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)
W. J. T. Mitchell, Mark B. N. Hansen (eds.): Critical Terms for Media Studies (2010)
Filed under book | Tags: · aesthetics, autopoiesis, body, communication, cybernetics, image, information theory, language, law, mass media, media, media studies, media theory, memory, networks, posthuman, software, technology, writing
“Part of a larger conversation that engages culture, technology, and politics, this collection of essays explores critical language for dealing with the qualities and modes of contemporary media. The essays, commissioned expressly for this volume, are organized into three interrelated groups: “Aesthetics” engages with terms that describe sensory experiences and judgments, “Technology” offers entry into a broad array of technological concepts, and “Society” opens up language describing the systems that allow a medium to function.”
Contributors: Johanna Drucker (Art), Bernadette Wegenstein (Body), Bill Brown (Materiality), Bernard Stiegler (Memory), Caroline Jones (Senses), Eugene Thacker (Biomedia), Bruce Clarke (Communication, Information), N. Katherine Hayles (Cybernetics), Geoffrey Winthrop-Young (Hardware / Software / Wetware), John Johnston (Technology), David Graeber (Exchange), Cary Wolfe (Language), Peter Goodrich (Law), John Durham Peters (Mass Media), Alexander R. Galloway (Networks), David Wellbery (Systems), Lydia H. Liu (Writing), and W. J. T. Mitchell and Mark B. N. Hansen (Image, Time and Space, New Media).
Publisher University of Chicago Press, 2010
ISBN 0226532666, 9780226532660
376 pages
Eden Medina: Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende’s Chile (2011)
Filed under book | Tags: · 1970s, chile, cybernetics, cybersyn, machine, networks, socialism
In Cybernetic Revolutionaries, Eden Medina tells the history of two intersecting utopian visions, one political and one technological. The first was Chile’s experiment with peaceful socialist change under Salvador Allende; the second was the simultaneous attempt to build a computer system that would manage Chile’s economy. Neither vision was fully realized–Allende’s government ended with a violent military coup; the system, known as Project Cybersyn, was never completely implemented–but they hold lessons for today about the relationship between technology and politics.
Drawing on extensive archival material and interviews, Medina examines the cybernetic system envisioned by the Chilean government–which was to feature holistic system design, decentralized management, human-computer interaction, a national telex network, near real-time control of the growing industrial sector, and modeling the behavior of dynamic systems. She also describes, and documents with photographs, the network’s Star Trek-like operations room, which featured swivel chairs with armrest control panels, a wall of screens displaying data, and flashing red lights to indicate economic emergencies.
Studying project Cybersyn today helps us understand not only the technological ambitions of a government in the midst of political change but also the limitations of the Chilean revolution. This history further shows how human attempts to combine the political and the technological with the goal of creating a more just society can open new technological, intellectual, and political possibilities. Technologies, Medina writes, are historical texts; when we read them we are reading history.
Publisher MIT Press, 2011
ISBN 0262016494, 9780262016490
326 pages
Cybersyn at wikipedia
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related: Miller Medina, Jessica Eden: “Designing Freedom, Regulating a Nation: Socialist Cybernetics in Allende’s Chile” (2006)