Sanja M. Bojanić’s book project reinterprets Victor Tausk’s 1919 notion of the influencing machine—originally a psychoanalytical concept describing a psychotic patient’s projection of an external device controlling thought—as a theoretical framework for understanding contemporary human-AI relations. No longer a private delusion, the influencing machine is now embedded in public infrastructures: algorithmic systems that govern attention, automate labor, and shape meaning. The colloquium examines this shift as both a psychological evolution and a philosophical transformation in the relationship between subjectivity, power, and machinic governance. In the age of machine learning and large language models, AI agents do not merely assist or augment human activity. Instead, they operate as protocol-governed environments that modulate and structure the very conditions of affectivity, cognition, communication, and labor. To articulate this transformation, Bojanić introduces the concept of Model Context Protocols (MCPs): structured computational frameworks that encode context, regulate interaction, and automate meaning-making within machinic ecologies. MCPs are not simply technological architectures—they are cultural and political instruments that recalibrate what counts as work, thought, and agency.
Sanja M. Bojanić’s research is grounded in the philosophy of culture, with a particular emphasis on contemporary configurations of gender, race, and class that exacerbate social and affective inequalities. She commenced her academic training in philosophy, subsequently obtaining an MA in hypermedia studies and a PhD from the Centre d’Études Féminines et d’Étude de Genre at Université Paris 8. Her work engages with interdisciplinary methodologies, drawing on experimental artistic practices, queer theory, and affect theory. Her academic and professional trajectory includes appointments at the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art (Louvre, Paris), Le Nouvel Observateur, and the Laboratory for Evaluation and Development of Digital Editing at the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme Paris Nord in Saint-Denis. Prior to her current role as Executive Director of the Center for Advanced Studies–Southeast Europe and professor of semiotics, new media theory and practice, and visual methodologies at the University of Rijeka, she held teaching positions at the University of Aberdeen and Université Paris 8. Her extensive research projects have been supported by the EU Commission, the Volkswagen Foundation, UNESCO, and others. She is the author of several books and over fifty peer-reviewed articles across her fields of research.
Ludger Hagedorn, IWM Permanent Fellow, will moderate the discussion.
