Michael Dieter is assistant professor at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies at the University of Warwick and holds a PhD in Culture and Communication from the University of Melbourne on media arts practice and theory. His current research focuses on publishing practices after digitisation, cultural techniques in interface and user-experience design, and genealogies of media at the intersection of aesthetic and political thought.
While at the Institute of Advanced Studies, he will focus on a monograph titled 'The Optimization Complex'. This work in progress critically examines current discourses and practices of user experience design for platform interfaces, particularly those used by innovative corporate services for behavioural design and the commercial accumulation of social data and Big Data. The project draws from humanities and social science research fields, whilst aiming to develop new experimental approaches for the still emergent field of 'interface criticism'.