[ebooks] Cuban Intersections of Literary and Urban Spaces by From SUNY Press in Arts-Photography

Description

In Media Ecologies; Matthew Fuller asks what happens when media systems interact. Complex objects such as media systems -- understood here as processes; or elements in a composition as much as "things" -- have become informational as much as physical; but without losing any of their fundamental materiality. Fuller looks at this multiplicitous materiality -- how it can be sensed; made use of; and how it makes other possibilities tangible. He investigates the ways the different qualities in media systems can be said to mix and interrelate; and; as he writes; "to produce patterns; dangers; and potentials."Fuller draws on texts by Felix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze as well as writings by Friedrich Nietzsche; Marshall McLuhan; Donna Haraway; Friedrich Kittler; and others; to define and extend the idea of "media ecology." Arguing that the only way to find out about what happens when media systems interact is to carry out such interactions; Fuller traces a series of media ecologies -- "taking every path in a labyrinth simultaneously;" as he describes one chapter. He looks at contemporary London-based pirate radio and its interweaving of high- and low-tech media systems; the "medial will to power" illustrated by "the camera that ate itself"; how; as seen in a range of compelling interpretations of new media works; the capacities and behaviors of media objects are affected when they are in "abnormal" relationships with other objects; and each step in a sequence of Web pages; Cctv -- world wide watch; that encourages viewers to report crimes seen via webcams.Contributing to debates around standardization; cultural evolution; cybernetic culture; and surveillance; and inventing a politically challenging aesthetic that links them; Media Ecologies; with its various narrative speeds; scales; frames of references; and voices; does not offer the academically traditional unifying framework; rather; Fuller says; it proposes to capture "an explosion of activity and ideas to which it hopes to add an echo."