How to Build a Technoculture:Digital Studies as Care, Curation, and Curriculum

Marcel O’GormanUniversity of WaterlooDepartment of English

http://criticalmedia.uwaterloo.ca

Applied media theory

Applied media theory

TECHNOLOGICAL PRODUCTION (driven by a powerful economic imperative)

CRITICAL ASSESSMENT OF TECH. (driven by a less powerful, academic imperative)

vs.

“writers like Barthes, Foucault, Kristeva and Derrida were really late modernist artists who had taken to philosophy rather than sculpture or the novel. . . . The boundaries between the conceptual and the creative began to blur. - Terry Eagleton, After Theory

CARE

Is it possible to develop a noopolitics, or a model of “knowledge work,” that combines digital media technics with the cognitive modes required for traditional humanities research?

We ask the Internet to keep interrupting us, in ever more and different ways. We willingly accept the loss of concentration and focus, the division of our attention and the fragmentation of our thoughts, in return for the wealth of compelling or at least diverting information we receive.

- Nicholas Carr, The Shallows

. . . the human is itself a prosthetic being, who from day one is constituted as human by its coevolution with and coconstitution by external archival technologies of various kinds—including language itself as the first archive and prosthesis.

- Cary Wolfe, What Is Posthumanism?

Deep Attentionvs.

Hyper Attention

the invention of a new way of life that takes care of and pays attention to the world by inventing techniques, technologies, and social structures of attention formation corresponding to the organological specificities of our times, and by developing an industrial system that functions engodenously as a system of care: making care its “value chain” -- its economy. ” - Bernard Stiegler, Taking Care

CURATION

As a curator/instructor, I assume the responsibilities of a keeper of cultural heritage, a content specialist, and an interpreter.

. . .the sustained expansion of images into models. Thus he gives considerable attention in his texts . . . to the description of quotidian objects -- an umbrella, a matchbox, an unlaced shoe, a post card -- whose functioning he interrogates as modeling the most complex or abstract levels of thought.

- Gregory Ulmer, Applied Grammatology

USE DIGITAL MEDIATO CRITIQUE DIGITAL MEDIA

A CURATOR (from Latin: curare meaning "take care") is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, a curator or keeper of a cultural heritage institution (e.g., gallery, museum, library or archive) is a content specialist responsible for an institution's collections and involved with the interpretation of heritage material. The object of a traditional curator's concern necessarily involves tangible objects of some sort, whether it be inter alia artwork, collectibles, historic items or scientific collections. More recently, new kinds of curators are emerging: curators of digital data objects and biocurators.

CURRICULUM

Is it possible to develop a noopolitics, or a model of “knowledge work,” that combines (hyper) digital media technics with the cognitive modes required for traditional humanities research?

Applied media theory

PHILOSOPHYRHETORICCRITICISMLITERATUREARTCOMPUTER SCIENCEENGINEERINGWHATEVER HELPS MAKE

OBJECTS-TO-THNK-WITH

HYPER AND DEEPREADINGTHINKINGMAKINGWRITING

CML projects are:

YES, BUT IS IT ART?

Dreadmill Performance, Interactive Media Forum, 2004

DREADMILL

http://dreadmill.net

Heidegger, Ellul, Virilio, Baudrillard, etc. . . .

Applied media theory

Screening Coffin, 2006

Cycle of Dread

Dane Watkins, “Call of the Dead,” 2007

CYCLE OF DREAD

Speed + Heart Rate + Distance = Multilinear Narrative

Flow and Critical Gaming

Can “flow” (immersion) involve a state of critical awareness?

Is it possible to achieve “critical immersion” in a computer game?

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, “Mental State in Terms of Challenge and Skill Level.” Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, 1990.

FLOW PROVOCATION:ReadingWritingArtistic PracticeExerciseGame play

CYCLE OF DREAD & Flow

Can “flow” (immersion) involve a state of critical awareness?

Is it possible to achieve “critical immersion” in a computer game?

"...the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul is to be expunged; this I shall do, by printing in the infernal method, by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid. If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narow chinks of his cavern." (Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell)

William Blake’s Infernal Methods

Technique + Philosophy // Form + contentEmbodying philosophical thought.

William Blake, Water Colour Design for Robert Blair's "The Grave" (1805) Louis Schiavonetti, Engraving for Robert Blair's "The Grave" (1808)

“The Grave”: Blake vs. Schiavonetti

Blake vs. Schiavonetti

Blake, Detail Schiavonetti, Detail

GoodLife/Delta Walkway over King Street, looking East, Night

The Bridge

The Cycle

Bridge of Infernal Methods

Cycle of Dread

GEOMOSAICresearch/creation feedback loop.

GEOMOSAICresearch/creation feedback loop.

Research/creation feedback loop.

Health Science > Gaming > Public Art > Cognitive Science

Research/creation feedback loop.

“Testing, testing!” BMW/Guggenheim Research Lab, Manhattan

Myth of the Steersman

Tom Thomson, Canadian Artist, 1877-1917 Downtown portage, October, 2010.

Myth of the Steersman

Tom Thomson’s paint recipe.

Myth of the Steersman

Canoe Lake, Algonquin Park, Ontario.

Myth of the Steersman

14 kilometres of fishing line.

http://www.steersman.ca

Myth of the Steersman

Telepresence and Tactility, Digital Embodiment, Lag, Interval

Cabs of Curiosity

Students of “Cyberbodies” class (ENGL).

MA in Experimental Digital Media (XDM)

DIGITAL WUNDERKAMMER

Cabinets of Curiosity, Winter 2011The students assembled the cabinets, created digital games to be played through the arcade interface, and programmed the arcade controllers.

Cabinets of Curiosity, Winter 2011The “critical arcade cabinets” were created as “objects to think with.” The projects allowed students to engage with critical theory by applying it to the development of a digital media project.

Cabinets of Curiosity, 2011Students of Professor Marcel O’Gorman’s ENGL 293 Introduction to Digital Media Studies course (Winter 2011) work on their MAME cabinets.

Cabinets of Curiosity, Spring 2011A few of the finished cabinets.

Cabs of Curiosity

Cabs of Curiosity

Cytopath

Cytopath

Roach Lab

Roach Lab

NecrogenesisTedX Waterloo, 2012

Sample Critical Media Lab projects in collaboration with the Murray Alzheimer’s Research and Education Program (MAREP):

Project 1: “I’m Still Here” by Adam Cilevitz, Gian Mancuso, Aaron Patkau, and Leif Penzendorfer -Digital simulation of Alzheimer’s for education and empathy.

Project 2: “Spark” by Judy Ehrentraut, Emma Vossen, and Elise Vist Digital art therapy for Alzheimer’s patients and their caregivers.

MISSION

The Critical Media Lab supports interdisciplinary research-creation projects that draw on new media to investigate the impact of technology on society and the human condition.

This approach, which challenges the boundaries between art and science, research and artistic practice, results in the invention of new technologies and media artifacts, dialogue facilitation across disciplines and communities, and policy formation that directly impacts technological design and implementation.

Crimelab mission

- Engage tech. at the R & D stage of development.- Present alternative models for digital production.- Reclaim “innovation” from the logic of commercialization- Intervene in the production of “technoculture.”

MARKETING “GOODS” and PURSUIT OF “THE GOOD”

Critical Media seeks to close the gap between:

http://criticalmedia.uwaterloo.camarcel@uwaterloo.ca