Wendy Hui Kyong Chun
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780262015424
- eISBN:
- 9780262295215
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262015424.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
The new media thrives on cycles of obsolescence and renewal: From celebrations of cyber-everything to Y2K, from the dot-com bust to the next big things—mobile mobs, Web 3.0, cloud computing, etc. ...
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The new media thrives on cycles of obsolescence and renewal: From celebrations of cyber-everything to Y2K, from the dot-com bust to the next big things—mobile mobs, Web 3.0, cloud computing, etc. This book argues that these cycles result in part from the ways in which new media encapsulates a logic of programmability, and discusses the assumptions of source code and logos and making computers more productive by exploiting the potential of source code. New media rapidly advances to “programmed visions,” which seek to shape and predict—even embody—a future based on past data. These programmed visions have also made computers, based on metaphor, metaphors for metaphor itself, and for a general logic of substitutability. The book furthermore argues that the clarity offered by software as metaphor should make us pause, because software also engenders a profound sense of ignorance: Who knows what lurks behind our smiling interfaces, behind the objects we click and manipulate? The combination of what can be seen and not seen, known (knowable) and not known—its separation of interface from algorithm and software from hardware—makes it a powerful metaphor for everything we believe is invisible yet generates visible, logical effects, from genetics to the invisible hand of the market, from ideology to culture.Less
The new media thrives on cycles of obsolescence and renewal: From celebrations of cyber-everything to Y2K, from the dot-com bust to the next big things—mobile mobs, Web 3.0, cloud computing, etc. This book argues that these cycles result in part from the ways in which new media encapsulates a logic of programmability, and discusses the assumptions of source code and logos and making computers more productive by exploiting the potential of source code. New media rapidly advances to “programmed visions,” which seek to shape and predict—even embody—a future based on past data. These programmed visions have also made computers, based on metaphor, metaphors for metaphor itself, and for a general logic of substitutability. The book furthermore argues that the clarity offered by software as metaphor should make us pause, because software also engenders a profound sense of ignorance: Who knows what lurks behind our smiling interfaces, behind the objects we click and manipulate? The combination of what can be seen and not seen, known (knowable) and not known—its separation of interface from algorithm and software from hardware—makes it a powerful metaphor for everything we believe is invisible yet generates visible, logical effects, from genetics to the invisible hand of the market, from ideology to culture.
Heike Behrend, Anja Dreschke, and Martin Zillinger (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823253807
- eISBN:
- 9780823260966
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823253807.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This volume explores the interferences of trance mediums and new technical media to add a new perspective to the ongoing debates on the “renaissance of the religious” which has been challenging ...
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This volume explores the interferences of trance mediums and new technical media to add a new perspective to the ongoing debates on the “renaissance of the religious” which has been challenging narratives of modernity and its disenchantment during the last two decades. However, in these discussions the “orgiastic” or enthusiastic qualities of religiosity have been largely neglected, despite the significant increase of the use of techniques of trance and possession that can be stated on a global level. Likewise, in research on religion and media only little attention has been paid to the fact that the rise of mediumship and spirit possession is closely linked to the advance of new media of communication – both analogues and digital. To close this gap this innovative and unprecedented publication offers a wide range of recent ethnographic studies in the fields of media anthropology as well as explorations in media studies and the anthropology of religion, which provide a broad, international, comparative perspective. Based on extensive scholarship the volume includes studies on local spiritual and media practices as varied as Thailand, Korea, India, Morocco, Mali, Tanzania and Germany. The editors aim to develop a new conceptual framework for ongoing work on religion and media, at the crossroads between anthropology, religious studies, and media studies.Less
This volume explores the interferences of trance mediums and new technical media to add a new perspective to the ongoing debates on the “renaissance of the religious” which has been challenging narratives of modernity and its disenchantment during the last two decades. However, in these discussions the “orgiastic” or enthusiastic qualities of religiosity have been largely neglected, despite the significant increase of the use of techniques of trance and possession that can be stated on a global level. Likewise, in research on religion and media only little attention has been paid to the fact that the rise of mediumship and spirit possession is closely linked to the advance of new media of communication – both analogues and digital. To close this gap this innovative and unprecedented publication offers a wide range of recent ethnographic studies in the fields of media anthropology as well as explorations in media studies and the anthropology of religion, which provide a broad, international, comparative perspective. Based on extensive scholarship the volume includes studies on local spiritual and media practices as varied as Thailand, Korea, India, Morocco, Mali, Tanzania and Germany. The editors aim to develop a new conceptual framework for ongoing work on religion and media, at the crossroads between anthropology, religious studies, and media studies.
Heike Behrend and Martin Zillinger
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823253807
- eISBN:
- 9780823260966
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823253807.003.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
Ongoing debates about the “return of religion” have paid little attention to the orgiastic and enthusiastic qualities of religiosity, despite a significant increase in the use of techniques of trance ...
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Ongoing debates about the “return of religion” have paid little attention to the orgiastic and enthusiastic qualities of religiosity, despite a significant increase in the use of techniques of trance and possession around the globe. Likewise, research on religion and media has neglected the fact that historically the rise of mediumship and spirit possession was closely linked to the development of new media of communication. In order to invoke the transcendental, to make otherworldly beings and powers appear, trance mediums need to make dispositions and take great care in preparing a setting conducive to their work of mediation. Their equipment includes technical media, apparition and apparatus are linked through ritual techniques. Likewise, the discourses and the imaginary of trance mediumship powerfully anticipated and shaped technical media such as photography, cinema, the telephone, and television. Spirits and their mediums served as the media a priori for the ‘‘invention’’ of these technical media: spirits were able to ‘‘telesee’’ and ‘‘telehear’’ long before television and the telephone existed. Inquiry into trance mediumship, therefore, forms an interpretative key to understanding technical media, and vice versa.Less
Ongoing debates about the “return of religion” have paid little attention to the orgiastic and enthusiastic qualities of religiosity, despite a significant increase in the use of techniques of trance and possession around the globe. Likewise, research on religion and media has neglected the fact that historically the rise of mediumship and spirit possession was closely linked to the development of new media of communication. In order to invoke the transcendental, to make otherworldly beings and powers appear, trance mediums need to make dispositions and take great care in preparing a setting conducive to their work of mediation. Their equipment includes technical media, apparition and apparatus are linked through ritual techniques. Likewise, the discourses and the imaginary of trance mediumship powerfully anticipated and shaped technical media such as photography, cinema, the telephone, and television. Spirits and their mediums served as the media a priori for the ‘‘invention’’ of these technical media: spirits were able to ‘‘telesee’’ and ‘‘telehear’’ long before television and the telephone existed. Inquiry into trance mediumship, therefore, forms an interpretative key to understanding technical media, and vice versa.
Jeffrey Geiger and Karin Littau
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780748676118
- eISBN:
- 9780748695096
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748676118.003.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The Introduction defines ‘cinematicity’ and provides a brief lineage of the term. It engages the idea that media inevitably bear each other’s traces, and that no medium may exhaustively be studied in ...
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The Introduction defines ‘cinematicity’ and provides a brief lineage of the term. It engages the idea that media inevitably bear each other’s traces, and that no medium may exhaustively be studied in isolation from others. It further signals a commitment to the comparative study of media, which abandons the compartmentalized approach of ‘structuring the study of media around individual media’ (Jenkins). Here intermediality becomes a useful concept for the environment in which this comparative labour is undertaken, since to study intermediality is to follow the intertwined histories and transformative relations between old and new, mechanical and electronic, analogue and digital, word-based and image-based media.Less
The Introduction defines ‘cinematicity’ and provides a brief lineage of the term. It engages the idea that media inevitably bear each other’s traces, and that no medium may exhaustively be studied in isolation from others. It further signals a commitment to the comparative study of media, which abandons the compartmentalized approach of ‘structuring the study of media around individual media’ (Jenkins). Here intermediality becomes a useful concept for the environment in which this comparative labour is undertaken, since to study intermediality is to follow the intertwined histories and transformative relations between old and new, mechanical and electronic, analogue and digital, word-based and image-based media.
Christopher Pavsek
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231160995
- eISBN:
- 9780231530811
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231160995.003.0004
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter studies four of Alexander Kluge's major film and video works. Kluge's early documentary on the Nuremberg Party Grounds, Brutality in Stone (1961), is often described as an experimental ...
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This chapter studies four of Alexander Kluge's major film and video works. Kluge's early documentary on the Nuremberg Party Grounds, Brutality in Stone (1961), is often described as an experimental or critical documentary about the legacy of National Socialism, portrayed primarily through an exploration of the monumental architecture of the Nazi period. Yesterday Girl (1965) works against the mythology of the German “zero hour” after the World War II, in which the traumas of the past were repressed, while The Assault of the Present (1985) is concerned by the “temporal imperialism” of the New Media. The Fruits of Trust (2009) attempts to nurture the utopian principle of cinema within the seemingly hostile medium of television in an era marked simultaneously by the “timelessness of the earthly eternity” of capitalism, and a growing economic and environmental crisis that suggests that human beings' time on Earth might be all too limited.Less
This chapter studies four of Alexander Kluge's major film and video works. Kluge's early documentary on the Nuremberg Party Grounds, Brutality in Stone (1961), is often described as an experimental or critical documentary about the legacy of National Socialism, portrayed primarily through an exploration of the monumental architecture of the Nazi period. Yesterday Girl (1965) works against the mythology of the German “zero hour” after the World War II, in which the traumas of the past were repressed, while The Assault of the Present (1985) is concerned by the “temporal imperialism” of the New Media. The Fruits of Trust (2009) attempts to nurture the utopian principle of cinema within the seemingly hostile medium of television in an era marked simultaneously by the “timelessness of the earthly eternity” of capitalism, and a growing economic and environmental crisis that suggests that human beings' time on Earth might be all too limited.
Marguerite Nguyen
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252037832
- eISBN:
- 9780252095955
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252037832.003.0011
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This concluding chapter examines representations of Vietnamese Americans before and after Hurricane Katrina. The recuperation of American political and military might in the 1980s marked a transition ...
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This concluding chapter examines representations of Vietnamese Americans before and after Hurricane Katrina. The recuperation of American political and military might in the 1980s marked a transition in representations of Vietnamese Americans, as the New Orleans media began to focus on stories of Vietnamese American economic and educational “success.” Nevertheless, Vietnamese Americans lived more or less under the radar until about thirty years later, when they were once again thrust into the media limelight because of their quick return and recovery after Hurricane Katrina. Once potential objects of New Orleans exclusion, Vietnamese Americans now represented the city at its best, with national and international media outlets upholding the community's efforts as a story of hope and achievement in the aftermath of disaster.Less
This concluding chapter examines representations of Vietnamese Americans before and after Hurricane Katrina. The recuperation of American political and military might in the 1980s marked a transition in representations of Vietnamese Americans, as the New Orleans media began to focus on stories of Vietnamese American economic and educational “success.” Nevertheless, Vietnamese Americans lived more or less under the radar until about thirty years later, when they were once again thrust into the media limelight because of their quick return and recovery after Hurricane Katrina. Once potential objects of New Orleans exclusion, Vietnamese Americans now represented the city at its best, with national and international media outlets upholding the community's efforts as a story of hope and achievement in the aftermath of disaster.
Fred Botting and Catherine Spooner (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719089770
- eISBN:
- 9781781708651
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719089770.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Monstrous Media/Spectral Subjects explores Gothic, monstrosity, spectrality and media forms and technologies (music, fiction's engagements with photography/ cinema, film, magic practice and new ...
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Monstrous Media/Spectral Subjects explores Gothic, monstrosity, spectrality and media forms and technologies (music, fiction's engagements with photography/ cinema, film, magic practice and new media) from the later nineteenth century to the present day. Placing Gothic forms and productions in an explicitly interdisciplinary context, it investigates how the engagement with technologies drives the dissemination of Gothic across diverse media through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, while conjuring all kinds of haunting and spectral presences that trouble cultural narratives of progress and technological advancement.Less
Monstrous Media/Spectral Subjects explores Gothic, monstrosity, spectrality and media forms and technologies (music, fiction's engagements with photography/ cinema, film, magic practice and new media) from the later nineteenth century to the present day. Placing Gothic forms and productions in an explicitly interdisciplinary context, it investigates how the engagement with technologies drives the dissemination of Gothic across diverse media through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, while conjuring all kinds of haunting and spectral presences that trouble cultural narratives of progress and technological advancement.
Aurora Wallace
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252037344
- eISBN:
- 9780252094521
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252037344.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This introductory chapter argues that architecture can lend legitimacy to the media industry. Using architecture as a delivery mechanism for notions of patriotism, nation building, individual ...
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This introductory chapter argues that architecture can lend legitimacy to the media industry. Using architecture as a delivery mechanism for notions of patriotism, nation building, individual aspiration, education, and moral uplift, the media sought to establish its own authority among its readers and citizens more generally. Beyond their own buildings, the New York media have authored an explicit account of urban space and city living. They established architecture, real estate, and land values as important elements of the news agenda, from which they also stood to gain. Yet this public presence is not without its own set of anxieties. To express the identity of a business graphically or via architecture necessitates the construction of certain fictions about the solidity and single purpose of an entity even when neither is immediately known.Less
This introductory chapter argues that architecture can lend legitimacy to the media industry. Using architecture as a delivery mechanism for notions of patriotism, nation building, individual aspiration, education, and moral uplift, the media sought to establish its own authority among its readers and citizens more generally. Beyond their own buildings, the New York media have authored an explicit account of urban space and city living. They established architecture, real estate, and land values as important elements of the news agenda, from which they also stood to gain. Yet this public presence is not without its own set of anxieties. To express the identity of a business graphically or via architecture necessitates the construction of certain fictions about the solidity and single purpose of an entity even when neither is immediately known.
Kristyn Gorton
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748624171
- eISBN:
- 9780748670956
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748624171.003.0004
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This chapter considers how the mediation of meaning occurs on a global scale. More specifically, it considers how the global exchange of televisual texts affects citizenship, notions of individualism ...
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This chapter considers how the mediation of meaning occurs on a global scale. More specifically, it considers how the global exchange of televisual texts affects citizenship, notions of individualism and choice and the concept of emotion. This chapter refers to debates on cultural imperialism and media imperialism and makes reference to the extensive research that has been done on the popular US television series Dallas. This chapter also discusses convergence in order to consider how new media technologies will influence/change viewer's engagements with television.Less
This chapter considers how the mediation of meaning occurs on a global scale. More specifically, it considers how the global exchange of televisual texts affects citizenship, notions of individualism and choice and the concept of emotion. This chapter refers to debates on cultural imperialism and media imperialism and makes reference to the extensive research that has been done on the popular US television series Dallas. This chapter also discusses convergence in order to consider how new media technologies will influence/change viewer's engagements with television.
Gertrud Hüwelmeier
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823253807
- eISBN:
- 9780823260966
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823253807.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter explores the role of media and new media technologies and the ways in which prayers and spirits travel and circulate among local and global audiences. Based on ethnographic fieldwork ...
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This chapter explores the role of media and new media technologies and the ways in which prayers and spirits travel and circulate among local and global audiences. Based on ethnographic fieldwork among Pentecostal religious practitioners in Germany and Vietnam, and in particular in a prayer camp on the Lorelei cliff at the Rhine river, this contribution investigates how media technologies affect place, space, and the effort to fill an assumed “spiritual vacuum” in diasporic Vietnamese Pentecostal networks. Referring to the image of the sinking Titanic, sermons and prayers recall experiences of flight and migration. The focus on practices of mediation demonstrates how ideas about the supernatural, the spiritual, and the transcendental are made accessible for believers, how they are reconsidered via media, and especially how spirits travel across borders.Less
This chapter explores the role of media and new media technologies and the ways in which prayers and spirits travel and circulate among local and global audiences. Based on ethnographic fieldwork among Pentecostal religious practitioners in Germany and Vietnam, and in particular in a prayer camp on the Lorelei cliff at the Rhine river, this contribution investigates how media technologies affect place, space, and the effort to fill an assumed “spiritual vacuum” in diasporic Vietnamese Pentecostal networks. Referring to the image of the sinking Titanic, sermons and prayers recall experiences of flight and migration. The focus on practices of mediation demonstrates how ideas about the supernatural, the spiritual, and the transcendental are made accessible for believers, how they are reconsidered via media, and especially how spirits travel across borders.
