Michael F. Leruth
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780262036498
- eISBN:
- 9780262339926
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262036498.001.0001
- Subject:
- Art, Visual Culture
This book introduces readers to the iconoclastic work of the French media artist Fred Forest. A pioneer in the fields of video art in the 1960s and internet art in the 1990s, and cofounder of the ...
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This book introduces readers to the iconoclastic work of the French media artist Fred Forest. A pioneer in the fields of video art in the 1960s and internet art in the 1990s, and cofounder of the Sociological Art Collective (1974) and the Aesthetics of Communication International Group (1983), Forest is best known as an ironic media hijacker and tinkerer of unconventional interfaces and alternative platforms for interactive communication that are accessible to the general public outside the exclusive precincts of the art world. He has also made headlines as an outspoken critic of the French contemporary art establishment, most famously by suing the Centre Pompidou in 1994 over its opaque acquisitions practices. This book surveys Forest’s work from the late 1960s to the present with particular emphasis on his prankster modus operandi, his advocacy of an existentially relevant form of counter-contemporary art―or “invisible system-art”―based on the principle of metacommunication (i.e., tasked with exploring the “immanent realities” of the virtual territory in which modern electronic communication takes place), his innovative “social” and “relational” use of a wide range of media from newspapers to Second Life, his attention-grabbing public interventions, and the unusual utopian dimension of his work. Never a hot commodity in the art world, Forest’s work has nonetheless garnered the attention and appreciation of a wide range of prominent intellectuals, critics, curators, technology innovators, and fellow artists including Marshall McLuhan, Edgar Morin, Vilém Flusser, Abraham Moles, Jean Duvignaud, Paul Virilio, Pierre Lévy, Pierre Restany, Frank Popper, Harald Szeeman, Robert C. Morgan, Vinton Cerf, Roy Ascott, and Eduardo Kac.Less
This book introduces readers to the iconoclastic work of the French media artist Fred Forest. A pioneer in the fields of video art in the 1960s and internet art in the 1990s, and cofounder of the Sociological Art Collective (1974) and the Aesthetics of Communication International Group (1983), Forest is best known as an ironic media hijacker and tinkerer of unconventional interfaces and alternative platforms for interactive communication that are accessible to the general public outside the exclusive precincts of the art world. He has also made headlines as an outspoken critic of the French contemporary art establishment, most famously by suing the Centre Pompidou in 1994 over its opaque acquisitions practices. This book surveys Forest’s work from the late 1960s to the present with particular emphasis on his prankster modus operandi, his advocacy of an existentially relevant form of counter-contemporary art―or “invisible system-art”―based on the principle of metacommunication (i.e., tasked with exploring the “immanent realities” of the virtual territory in which modern electronic communication takes place), his innovative “social” and “relational” use of a wide range of media from newspapers to Second Life, his attention-grabbing public interventions, and the unusual utopian dimension of his work. Never a hot commodity in the art world, Forest’s work has nonetheless garnered the attention and appreciation of a wide range of prominent intellectuals, critics, curators, technology innovators, and fellow artists including Marshall McLuhan, Edgar Morin, Vilém Flusser, Abraham Moles, Jean Duvignaud, Paul Virilio, Pierre Lévy, Pierre Restany, Frank Popper, Harald Szeeman, Robert C. Morgan, Vinton Cerf, Roy Ascott, and Eduardo Kac.
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.
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.
Jeffrey Geiger and Karin Littau (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780748676118
- eISBN:
- 9780748695096
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748676118.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
In a world where change has become the only constant, how does the perpetually new relate to the old? How does cinema, itself once a new medium, interact both with previous or outmoded media and with ...
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In a world where change has become the only constant, how does the perpetually new relate to the old? How does cinema, itself once a new medium, interact both with previous or outmoded media and with what we now refer to as New Media? This collection addresses these questions by focusing on the relations of cinema to other media, cultural productions, and diverse forms of entertainment, exploring these sometimes parallel and sometimes more densely intertwined histories. Cinematicity in Media History makes visible the complex ways in which media anticipate, interfere with, and draw on one other, demonstrating how cinematicity makes itself felt in practices of seeing, reading, writing, and thinking both before and after the ‘birth’ of cinema. Contributors examine the interrelations between cinema, literature, painting, photography, and gaming, not only to each other, but amid a host of other minor and major media such as the magic lantern, the zoetrope, the flick-book, the iPhone, and the computer. Each chapter provides insights into the development of media and their overlapping technologies and aesthetics.Less
In a world where change has become the only constant, how does the perpetually new relate to the old? How does cinema, itself once a new medium, interact both with previous or outmoded media and with what we now refer to as New Media? This collection addresses these questions by focusing on the relations of cinema to other media, cultural productions, and diverse forms of entertainment, exploring these sometimes parallel and sometimes more densely intertwined histories. Cinematicity in Media History makes visible the complex ways in which media anticipate, interfere with, and draw on one other, demonstrating how cinematicity makes itself felt in practices of seeing, reading, writing, and thinking both before and after the ‘birth’ of cinema. Contributors examine the interrelations between cinema, literature, painting, photography, and gaming, not only to each other, but amid a host of other minor and major media such as the magic lantern, the zoetrope, the flick-book, the iPhone, and the computer. Each chapter provides insights into the development of media and their overlapping technologies and aesthetics.
Michael F. Leruth
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780262036498
- eISBN:
- 9780262339926
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262036498.003.0003
- Subject:
- Art, Visual Culture
Chapter 2 examines Forest’s work from the 1980s through the mid-1990s, which was characterized by greater emphasis on simulation, symbolism, and the sensory; a more varied “palette” of artistic ...
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Chapter 2 examines Forest’s work from the 1980s through the mid-1990s, which was characterized by greater emphasis on simulation, symbolism, and the sensory; a more varied “palette” of artistic production ranging from more conventional multimedia installations to ambitious attempts to create temporary alternative channels of networked mass communication; and a series of conceptual experiments in metacommunication as defined in the Aesthetics of Communication movement. Works discussed in Chapter 2 include The Territory of the Square Meter (1980), TheStock Exchange of the Imaginary (1982), Here and Now (1983), Press Conference of Babel (1983), Learn How to Watch TV with Your Radio (1984), In Search of Julia Margaret Cameron (1988), The Electronic Bible and the Gulf War (1991), Telephonic Faucet (1992), and The Watchtowers of Peace (1993). Chapter 2 also discusses Forest’s greater interest in ecological themes, the ramifications of globalization, and more explicitly political subjects (e.g., the collapse of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe, the Gulf War, and the Yugoslav Wars) in the late 80s and early 90s.Less
Chapter 2 examines Forest’s work from the 1980s through the mid-1990s, which was characterized by greater emphasis on simulation, symbolism, and the sensory; a more varied “palette” of artistic production ranging from more conventional multimedia installations to ambitious attempts to create temporary alternative channels of networked mass communication; and a series of conceptual experiments in metacommunication as defined in the Aesthetics of Communication movement. Works discussed in Chapter 2 include The Territory of the Square Meter (1980), TheStock Exchange of the Imaginary (1982), Here and Now (1983), Press Conference of Babel (1983), Learn How to Watch TV with Your Radio (1984), In Search of Julia Margaret Cameron (1988), The Electronic Bible and the Gulf War (1991), Telephonic Faucet (1992), and The Watchtowers of Peace (1993). Chapter 2 also discusses Forest’s greater interest in ecological themes, the ramifications of globalization, and more explicitly political subjects (e.g., the collapse of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe, the Gulf War, and the Yugoslav Wars) in the late 80s and early 90s.
Jenny Lin
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781526132604
- eISBN:
- 9781526139047
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526132604.003.0004
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
Chapter Three investigates the turn of the twenty-first century global expansion of Shanghai’s contemporary art vis-à-vis the first international iteration of China’s premier contemporary art event, ...
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Chapter Three investigates the turn of the twenty-first century global expansion of Shanghai’s contemporary art vis-à-vis the first international iteration of China’s premier contemporary art event, the Chinese Communist Party-sponsored 2000 Shanghai. The chapter theorizes biennialization-as-banalization vis-à-vis contemporary exhibition practices and the promotion of contemporary Chinese art. The chapter argues that Shanghai Biennial’s curators’ hopes of harnessing the spirit of Shanghai were ultimately supplanted by a generic brand of global contemporary art that neglected the city’s unique historical features and current concerns. This chapter then examines critical responses to the 2000 Shanghai Biennial and critiques of the global positioning of Shanghai’s contemporary art as seen in Ai Weiwei and Feng Boyi’s counter-exhibition “Fuck Off,” and in two related works by artists Zhou Tiehai and Yang Fudong.Less
Chapter Three investigates the turn of the twenty-first century global expansion of Shanghai’s contemporary art vis-à-vis the first international iteration of China’s premier contemporary art event, the Chinese Communist Party-sponsored 2000 Shanghai. The chapter theorizes biennialization-as-banalization vis-à-vis contemporary exhibition practices and the promotion of contemporary Chinese art. The chapter argues that Shanghai Biennial’s curators’ hopes of harnessing the spirit of Shanghai were ultimately supplanted by a generic brand of global contemporary art that neglected the city’s unique historical features and current concerns. This chapter then examines critical responses to the 2000 Shanghai Biennial and critiques of the global positioning of Shanghai’s contemporary art as seen in Ai Weiwei and Feng Boyi’s counter-exhibition “Fuck Off,” and in two related works by artists Zhou Tiehai and Yang Fudong.
Annick Bureaud
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780262034654
- eISBN:
- 9780262336871
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262034654.003.0008
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Technology and Society
The Minitel (French videotex system) is often considered as a “pre-Internet” platform and the art that was created with it as belonging to “network art” and/or “collaborative” practices on a “social ...
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The Minitel (French videotex system) is often considered as a “pre-Internet” platform and the art that was created with it as belonging to “network art” and/or “collaborative” practices on a “social media” avant la lettre. In which respect is this true? This article provides an initial map and a typology of minitel-based creative practice by identifying works and documenting its context as it happened in France, compared to other countries. With detailed descriptions of selected works and of the ART ACCES online magazine-gallery project, it proposes an analysis that will be compared to and confront net art, new media art, and current trends in e-publishing.Less
The Minitel (French videotex system) is often considered as a “pre-Internet” platform and the art that was created with it as belonging to “network art” and/or “collaborative” practices on a “social media” avant la lettre. In which respect is this true? This article provides an initial map and a typology of minitel-based creative practice by identifying works and documenting its context as it happened in France, compared to other countries. With detailed descriptions of selected works and of the ART ACCES online magazine-gallery project, it proposes an analysis that will be compared to and confront net art, new media art, and current trends in e-publishing.
Xia Zhang
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9789888455850
- eISBN:
- 9789888455478
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888455850.003.0013
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This chapter investigates the cultural politics involved in the emergence and prevalence of the online epithet of “North American despicable man” (or “beimei weisuo nan” in Chinese and “NAWSN” in ...
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This chapter investigates the cultural politics involved in the emergence and prevalence of the online epithet of “North American despicable man” (or “beimei weisuo nan” in Chinese and “NAWSN” in short). Combining virtual ethnography and off-line fieldwork research and informed by critical theories of masculinity studies and new media studies, this chapter explores the ways in which race, class, and nationality intersect in constructing and negotiating the cultural meanings of “NAWSN” within overseas Chinese online community. It argues that the emergence and popularity of the notion of “NAWSN” should be understood as a social process of “double emasculation” that feminizes and emasculates well-educated recent Chinese immigrant men with non-elite backgrounds in the United States. A full understanding of the cultural construction of newly emerging forms of Chinese masculinity requires us to attend to not just the gender ideological field in both China and the United States, but also to the transnational dimensions of its construction. Through confronting the “NAWSN” image online, the Chinese immigrant men attempt to compensate for the lack or loss of power in real life, but ironically reinforce the social prejudice against Chinese men and help perpetuate male dominance in the United States.Less
This chapter investigates the cultural politics involved in the emergence and prevalence of the online epithet of “North American despicable man” (or “beimei weisuo nan” in Chinese and “NAWSN” in short). Combining virtual ethnography and off-line fieldwork research and informed by critical theories of masculinity studies and new media studies, this chapter explores the ways in which race, class, and nationality intersect in constructing and negotiating the cultural meanings of “NAWSN” within overseas Chinese online community. It argues that the emergence and popularity of the notion of “NAWSN” should be understood as a social process of “double emasculation” that feminizes and emasculates well-educated recent Chinese immigrant men with non-elite backgrounds in the United States. A full understanding of the cultural construction of newly emerging forms of Chinese masculinity requires us to attend to not just the gender ideological field in both China and the United States, but also to the transnational dimensions of its construction. Through confronting the “NAWSN” image online, the Chinese immigrant men attempt to compensate for the lack or loss of power in real life, but ironically reinforce the social prejudice against Chinese men and help perpetuate male dominance in the United States.
Deborah L. Wheeler
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474422550
- eISBN:
- 9781474435048
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474422550.003.0002
- Subject:
- Political Science, Middle Eastern Politics
Artefacts and data with which to understand the diffusion and impact of new media in the Middle East collected between 1996-2014, are explored in this chapter. Data on diffusion is provided by charts ...
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Artefacts and data with which to understand the diffusion and impact of new media in the Middle East collected between 1996-2014, are explored in this chapter. Data on diffusion is provided by charts and tables; while evidence of emerging Internet cultures and their impact are documented with political cartoons, photographs, advertisements, resistance literature, ethnographic insights and conversations with Internet users. This brief history explains why states in the region may be increasingly confronted with restive publics demanding more responsive governance, and provides four distinct lenses through which to view communication and change in the region. Fear, IT4D, Resistance, and Revolution.Less
Artefacts and data with which to understand the diffusion and impact of new media in the Middle East collected between 1996-2014, are explored in this chapter. Data on diffusion is provided by charts and tables; while evidence of emerging Internet cultures and their impact are documented with political cartoons, photographs, advertisements, resistance literature, ethnographic insights and conversations with Internet users. This brief history explains why states in the region may be increasingly confronted with restive publics demanding more responsive governance, and provides four distinct lenses through which to view communication and change in the region. Fear, IT4D, Resistance, and Revolution.
James Leach and Lee Wilson (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780262027168
- eISBN:
- 9780262322492
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262027168.001.0001
- Subject:
- Business and Management, Information Technology
Subversion, Conversion, Development explores alternative cultural encounters with and around information technologies, encounters that counter dominant, Western-oriented notions of media consumption. ...
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Subversion, Conversion, Development explores alternative cultural encounters with and around information technologies, encounters that counter dominant, Western-oriented notions of media consumption. We include media practices as forms of cultural resistance and subversion, ‘DIY cultures’, and other non-mainstream models of technology production and consumption. The contributors—leading thinkers in science and technology studies, anthropology, and software design—pay special attention to the specific inflections that different cultures and communities give to the value of knowledge. The richly detailed accounts presented challenge the dominant view of knowledge as a neutral good—that is, as information available for representation, encoding, and use outside social relations. Instead, we demonstrate the specific social and historical situation of all knowledge forms, and thus of the technological engagement with and communication of knowledges. The chapters examine specific cases in which forms of knowledge and cross-cultural encounter are shaping technology use and development. They consider design, use, and reuse of technological tools including databases, GPS devices, books, and computers, in locations that range from Australia and New Guinea to Germany and the United States. Contributors: Laura Watts, Gregers Petersen, Helen Verran, Michael Christie, Jerome Lewis, Hildegard Diemberger, Stephen Hugh-Jones, Alan Blackwell, Dawn Nafus, Lee Wilson, James Leach, Marilyn Strathern, David Turnbull, Wade Chambers.Less
Subversion, Conversion, Development explores alternative cultural encounters with and around information technologies, encounters that counter dominant, Western-oriented notions of media consumption. We include media practices as forms of cultural resistance and subversion, ‘DIY cultures’, and other non-mainstream models of technology production and consumption. The contributors—leading thinkers in science and technology studies, anthropology, and software design—pay special attention to the specific inflections that different cultures and communities give to the value of knowledge. The richly detailed accounts presented challenge the dominant view of knowledge as a neutral good—that is, as information available for representation, encoding, and use outside social relations. Instead, we demonstrate the specific social and historical situation of all knowledge forms, and thus of the technological engagement with and communication of knowledges. The chapters examine specific cases in which forms of knowledge and cross-cultural encounter are shaping technology use and development. They consider design, use, and reuse of technological tools including databases, GPS devices, books, and computers, in locations that range from Australia and New Guinea to Germany and the United States. Contributors: Laura Watts, Gregers Petersen, Helen Verran, Michael Christie, Jerome Lewis, Hildegard Diemberger, Stephen Hugh-Jones, Alan Blackwell, Dawn Nafus, Lee Wilson, James Leach, Marilyn Strathern, David Turnbull, Wade Chambers.
Steven Durland
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780262034654
- eISBN:
- 9780262336871
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262034654.003.0010
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Technology and Society
Since meeting in 1975, Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz focused their collaborative art work on developing new and alternative structures for video as an interactive communication form and on ...
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Since meeting in 1975, Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz focused their collaborative art work on developing new and alternative structures for video as an interactive communication form and on interactive new media and community-centered social media. With participation by media art and politics theorist Gene Youngblood, this historic conversation follows the work of Galloway and Rabinowitz, beginning with their meeting in Paris and including Satellite Arts Project (1977), Hole-In-Space (1980), and the birth of the Electronic Café during the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics.Less
Since meeting in 1975, Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz focused their collaborative art work on developing new and alternative structures for video as an interactive communication form and on interactive new media and community-centered social media. With participation by media art and politics theorist Gene Youngblood, this historic conversation follows the work of Galloway and Rabinowitz, beginning with their meeting in Paris and including Satellite Arts Project (1977), Hole-In-Space (1980), and the birth of the Electronic Café during the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics.
Deborah L. Wheeler
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474422550
- eISBN:
- 9781474435048
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474422550.003.0005
- Subject:
- Political Science, Middle Eastern Politics
In Chapter 4, data collected through ethnographic research and structured interviews are used to argue that new media tools when used, can profoundly alter social and political practices in Kuwait. ...
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In Chapter 4, data collected through ethnographic research and structured interviews are used to argue that new media tools when used, can profoundly alter social and political practices in Kuwait. Internet use removes inhibitions, gives the public a voice, encourages people to demand access to current, transparent news and information, and enables citizens to become more engaged and active in the world. In the words of one 55 year old female Kuwaiti participant, the Internet “opens the eyes of the younger generation and because of this, they find more freedom to exercise and they can compare freedom in their countries to that in other countries” (Interview, July 2009, Kuwait City). Explanations for the increasingly volatile political and social environment in Kuwait are explored in light of new media use. The persistence of patriarchy in spite of enhanced civic engagement reveals the puzzling nature of oppositional compliance in the emirate.Less
In Chapter 4, data collected through ethnographic research and structured interviews are used to argue that new media tools when used, can profoundly alter social and political practices in Kuwait. Internet use removes inhibitions, gives the public a voice, encourages people to demand access to current, transparent news and information, and enables citizens to become more engaged and active in the world. In the words of one 55 year old female Kuwaiti participant, the Internet “opens the eyes of the younger generation and because of this, they find more freedom to exercise and they can compare freedom in their countries to that in other countries” (Interview, July 2009, Kuwait City). Explanations for the increasingly volatile political and social environment in Kuwait are explored in light of new media use. The persistence of patriarchy in spite of enhanced civic engagement reveals the puzzling nature of oppositional compliance in the emirate.
James Leach and Lee Wilson
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780262027168
- eISBN:
- 9780262322492
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262027168.003.0012
- Subject:
- Business and Management, Information Technology
This chapter draws together contributions to the volume Subversion, Conversion, Development. Cross-Cultural Knowledge Encounter and the Politics of Design to make several novel arguments in relation ...
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This chapter draws together contributions to the volume Subversion, Conversion, Development. Cross-Cultural Knowledge Encounter and the Politics of Design to make several novel arguments in relation to the design and use of ICT’s. Firstly, we note that while attention in new media studies has focussed on the use and reuse of content and meaning, the studies collected here offer a consideration of hardware and technology's potential for re-purposing, redesign, even subversion, in its uptake by different users. But for this to make positive sense, attention must be given to the different value systems, interests, and cultural worlds in which people live. We focus on the theme of knowledge, arguing that all knowledge is local knowledge, and as such, is both vulnerable to, and informative for, the designers of technologies. Imaginaries are highlighted as guiding design and use, and holding possibilities for important innovations and developments of appropriate technologies. The issue of reuse and redesign is approached through an idea of open technology, guided by actual knowledge of different ways of knowing and modes of life.Less
This chapter draws together contributions to the volume Subversion, Conversion, Development. Cross-Cultural Knowledge Encounter and the Politics of Design to make several novel arguments in relation to the design and use of ICT’s. Firstly, we note that while attention in new media studies has focussed on the use and reuse of content and meaning, the studies collected here offer a consideration of hardware and technology's potential for re-purposing, redesign, even subversion, in its uptake by different users. But for this to make positive sense, attention must be given to the different value systems, interests, and cultural worlds in which people live. We focus on the theme of knowledge, arguing that all knowledge is local knowledge, and as such, is both vulnerable to, and informative for, the designers of technologies. Imaginaries are highlighted as guiding design and use, and holding possibilities for important innovations and developments of appropriate technologies. The issue of reuse and redesign is approached through an idea of open technology, guided by actual knowledge of different ways of knowing and modes of life.
Ashley Woodward
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780748697243
- eISBN:
- 9781474418669
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748697243.003.0008
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
Twentieth century European philosophy has seen many influential critiques of the technological dehumanisation process, often accompanied by appeals to the humanising powers of art as a potential ...
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Twentieth century European philosophy has seen many influential critiques of the technological dehumanisation process, often accompanied by appeals to the humanising powers of art as a potential response. And yet, Guillaume Apollinaire wrote in The Cubist Painters in 1913 that “Artists are, above all, men who want to become inhuman.” What would it mean for art to be “inhuman,” and what relation might inhuman arts have to the dehumanising effects of technology? This chapter traces the idea of the inhuman in art from cubism to new media art, focusing on the reflections on these topics by Lyotard, through his activities both as a philosopher of art and as an exhibition director. It traces the meaning that “the inhuman” has in relation to art in his work from the exhibition Les Immatériaux to his later writings on Malraux, aiming to show how, for Lyotard, a “positive” aesthetic conception of the inhuman can act as an antidote to the “negative” inhuman of contemporary cultural conditions.Less
Twentieth century European philosophy has seen many influential critiques of the technological dehumanisation process, often accompanied by appeals to the humanising powers of art as a potential response. And yet, Guillaume Apollinaire wrote in The Cubist Painters in 1913 that “Artists are, above all, men who want to become inhuman.” What would it mean for art to be “inhuman,” and what relation might inhuman arts have to the dehumanising effects of technology? This chapter traces the idea of the inhuman in art from cubism to new media art, focusing on the reflections on these topics by Lyotard, through his activities both as a philosopher of art and as an exhibition director. It traces the meaning that “the inhuman” has in relation to art in his work from the exhibition Les Immatériaux to his later writings on Malraux, aiming to show how, for Lyotard, a “positive” aesthetic conception of the inhuman can act as an antidote to the “negative” inhuman of contemporary cultural conditions.
Brett Mills
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748637515
- eISBN:
- 9780748671229
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748637515.003.0006
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Television
This chapter offers predictions for the future of sitcom, especially as it is a genre whose ‘death’ is repeatedly signalled by broadcasters and critics. It outlines newer forms of comedy that draw on ...
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This chapter offers predictions for the future of sitcom, especially as it is a genre whose ‘death’ is repeatedly signalled by broadcasters and critics. It outlines newer forms of comedy that draw on contemporary technologies, such as web broadcasting. It also explores more recent developments in sitcom aesthetics and conventions, to examine what impact these may have. The chapter argues that sitcom's death has been prematurely predicted, particularly because the social roles of comedy and television remain undimmed, and the genre is one that productively draws on these.Less
This chapter offers predictions for the future of sitcom, especially as it is a genre whose ‘death’ is repeatedly signalled by broadcasters and critics. It outlines newer forms of comedy that draw on contemporary technologies, such as web broadcasting. It also explores more recent developments in sitcom aesthetics and conventions, to examine what impact these may have. The chapter argues that sitcom's death has been prematurely predicted, particularly because the social roles of comedy and television remain undimmed, and the genre is one that productively draws on these.
Ashley Woodward
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780748697243
- eISBN:
- 9781474418669
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748697243.003.0006
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
This chapter examines Lyotard’s consideration of the way that technologies, and in particular information technologies, reconfigure the nature of aesthetic experience. When art uses communication ...
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This chapter examines Lyotard’s consideration of the way that technologies, and in particular information technologies, reconfigure the nature of aesthetic experience. When art uses communication technologies themselves as its matter or medium, the “traditional” model of aesthetic experience becomes problematised. Lyotard argues that this is the case because information technologies determine or “program” a conceptual meaning in advance of an aesthetic experience. Therefore, we no longer have a situation of the “free play” between sensible forms and concepts that constitutes the aesthetics of the beautiful for Kant. Lyotard argues, however, that this decline in aesthetic experience as traditionally conceived need not be understood negatively: rather, it may be seen positively in so far as it furthers experimentation with materials, and activates an aesthetic of the sublime.Less
This chapter examines Lyotard’s consideration of the way that technologies, and in particular information technologies, reconfigure the nature of aesthetic experience. When art uses communication technologies themselves as its matter or medium, the “traditional” model of aesthetic experience becomes problematised. Lyotard argues that this is the case because information technologies determine or “program” a conceptual meaning in advance of an aesthetic experience. Therefore, we no longer have a situation of the “free play” between sensible forms and concepts that constitutes the aesthetics of the beautiful for Kant. Lyotard argues, however, that this decline in aesthetic experience as traditionally conceived need not be understood negatively: rather, it may be seen positively in so far as it furthers experimentation with materials, and activates an aesthetic of the sublime.
Sven Jochem
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781447306252
- eISBN:
- 9781447310983
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
- DOI:
- 10.1332/policypress/9781447306252.003.0016
- Subject:
- Sociology, Politics, Social Movements and Social Change
This chapter examines the way in which German think tanks conducted their policy analyses over the past decades – and how successful they have been. On the empirical ground of four case studies it is ...
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This chapter examines the way in which German think tanks conducted their policy analyses over the past decades – and how successful they have been. On the empirical ground of four case studies it is shown that the dualism between academic policy-analyses and applied policy-analyses could be overcome by some think tanks. Some other think tanks, however, changed their strategy towards directly influencing the public debate, thereby successfully employing new media on the internet. It seems plausible to argue that the closer think tanks are coupled with the academic community and the more they depend on public funding, the more it seems to be granted that policy advices are academically substantiated.Less
This chapter examines the way in which German think tanks conducted their policy analyses over the past decades – and how successful they have been. On the empirical ground of four case studies it is shown that the dualism between academic policy-analyses and applied policy-analyses could be overcome by some think tanks. Some other think tanks, however, changed their strategy towards directly influencing the public debate, thereby successfully employing new media on the internet. It seems plausible to argue that the closer think tanks are coupled with the academic community and the more they depend on public funding, the more it seems to be granted that policy advices are academically substantiated.
