Underskog

Open seminar with MATTHEW FULLER (Goldsmith’s College) and TARA MCPHERSON (University of Southern California), organized by the Seminar of Aesthetics.

DECEMBER 10, 14:15 – 17:00, Aud. 3, Helga Engs Hus, Universitetet Blindern

TARA MCPHERSON: THEORY IN THE MACHINE, OR, A FEMINIST IN A SOFTWARE LAB
MATTHEW FULLER: EVIL ARCHIVING IS HAPPY ARCHIVING (ON EVIL MEDIA)

TARA MCPHERSON: THEORY IN THE MACHINE, OR, A FEMINIST IN A SOFTWARE LAB. "How did a feminist film scholar trained in post-structuralist theory end up running a software lab? In answering that question, this talk engages various histories in the development of computational systems in order to argue that we need more humanities scholars to take seriously issues in the design and implementation of software systems. Humanities scholars are particularly well suited to help us think through such topics as the status of the archive as it mutates into the database, the possibilities for less hierarchal computing, and the cultural contexts of code. In short, the talk argues that we need to do more than theorize new technologies; we also need to build them.

MATTHEW FULLER: EVIL ARCHIVING IS HAPPY ARCHIVING. (ON EVIL MEDIA) In a context in which media are increasingly operational as control systems, biological in their handling of affect and information, and distributed amongst themselves and with multiple scales of reality, we need a pragmatics that is capable of recognizing the collapsing of the technical into the cultural, social and ecological, while recognizing the opportunities for power that such a situation presents.The concept of evil media implies a broad conception of mediality: whilst it includes the usual repertoire of systems of signification that can be detached from the body, it also works at the level of brains, neural entrainment and physiologically potent chemicals that are manageable as signals. But the evil media approach also works with contemporary grey media: expert systems, workflow, databases, human-computer interaction and the sub-media world of leaks, networks and permissions structures that establish what eventually appears as conventional media. These systems are now far more widespread and significant than those that are most apparent as media and their relative invisibility offers numerous opportunities for interesting uses. This lecture will review some of the uses of grey media in relation to the question of the archive and archival systems.

TARA MCPHERSON is an Associate Professor at the School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California. She is the founding editor of Vectors Journal and the author of Reconstructing Dixie: Race, Gender and Nostalgia in the Imagined South. Her writing has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Camera Obscura, The Velvet Light Trap, Discourse, Race in Cyberspace, 24, The New Media Handbook, The Visual Culture Reader 2.0, Virtual Publics and Basketball Jones. She is currently co-editing two anthologies on new technology (including one for the MacArthur Foundation’s initiative in Digital Media and Learning) and working on a book manuscript on new media.

MATTHEW FULLER is David Gee Reader in Digital Media at the Centre for Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He is the author of Evil Media (MIT Press 2012), Behind the Blip: Essays on the Culture of Software (Autonomedia) and Media Ecologies: Materialist Energies in Art and Technoculture (MIT Press, 2005) and editor of Software Studies: A Lexicon (MIT Press, 2008). He is involved in a number of projects in art, media and software, a number of which may be accessed through www.spc.org/fuller/