Month: May 2019
-
Media archaeology with dirty hands: Mattern (2017), Code and Clay, Data and Dirt
Mattern, S. (2017). Code and clay, data and dirt: Five thousand years of urban media. U of Minnesota Press. This is an exemplary introduction chapter for many reasons, and one of things I admire most about it is the tone: it’s critical of the “smart cities” memeplex, without a doubt – framing the book’s project…
-
First There is an Island
Later this week I’ll be taking a trip down the country, and also down the years. On Sunday 12th June, I’ll be reading a poem in Sandown on the Isle of Wight. I started off writing poetry seriously around 2004 or so, as a kind of preliminary to practicing the longer forms of writing that…
-
UAV god-trick
There is something sublime and hypnotic about seeing the earth from above. Before drones, satellites and helicopters provided such views, but this God-like perspective was never so abundant, nor accompanied by such elegant silence. As I sat there, I fell into a kind of trance, such that the images began to seem removed not only…
-
Organ projection
Kapp’s arguments also represent an important forerunner in theories of media and culture. In the 20th century, German sociological discourse was shaped by two canonical arguments about the prosthesis, one posed by Sigmund Freud, the other by Arnold Gehlen. Freud’s definition of man as a prosthetic god appears in his 1930 Civilization and Its Discontents.…