Imaginative Intelligence

How does collective imagination take shape under digital conditions and who gets to shape it? Imagination is a cultural force at work in the great transformations of our time: in how we speak about climate, cities, and the future, in the visions societies hold of what is possible. Artificial intelligence is understood here not as a tool but as an epistemic actor and cultural system: a co-shaper of the conditions under which knowledge is produced and futures are imagined. This raises a pressing question: whose imaginations enter these systems, and whose are systematically left out? The aim is to rethink the relationship between humans, technology, and the environment and to surface the spaces in which futures can be shaped collectively and democratically.

Key Research Areas are:

urban water futures and climate transformation
the cultural dimensions of digital knowledge and future production
artistic research and speculative design
co-creative and transdisciplinary methods of knowledge production

Methodologically, this work operates at the intersection of cultural studies, STS, and critical AI studies, developing experimental formats in which research takes place as collaborative practice with artists, researchers from other disciplines, and societal actors.

Key Projects:

Currents of Imagination

Currents of Imagination. Co-Creating Urban Water Futures Through AI, Art, and Transdisciplinary Collaboration

2026–2031 · Change! Fellowship, Volkswagen Stiftung · in cooperation with ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe

Water is the most tangible face of the climate crisis: present in every flood, every drought, and in the deep social inequalities that shape who bears its consequences. Currents of Imagination asks how urban water futures can be shaped under conditions of climate change and whether artificial intelligence can play a different role than that of a predictive tool: whether it can act as a co-creative agent that brings together diverse voices, data, and forms of knowledge, rather than reducing them to what can be calculated. Through the interplay of science, art, and civic practice, diverse visions of urban water futures emerge that go beyond what conventional models can reach.

→ To the project page

up:town. Collaborative Imagination of Resilient Urban Futures Through Serious Gaming

with Rico Herzog and Annika Kühn

Serious games as a method of collaborative future-making. At the heart of the project: how playful formats enable urban resilience to be not only modelled but collectively imagined and negotiated.

„up:town: Collaborative Imagination of Resilient Urban Futures Through Serious Gaming.“ Rico Herzog and Annika Kühn. In: The Geographical Journal, 2025. Link

Sinking Cities. Cultural Heritage as a Transformational Resource

2023–2025 · VolkswagenStiftung · Pioneer Projects: Societal Transformations · City Science Lab at the HafenCity University Hamburg

How can coastal cities cope with rising sea levels? Not only technically, but socially and emotionally? Sinking Cities explores how cultural heritage can serve as a resource for climate adaptation. Through transdisciplinary collaboration with cultural and scientific partners in Jakarta, Alexandria, and Bremen, artistic practice, collaborative research, and climate science come together around the question of which collective memories, stories, and rituals help societies transform themselves at a fundamental level.

→ Film

→ Project page VolkswagenStifung

CityClimate meets CreativeCoding (CCmCC)

2022–2023 · German Federal Cultural Foundation · City Science Lab at HafenCity University Hamburg · in cooperation with GERICS and TU Delft

What happens when artistic practice meets urban climate research and the digital tools used to plan cities today? CCmCC brings together international artists, data analysts, and climate scientists to repurpose existing planning tools artistically. In tandems of art and science, experimental works emerge in which research data, modelling, and fiction intertwine. The project culminated in a public Art Science Festival at Jupiter Campus Hamburg in September 2023, presenting installations, interventions, and performances and making climate research tangible as cultural practice.

→ Film