Evil media

"Evil media studies is not a discipline, nor is it the description of a category of particularly unpleasant media objects. It is a manner of working with a set of informal practices and bodies of knowledge, characterised as stratagems, which pervade contemporary networked media and which straddle the distinction between the work of theory and of practice." (source)

Key terms

• evil media
• stratagems
• grey media. "Evil Media approach works extensively with much of contemporary grey media such as expert systems, workflow, databases, human-computer interaction and the sub-media world of leaks, networks and permissions structures that establish what eventually appears as conventional media. These systems are now far more widespread and functionally significant than those which are most often apparent as media. The relative invisibility, or naturalization through ostensively neutral technicity, and their fusing of the cultures of the workplace with those of consumption and policing offers numerous opportunities for interesting uses." (Fuller and Goffey, 2010, pp 156-57).

Events

• From Grey Eminence to Grey Immanence, a talk by Matthew Fuller and Andrew Goffey, Verbindingen / Jonctions 12 festival, Brussels, November 2009.
• Recursion, Sorting, Workflow: the stratagematic rhythmns of grey media events, a talk by Matthew Fuller and Andrew Goffey, London, October 2011. MP3 recording.
• Archives and digital/social ecologies, double lecture with Matthew Fuller and Tara McPherson, Oslo, October 2012.
• Double Evil, a talk with Fuller, Goffey and Eyal Weizman, Centre for Possible Studies, London, October 2012. Video and audio recording.
• Evil Media Distribution Centre exhibition curated by Graham Harwood and Matsuko Yokokoji (YoHa) [1] [2]; and Learning from Evil Media conference panel, Transmediale, Berlin, January-February 2013. The exhibition later moved to The New Institute, Rotterdam, June-September 2013. Review: Stephen Fortune.

Literature

• Matthew Fuller, Andrew Goffey, "Towards an Evil Media Studies", March 2007. For The Spam Book, eds. Jussi Parikka and Tony Sampson. [3]
• Matthew Fuller, Andrew Goffey, "Digital Infrastructures and the Machinery of Topological Abstraction", Theory, Culture and Society 29(4-5), 2012, pp 311-333. [4]
• Matthew Fuller, Andrew Goffey, Evil Media, MIT Press, 2012.
• Matthew Fuller, Andrew Goffey, "Die obskuren Objekte der Objektorientierung", Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft: Sozialtheorie und Medienforschung 6, 2012.
• Matthew Fuller, Andrew Goffey, "The Unknown Objects of Object Orientation", in Handbook of Objects Studies, Routledge, 2013.

Primary references

• Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince [Il Principe], 1532.
• Arthur Schopenhauer, The Art of Being Right: 38 Ways to Win an Argument [Eristische Dialektik: Die Kunst, Recht zu Behalten], 1831. [5] [6]

See also

• Niccolò Machiavelli
• Arthur Schopenhauer
• Software studies

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