Grey Room 29: New German Media Theory (2007)
Filed under journal | Tags: · aesthetics, body, code, communication, computing, cultural techniques, cybernetics, information aesthetics, law, media, media studies, media theory, mediality, technology, theory, writing

“If asked for a definition of ‘media,’ the answer given by the authors included in this volume would likely be ‘Es gibt keine Medien’–‘There are no media.’ In 1993, Friedrich Kittler published the essay ‘There Is No Software.’ Three years later, Bernhard Siegert attacked one of the fetishes of the burgeoning German media studies of the 1990s by declaring that ‘There are no mass media.’ Such a dismissal of some of the core concepts of media studies–including any fixed concept of ‘media’ itself may well be the signature of the type of ‘new media theory’ presented by the modest collection of essays in this volume.” (from the Introduction)
With contributions by Eva Horn, Joseph Vogl, Bernhard Siegert, Philipp Sarasin, Herta Wolf, Cornelia Vismann and Markus Krajewski, and Claus Pias.
Edited by Eva Horn
Publisher MIT Press, Fall 2007
ISSN 1526-3819
133 pages
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Comment (0)Stefan Helmreich: An Anthropologist Underwater: Immersive Soundscapes, Submarine Cyborgs, and Transductive Ethnography (2007)
Filed under paper | Tags: · anthropology, anthropology of sound, cybernetics, cyborg, ethnography, hearing, immersion, listening, media, noise, science, sound, sound studies, transduction, water

“In this article, I deliver a first-person anthropological report on a dive to the seafloor in the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s three-person submersible, Alvin. I examine multiple meanings of immersion: as a descent into liquid, an absorption in activity, and the all-encompassing entry of an anthropologist into a cultural medium. Tuning in to the rhythms of what I call the “submarine cyborg”—“doing anthropology in sound,” as advocated by Steven Feld and Donald Brenneis (2004)—I show how interior and exterior soundscapes create a sense of immersion, and I argue that a transductive ethnography can make explicit the technical structures and social practices of sounding, hearing, and listening that support this sense of sonic presence.” (Abstract)
Published in American Ethnologist 34(4), 2007, pp 621-641.
PDF (from the author, updated on 2016-8-25)
Comment (0)Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft 8: Medienästhetik (2013) [German]
Filed under journal | Tags: · aesthetics, art, cybernetics, media, media theory, networks, philosophy of technology, technology

Der Schwerpunkt «Medienästhetik» findet seinen Ausgangspunkt in einer Beobachtung Félix Guattaris, die in ihrer ganzen Dringlichkeit vermutlich erst heute einzusehen ist: Die Produktion von Subjektivität, die mit der allgemeinen Kybernetisierung der Lebensform einhergeht, wurde von Guattari als eine Frage der Ästhetik pointiert. Die medientechnologische Situation, die hinter dieser Neubewertung des Ästhetischen steckt, hat sich in den letzten zwanzig Jahren durch den Eintritt in eine Prozesskultur, wie sie die multiskalaren, netzwerkbasierten, environmentalen Medien des 21. Jahrhunderts bringen, ebenso verschärft wie ausdifferenziert.
Mit Beiträge von Félix Guattari, Luciana Parsi, Erich Hörl, Geert Lovink, Olga Goriunova, Jens Schröter, Yuk Hui, Shintaro Miyazaki, Anke Heelemann, Petra Löffler, Olivier Simard, Ute Holl, Nacim Ghanbari, Sebastian Haunss, Beate Ochsner, Isabell Otto, Tristan Thielmann, Ralf Junkerjürgen, Juliane Rebentisch, Michaela Ott, Jan Distelmeyer, Oliver Leistert, Theo Röhle, Maja Figge, Daniela Wentz und Sebastian Gießmann.
Guest edited by Erich Hörl and Mark B. N. Hansen
Publisher Diaphanes, Zürich, 2013
ISBN 9783037342404
ISSN 1869-1722
Open Access
216 pages
PDF (single PDF)
PDF (PDF articles)