Machinology

Media Theory in Transit: A one-day symposium at the Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton,

November 24, 2015.

organised by Jussi Parikka and Yigit Soncul

Media theory is in transit: the concepts travel across space and time, claiming new meanings for new uses along the way. We are not dealing with a static body of knowledge, but a dynamic, situated process of articulating knowledge and perceiving reality. Media theory crosses both geographical and disciplinary boundaries. It trespasses the border between Humanities and Sciences, and is able to carve out new sites of knowledge. It moves across conceptual lineages from human to non-human, and supposedly distinct senses such as sight, hearing and smell. Media theory is not merely a reflection on the world but an active involvement that participates in creating the objects of interest.

This event investigates such conceptual, geographical and sensorial passages of media theory. The talks address contemporary media theory and issues that are now identified as urgent for academic and artistic practices. The speakers represent different fields of arts and humanities as well as media theory, and engage with the question: how does theory move, and itself occupy new areas of interest, across academic fields and across geographies, in which theory itself is set to be in movement.

The event is supported by the Santander-fund, via University of Southampton and the Faculty Postgraduate Research Funds.

Media Theory in Transit is open and free to attend but please register via Eventbrite!

Schedule

The PhD Study Room (East Building)

10.30 Introduction by Yigit Soncul and Jussi Parikka

10.40 Erick Felinto (State University of Rio de Janeiro, UERJ): “Vilém Flusser’s ‘Philosophical Fiction’: Science, Creativity and the Encounter with Radical Otherness”

11.30 Joanna Zylinska (Goldsmiths, London): “The liberation of the I/eye: nonhuman vision”

12.20 lunch break

14.00 Shintaro Miyazaki: (Critical Media Lab, Basel): “Models As Agents – Designing Epistemic Diffraction By Spinning-Off Media Theory”

14.50 Seth Giddings (WSA): “Distributed imagination: small steps to an ethology of mind and media”

15.20 Jussi Parikka (WSA): “Labs as Sites of Theory/Practice”

15.50 short summary discussion

16.10-16.30 Jane Birkin (WSA) “The Viewing of Las Meninas” (performance)