Week 1 – Nature and/as Media
“The question of how to define nature, humans, and media are ultimately the same question.” → media have always been around us.
Parmett, Space Peters, Understanding Media Sharma, temporality
Space collapsing through media →
Today, the world has globalized due to the internet, and
so it doesn’t matter anymore where you live. Because
of the interconnectedness you can connect with
everyone around you, all over the world.
Conceptions of Media An Elemental Philosophy of Media Media and the Human Condition
Medium has “always meant an element, environment, Natural facts are media - Internet as a means of “Media show up wherever we humans face the
or vehicle in the middle of things. existence. unmanageable mortality of our material existence: the
● Media have become an integral part of our melancholy facts that memory cannot hold up and
existence. body cannot last, that time is, at base, the merciless
and generous habitat for humans and things. Media lift
us out of time by providing a symbolic world that can
store and process data, in the widest sense of that
word.”
→ the dying body vs the immortality of technology.
Classical roots: The concepts of medium and milieu We are conditioned by conditions we condition →
are intimately linked, both deriving from the Latin word Feedback loop: acceleration of the interpenetration of
medius (middle) nature/technology and culture → anthropocene
● Eg. we have learned to write with our left/right
hand, due to the technological development of
pencils/pens.
Medieval and modern transformation: Media is what Marshall McLuhan: Media as the extension of the
produces contact at a distance. central nervous system — and also its “amputation.”
19th century: shift from medium as a term that Leroi-Gourhan: For him the human condition was
describes the natural and the environmental to medium defined precisely by our standing on two feet — and by
as a term that is specifically about human signals. our consequent impossibility of separating nature and
● eg. Telegraph culture.”
,19th century: the medium as a spiritualist medium
● Greatest distance to cross: threshold between
life and death.
● Eg. Audio recording (phonography): play the
voice of dead ancestors.
20th century: Mass media.
● But it recovers an environmental meaning as
an all pervasive “ecology.”
21st century: with the proliferation of digital media and
computers, back to the older notion that media is
essentially environmental / everywhere around us.
● Addition that media become logistical: eg.
use our phones to navigate, using big data to
sort people according to demographics.
, Week 2 – Infrastructure and/as Media
Parks – Infrastructure Peters – The Marvelous Clouds Schivelbusch - The Railway Starosielski – Fixed Flow: The Forgotten Space
Journey Undersea Cables as Media
Infrastructure (Wirelessness)
Subjects: Subjects” Subjects: Subjects:
● Infrastructural disposition ● Infrastructure as ● Change in space-time ● Power and ‘leverage’ /
● Infrastructures & Force relations environments perception Cables as Infrastructure
● Techniques / Technologies
● Infrastructuralism
- Infrastructural disposition: not only - “Mind and matter are married, and - “Annihilation of time and Wirelessness → media = not truly Purpose of the movie: to make
focussing on the content and context of mind is exterior to brain.” - (p.78) space” (p.4) by the invention of wireless → dependent on submarine the invisible infrastructure behind
media distribution, but at the material → people can convert thoughts and the train. cables. the shipment of commodities
conditions that make (media) distribution ideas into material, into matter. This → The speed of the train caused visible.
possible → and how they impact us, "how is in contrast to dolphins. the previous experience of both - Objective: An analysis of the way ● Think of 'cognitive
they affect us" (p. 106) → in other words, humans can, in time and space to be destroyed. physical cables are connected to the mapping', where 'the
→ eg. idea that technology is wireless: contrast to dolphins, produce → “Space was both diminished wider spread of media cultures. situated' is connected to
however, this depends on material cabling. objects that are durable and thus and expanded” (p.5): train 'the whole' (week 6).
become part of an infrastructure. allowed new distances to be - “A technical system becomes an
Parks speaks of force relations traveled (expanded), but did so infrastructure only through its use: Infrastructural affect:
(unconscious dependence on - Dolphins have techniques but no by destroying old spaces; namely what exists for one person as a → Phenomenology:
infrastructures): technologies – and therefore have the space between points A and media infrastructure might be for - Technology replaces people (eg.
- We are so used to infrastructures that we no access to any infrastructure. B (diminished). others an impediment (hinder) to automated cranes to put
take them for granted. → techniques: dolphins can only → Re-organization of media circulation.” containers on top of each other) →
- Yet there is the risk of the disruption of use their bodies to create perception (p.42): The new → when you are part of the this makes work boring.
this self-evidence, when there is temporary moments. reality of time and space infrastructure it is often a gain, but if - Due to the arrival of technology,
inaccessibility, for example due to → technologies: people are able becomes most apparent in film: you are not part of this it is often an financial pressure arises –
malfunctions. to make materials durable. after all, the montage is a obstacle. deadlines must be met → stress vs
→ We often only really experience the → in relation to time: techniques juxtaposition of different times previously relaxed way of working.
affect of an infrastructure when it falls are temporal and technologies are and spaces: the in-between Four ways cables function as - Infrastructure for rich vs poor:
away. (when you’re hammer suddenly durable. Dolphins will therefore spaces (in the case of the train, media infrastructures: woman who missed day in court
breaks) experience time differently than the points between A and B) are 1. Cables are a resource, both real because she had no money for
humans. destroyed. and imagined, for mediation. transportation and lost her children
Added to this: “Network infrastructures like → in relation to space: technologies → trains only know point of - A feedback loop is created: it is because of it.
the Internet rely upon the affective or exist in space and do not departure and arrival: gaps are assumed that an infrastructure that - European train connections
immaterial labor of users to function and disappear. neglected by train speed (p.104) does not yet exist will be used → despite residents' dissatisfaction
sustain themselves over time.” trigger to build infrastructure → (houses have to be demolished to
→ An infrastructure still depends on the - Intelligence dolphins vs humans: Loss of temporal identity infrastructure is used. make room).
work of people! Even though both dolphins and (p.43): the construction of the > Starosielskie speaks of an insular → Political/labor affect: exploitation
