Stamatia Portanova: Moving without a Body: Digital Philosophy and Choreographic Thoughts (2013)
Filed under book | Tags: · abstraction, aesthetics, affect, algorithm, body, choreography, code, composition, computation, computing, dance, digital, geometry, image, infinity, mathematics, mind, movement, number, object, philosophy, sensation, virtual
“Digital technologies offer the possibility of capturing, storing, and manipulating movement, abstracting it from the body and transforming it into numerical information. In Moving without a Body, Stamatia Portanova considers what really happens when the physicality of movement is translated into a numerical code by a technological system. Drawing on the radical empiricism of Gilles Deleuze and Alfred North Whitehead, she argues that this does not amount to a technical assessment of software’s capacity to record motion but requires a philosophical rethinking of what movement itself is, or can become.
Discussing the development of different audiovisual tools and the shift from analog to digital, she focuses on some choreographic realizations of this evolution, including works by Loie Fuller and Merce Cunningham. Throughout, Portanova considers these technologies and dances as ways to think—rather than just perform or perceive—movement. She distinguishes the choreographic thought from the performance: a body performs a movement, and a mind thinks or choreographs a dance. Similarly, she sees the move from analog to digital as a shift in conception rather than simply in technical realization. Analyzing choreographic technologies for their capacity to redesign the way movement is thought, Moving without a Body offers an ambitiously conceived reflection on the ontological implications of the encounter between movement and technological systems.”
Publisher MIT Press, 2013
Technologies of Lived Abstraction series
ISBN 0262018926, 9780262018920
200 pages
Reviews: Donnarumma (Mute, 2014), Murphy (Afterimage, 2014), Thain (Digicult).
PDF (11 MB)
Comment (0)Luciana Parisi: Contagious Architecture: Computation, Aesthetics, and Space (2013)
Filed under book | Tags: · abstraction, aesthetics, algorithm, architecture, cognition, computation, computing, cybernetics, design, evolution, feedback, infinity, information, interaction design, knowledge, media, metaphysics, networks, neural networks, philosophy, processing, randomness, sensors, software, space, temporality, time, topology, variation
“In Contagious Architecture, Luciana Parisi offers a philosophical inquiry into the status of the algorithm in architectural and interaction design. Her thesis is that algorithmic computation is not simply an abstract mathematical tool but constitutes a mode of thought in its own right, in that its operation extends into forms of abstraction that lie beyond direct human cognition and control. These include modes of infinity, contingency, and indeterminacy, as well as incomputable quantities underlying the iterative process of algorithmic processing.
The main philosophical source for the project is Alfred North Whitehead, whose process philosophy is specifically designed to provide a vocabulary for “modes of thought” exhibiting various degrees of autonomy from human agency even as they are mobilized by it. Because algorithmic processing lies at the heart of the design practices now reshaping our world—from the physical spaces of our built environment to the networked spaces of digital culture—the nature of algorithmic thought is a topic of pressing importance that reraises questions of control and, ultimately, power. Contagious Architecture revisits cybernetic theories of control and information theory’s notion of the incomputable in light of this rethinking of the role of algorithmic thought. Informed by recent debates in political and cultural theory around the changing landscape of power, it links the nature of abstraction to a new theory of power adequate to the complexities of the digital world.”
Publisher MIT Press, 2013
Technologies of Lived Abstraction series
ISBN 0262018632, 9780262018630
392 pages
For a New Computational Aesthetics: Algorithmic Environments as Actual Objects lecture by Parisi (2012, video, 72 min).
Reviews: Lecomte (Mute, 2013), Ikoniadou (Computational Culture, 2014).
PDF (24 MB, updated o 2021-10-28)
Comments (2)Friedrich Kittler: The Truth of the Technological World: Essays on the Genealogy of Presence (2013–) [DE, EN]
Filed under book | Tags: · antiquity, computing, cybernetics, film, information theory, literary theory, literature, media, media technology, media theory, noise, philosophy, psychoanalysis, software, sound recording, technology, telegraphy, theory, typewriter, war, writing
“Few German scholars in the past 50 years have had such a lasting impact on the cultural situation of our time, including its academic institutions, as Friedrich Kittler. It is in large part due to his writings that the radio, the gramophone, and the computer are not just objects of cultural fascination, but also of philosophical reflection.
This volume contains a collection of essays written by Kittler over the course of 40 years which serve as a testament to the enormous breadth, intensity, and the singular creativity of his thought.”
German edition
Edited and with an Afterword by Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht
Publisher Suhrkamp, Berlin, 2013
ISBN 9783518732984
432 pages
English edition
Translated by Erik Butler
Publisher Stanford University Press, 2014
ISBN 9780804792622
400 pages
Reviews: Oliver Jahraus (zfm, 2014), Stavros Arabatzis (Weimarer Beiträge, 2014).
Publisher (DE)
Publisher (EN)
Worldcat (DE)
Worldcat (EN)
Die Wahrheit der technischen Welt (German, EPUB, updated on 2019-11-2)
The Truth of the Technological World (English, updated on 2019-11-2)