural systems.
To critically examine the practice of virtual fencing in terms of its geographical and socio-technical conditions, the project conducts empirical analyses of selected virtual fencing systems. The study encompasses the diverse socio-economic contexts in which current applications have emerged and are used, highlighting the specific technologies and situated practices associated with each system. In this context, three key analytical perspectives have been identified for a media-theoretical investigation of virtual fencing: infrastructure and intervention, interfaces and interaction, and sensing ecologies. Based on the field studies conducted, four central thematic clusters emerge:
- Models of motion control: How is animal behaviour modelled, conditioned, and rendered governable within technologically mediated environments?
- Interfaces and databases: How do interface design and data infrastructures shape the formatting, interpretation, and use of animal-related data?
- Technological solutionism: Which media conditions enable virtual fencing to be framed as a technological solution to complex ecological and operational challenges?
- Ecology and borders: How do the material and epistemic practices of bordering relate to land use, environmental governance, and multispecies coexistence?
Vesna Schierbaum
Signal|Logistics: Time-Critical Operations in Infrastructures of Distributed Movement
Doctoral Research Project
This doctoral project investigates time-critical operations in digital infrastructures that coordinate the wireless transmission of signals and data between large numbers of mobile entities. It aims at a media-theoretical analysis of the signal and data logistics required to organize not only spatially distributed movement but also the temporal coordination of wireless communication between distributed and mobile elements. The dissertation examines four historical case studies of digital systems in which dynamics of movement are captured as data, modelled, and controlled: (1) mobile telephony, (2) mobile sensor networks, (3) virtual fencing, and (4) mobile crowdsensing.
The project approaches these case studies as processes of infrastructuring situated within specific socio-economic and political contexts of application. It investigates the socio-technical imaginaries—such as automation, autonomization, flexibilization, coverage, and scalability—that have driven the development of these systems. These imaginaries are examined in relation to the infrastructural embedding and the dynamic interplay between infrastructure and movement. In this context, particular attention is paid to the design and implementation of behavioural models within system design, which seek both to optimize the adaptive capacity of infrastructures in response to complex environmental dynamics and to render movement governable.
The dissertation contributes to media studies scholarship on logistics as well as to contemporary debates on sensory infrastructures and automated processes of sense-making.