German media theory

"Plane Formation Test" in JJ Gibson, Motion Picture Testing and Research, Army Air Forces, Washington, DC, 1947

Untimely Mediations: Siegert and Sprenger Review

I recently reviewed Bernhard Siegert's CULTURAL TECHNIQUES and Florian Sprenger's MEDIEN DES IMMEDIATEN for the literary journal PARAGRAPH. For those of you that don't have a subscription, find the PDF attached here and the full text below. If you have a subscription option through your university, please go that route. I assume it's good for the journal to have clicks generating in some record somewhere. If that's not an option then best to download the PDF I linked. PARAGRAPH has good formatting, much better than my quick and dirty reproduction below. 

 

Untimely Mediations: On Two Recent Contributions to ‘German Media Theory’

BERNARD DIONYSIUS GEOGHEGAN

On Siegert's "Cultural Techniques" and Sprenger's "Medien des Immediaten"

I wrote book reviews of Bernhard Siegert's forthcoming "Cultural Techniques: Grids, Filters, Doors and Other Articulations of the Real" and of Florian Sprenger's "Medien des Immediaten. Elektrizität, Telegraphie, McLuhan" for the forthcoming issue of PARAGRAPH. It was a pleasure to be able to contribute something to this great journal, and also to comment on trends in germanophone media studies for Edinburgh University Press, which has done so much in recent years to put cutting edge conceptual work before anglophone readers. I'm also pleased to review something coming out from Fordham, another press championing pathbreaking publications and translations. The late Helen Tartar championed publication of this book by Siegert and perhaps this review can serve as a small tribute to her important and enduring legacies in critical thought.

CFP: Models and Modelling, Archiv für Mediengeschichte

The Archiv für Mediengeschichte is one of the crown jewels of contemporary research on the history, theory, and philosophy of media. It seems to me that journal success sometimes means a sort of bureacratization and neutralization of its identity--more submissions arrive from afar, peer reviewing procedures start sifting out the most idiosnycratic texts, etc--but the Archiv has maintained and even enhanced its mission & identity for a decade or so now. The CFP for the next issue on "Models and Modelling" just came out. I bet it'll be a great issue and it's a great opportunity to publish in an exciting venue.

 

Deadline: Apr 30, 2014

Call for Papers: Afterlives of Systems

PDF: 
Download: PDF icon call_afterlives of systems.pdf

My friends and colleagues here in Germany, Christina Vagt and Florian Sprenger, are co-editing an issue of the journal Communication+1 (where I also happen to be an editor) on "Afterlives of Systems." The announcement is below, and also attached as a PDF. Having worked at length on cybernetics, this project naturally appealed to me in its general outlines. What specifically excites me, however, is its linking up of media theory and ecological studies. In the United States scholars including Bruce Clarke, Mark B. N. Hansen, Rob Mitchell, Alenda Chang, Tom Cohen, and J.

Bernard Stiegler, Mark Hansen, and WJT Mitchell on Friedrich Kittler (Episode 7)

Download: Audio icon Cult_Tech_Ep007_Stiegler_Hansen_Mitchell_on_Kittler.mp3

Another Cultural Technologies Bootleg: This episode features a chat among French philosopher Bernard Stiegler, media theorist Mark B. N. Hansen, and literary critic W. J. T. Mitchell on the work of German media theorist Friedrich Kittler, following which Stiegler muses about time, technology, love, and death in the age of electronic media. And Hansen chimes in about Amazon algorithms stalking his desires. (Original recording took place in Mark Hansen's and W. J. T. Mitchell's 2004 media theory course at the University of Chicago.)

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