Sensation for Sensation’s Sake

My article Sensation for Sensation’s Sake: Affect and the Temptation of “Wow!”, originally published in the beautiful art magazine Sjonauki, has been republished in the Nordic online magazine Alba.nu.

This was a fun piece to research. I wrote it in response to the Psycho Buildings exhibit at the Hayward Gallery in summer 2008. The show brought together a remarkable set of artworks that helped me think differently about aesthetics and representation. Like Carsten Höller’s slides at the Tate Modern and Anthony Gormley’s Blind Light, the works by Gelitin and Saraceno, among others at Psycho Buildings, were primarily about the user’s experience – touching, floating, falling…

Perhaps these works are part of a trend, but the recent recreation of Robert Morris’ Bodyspacemotionthings (1971) should remind us that art has emulated the playground for quite some time.

Bodyspacemotionthings has just closed at the Tate Modern, but I’m looking forward to Walking in My Mind, opening next week at the Hayward.

Wheeee!

Filed under: Academic, Local/London, Media Theory

Growing up Online

Another fine documentary from PBS’s Frontline series came to my attention: Growing up Online, broadcast 22 January 2008. I don’t know how, just yet, but I’ll have to make room in some of my classes to show at least some of the segments.

One good thing about this documentary is that it attempts to keep the hysterical “omigod, your kids are doing whatever they want online” attitude in check long enough to point out that socializing online is not a passing fad – it’s now part of the everyday media environment.

Watch the full programme and explore additional materials here.

Filed under: Education, Media Theory, Social media, Technoculture , Education, Media Theory, Postgrad, Technoculture

Music industry woes

For my students, some of whom are making a documentary on music downloading, and others who just like music:

“It’s the Wild West out there” – interview with Guy Hands, EMI boss.

The music industry – from major to minor, The Economist, 10 Jan 2008.

Miranda Sawyer, It’s no way to make a living these days (The Observer), on the question of how much music is worth.

…and Miranda Sawyer again, Who calls the tune in the new music age?

Filed under: Media Theory , Bifrost, Music, Postgrad, Technoculture

Sociology is a combat sport

Video: La Sociologie est un sport de combat (2001)
This is, as far as I can tell, a full version of Pierre Carles’ La sociologie est un sport de combat (2001), an attempt to use the documentary film format to introduce the work of Pierre Bourdieu to a wider audience. Yes, it’s in French – apologies to my non-Francophone students – but watching this rather lo-res version has put the DVD on my next library order. Let’s see how long this stays online.

Filed under: Media Theory , Bifrost, Bourdieu, Media Theory

Foucault and Chomsky

Here is the famous exchange between Chomsky and Foucault on justice and human nature.

With thanks to Pablo for passing this on, via Paris4Philo.

Filed under: Media Theory , Chomsky, Foucault

City Session

“Haunted places are the only ones that people can live in” writes Michel De Certeau.

This week, I’ll be leading a seminar to a few choice locations in London. Inspired by Certeau’s essay “Walking in the City”, we’ll be doing a bit of philosophy with our feet. These sessions are about the space into which contemporary database-driven, networked “new media” fit. It is not so much a series of seminars about technologies of new media, as an invitation to think about the relationship between media and space.

Of course, the privileged medium of this section will be the walk. Walking is a “mapping” exercise, an experience of a place which connects the “Concept-city” of the map, the plan, the architect to the everyday practice of lived space. The narrative space of a formal walk, with storytelling and an itinerary to match, fits somewhere in between Certeau’s categories, belonging neither to the map or plan nor to the flow of everyday experience.

Therefore, for a few days we will treat selected bits of London as a story-space, an environment which simultaneously stores memories of the past, serves as a source of raw material for new stories, and provides a backdrop to imagined ones.

Some online resources to get us started:

Digital Urban blog – interesting resources on mapping and urban planning:
http://www.digitalurban.blogspot.com/

London Google Earth Streaming and splicing landmarks – lovely example of what Certeau calls the concept-city:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ij4Pwg4RqjY

Cities in Games video: The Getaway (a video game set among London locations)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8huO9KihVZ0

Hackney Boys video (driving). This is a very “Certeauian” video of two guys driving around, capturing a bit of the experience of navigating around the city, with all its incidental sights and sounds:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfUbApIHUk0

Filed under: Education, Media Theory