138 research outputs found

    SInCom 2015

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    2nd Baden-WĂźrttemberg Center of Applied Research Symposium on Information and Communication Systems, SInCom 2015, 13. November 2015 in Konstan

    Fantastic reconstruction: postcolonial artists and the colonial archive

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    The context paper addresses works submitted that are informed by postcolonial theoretical debates about multiculturalism, racial identification, essentialism, cultural hybridity and mimicry that prevailed in the cultural milieus of New York and London in the 1980s and early 1990s. Race is addressed in all these works as a language and racialisation is treated as a social and psychic process. The practice that is addressed in the context paper is interdisciplinary, involving performance, video and curating, as well as writing that assesses how these works engage the public in a dialogue about race as a signifying practice and about the seductive qualities of racial imagery. Central to the works submitted is the notion of the archive, and more particularly the colonial archive. The context paper singles out the pertinent conceptualizations of the archive in relation to the postcolonial theories and practices under consideration. Those most relevant to the works submitted are the writings of Edward Said, Michel Foucault and Allan Sekula. The colonial archive is understood as actual repositories of official representations of colonised peoples, as well as a structuring principle that demarcates the possible articulations of subaltern selfhood. The context paper treats the artistic works submitted as attempts to work through postcolonial theories via critically informed lived experiences, which is to say via praxis. What is proposed is that performative re- enactment and interaction with audiences offers an important means of exploring how racialised cultural discourses actually operate in and shape understanding of the world. The principal argument for the originality of the works submitted is that the reflexive use of performances foregrounding the constructed nature of racial identity through re-enactment and simulation constitutes an innovative approach to postcolonial praxis. The context paper also summarizes relevant aspects of the historical context in which the submitted works were produced. During that period, the author was associated with artists and art collectives that were actively engaged in a postcolonial critique of cultural institutions and Eurocentric aesthetics in the United States and Britain. The multicultural activism of that period concentrated on developing ways to combine experimental techniques with a "new cultural politics of difference" in the words of cultural theorist Cornel West. Multicultural activists were concerned not only with critiquing the stereotyping of racial minorities in mainstream media and art history, but also with putting forward a notion of race as a social construct and a symbolic practice. The works submitted address the ways that racial tropes from colonial discourse, such as "the primitive" reasserted themselves in the contemporary discourses of state-sponsored and corporate multiculturalism. The context statement focuses on three major cultural projects and nine essays that engage with the notion of race as a language. Those cultural projects are: my caged Amerindian performance, Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit the West (1992-1994), featured in the video The Couple in the Cage (1993); my video a/k/a Mrs.George Gilbert (2004); and my curatorial project Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self (2003). The essays address either these works or others by artists who share a concern with racial representation. The context statement outlines the theoretical underpinnings that inform these works. I discuss how these works have been informed by structuralist and post-structuralist theories of language and discursive practice; psychoanalytic theories of racial identification and fantasy and postcolonial models of cultural interpretation. The conclusion incorporates retrospective commentary on the shortcomings in my approach and in my original understanding of audience reception, particularly in relation to credulity and the suspension of disbelief

    Resisting Postmodern Architecture

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    Since its first appearance in 1981, critical regionalism has enjoyed a celebrated worldwide reception. The 1990s increased its pertinence as an architectural theory that defends the cultural identity of a place resisting the homogenising onslaught of globalisation. Today, its main principles (such as acknowledging the climate, history, materials, culture and topography of a specific place) are integrated in architects’ education across the globe. But at the same time, the richer cross-cultural history of critical regionalism has been reduced to schematic juxtapositions of ‘the global’ with ‘the local’. Retrieving both the globalising branches and the overlooked cross-cultural roots of critical regionalism, Resisting Postmodern Architecture resituates critical regionalism within the wider framework of debates around postmodern architecture, the diverse contexts from which it emerged, and the cultural media complex that conditioned its reception. In so doing, it explores the intersection of three areas of growing historical and theoretical interest: postmodernism, critical regionalism and globalisation. Based on more than 50 interviews and previously unpublished archival material from six countries, the book transgresses existing barriers to integrate sources in other languages into anglophone architectural scholarship. In so doing, it shows how the ‘periphery’ was not just a passive recipient, but also an active generator of architectural theory and practice. Stylianos Giamarelos challenges long-held ‘central’ notions of supposedly ‘international’ discourses of the recent past, and outlines critical regionalism as an unfinished project apposite for the 21st century on the fronts of architectural theory, history and historiography

    Resisting Postmodern Architecture: Critical regionalism before globalisation

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    Since its first appearance in 1981, critical regionalism has enjoyed a celebrated worldwide reception. The 1990s increased its pertinence as an architectural theory that defends the cultural identity of a place resisting the homogenising onslaught of globalisation. Today, its main principles (such as acknowledging the climate, history, materials, culture and topography of a specific place) are integrated in architects’ education across the globe. But at the same time, the richer cross-cultural history of critical regionalism has been reduced to schematic juxtapositions of ‘the global’ with ‘the local’. Retrieving both the globalising branches and the overlooked cross-cultural roots of critical regionalism, Resisting Postmodern Architecture resituates critical regionalism within the wider framework of debates around postmodern architecture, the diverse contexts from which it emerged, and the cultural media complex that conditioned its reception. In so doing, it explores the intersection of three areas of growing historical and theoretical interest: postmodernism, critical regionalism and globalisation. Based on more than 50 interviews and previously unpublished archival material from six countries, the book transgresses existing barriers to integrate sources in other languages into anglophone architectural scholarship. In so doing, it shows how the ‘periphery’ was not just a passive recipient, but also an active generator of architectural theory and practice. Stylianos Giamarelos challenges long-held ‘central’ notions of supposedly ‘international’ discourses of the recent past, and outlines critical regionalism as an unfinished project apposite for the 21st century on the fronts of architectural theory, history and historiography

    Resisting Postmodern Architecture

    Get PDF
    Since its first appearance in 1981, critical regionalism has enjoyed a celebrated worldwide reception. The 1990s increased its pertinence as an architectural theory that defends the cultural identity of a place resisting the homogenising onslaught of globalisation. Today, its main principles (such as acknowledging the climate, history, materials, culture and topography of a specific place) are integrated in architects’ education across the globe. But at the same time, the richer cross-cultural history of critical regionalism has been reduced to schematic juxtapositions of ‘the global’ with ‘the local’. Retrieving both the globalising branches and the overlooked cross-cultural roots of critical regionalism, Resisting Postmodern Architecture resituates critical regionalism within the wider framework of debates around postmodern architecture, the diverse contexts from which it emerged, and the cultural media complex that conditioned its reception. In so doing, it explores the intersection of three areas of growing historical and theoretical interest: postmodernism, critical regionalism and globalisation. Based on more than 50 interviews and previously unpublished archival material from six countries, the book transgresses existing barriers to integrate sources in other languages into anglophone architectural scholarship. In so doing, it shows how the ‘periphery’ was not just a passive recipient, but also an active generator of architectural theory and practice. Stylianos Giamarelos challenges long-held ‘central’ notions of supposedly ‘international’ discourses of the recent past, and outlines critical regionalism as an unfinished project apposite for the 21st century on the fronts of architectural theory, history and historiography

    ECLAP 2012 Conference on Information Technologies for Performing Arts, Media Access and Entertainment

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    It has been a long history of Information Technology innovations within the Cultural Heritage areas. The Performing arts has also been enforced with a number of new innovations which unveil a range of synergies and possibilities. Most of the technologies and innovations produced for digital libraries, media entertainment and education can be exploited in the field of performing arts, with adaptation and repurposing. Performing arts offer many interesting challenges and opportunities for research and innovations and exploitation of cutting edge research results from interdisciplinary areas. For these reasons, the ECLAP 2012 can be regarded as a continuation of past conferences such as AXMEDIS and WEDELMUSIC (both pressed by IEEE and FUP). ECLAP is an European Commission project to create a social network and media access service for performing arts institutions in Europe, to create the e-library of performing arts, exploiting innovative solutions coming from the ICT

    Critical point of view: a Wikipedia reader

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    For millions of internet users around the globe, the search for new knowledge begins with Wikipedia. The encyclopedia’s rapid rise, novel organization, and freely offered content have been marveled at and denounced by a host of commentators. Critical Point of View moves beyond unflagging praise, well-worn facts, and questions about its reliability and accuracy, to unveil the complex, messy, and controversial realities of a distributed knowledge platform. The essays, interviews and artworks brought together in this reader form part of the overarching Critical Point of View research initiative, which began with a conference in Bangalore (January 2010), followed by events in Amsterdam (March 2010) and Leipzig (September 2010). With an emphasis on theoretical reflection, cultural difference and indeed, critique, contributions to this collection ask: What values are embedded in Wikipedia’s software? On what basis are Wikipedia’s claims to neutrality made? How can Wikipedia give voice to those outside the Western tradition of Enlightenment, or even its own administrative hierarchies? Critical Point of View collects original insights on the next generation of wiki-related research, from radical artistic interventions and the significant role of bots to hidden trajectories of encyclopedic knowledge and the politics of agency and exclusion

    The Dynamics of Influencer Marketing

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    YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Vimeo, Twitter, etc. have their own logics, dynamics and different audiences. This book analyses how the users of these social networks, especially those of YouTube and Instagram, become content prescribers, opinion leaders and, by extension, people of influence. What influence capacity do they have? Why are intimate or personal aspects shared with unknown people? Who are the big beneficiaries? How much is vanity and how much altruism? What business is behind these social networks? What dangers do they contain? What volume of business can we estimate they generate? How are they transforming cultural industries? What legislation is applied? How does the legislation affect these communications when they are sponsored? Is the privacy of users violated with the data obtained? Who is the owner of the content? Are they to blame for ""fake news""? In this changing, challenging and intriguing environment, The Dynamics of Influencer Marketing discusses all of these questions and more. Considering this complexity from different perspectives: technological, economic, sociological, psychological and legal, the book combines the visions of several experts from the academic world and provides a structured framework with a wide approach to understand the new era of influencing, including the dark sides of it. It will be of direct interest to marketing scholars and researchers while also relevant to many other areas affected by the phenomenon of social media influence

    Flows, Routes and Networks: The Global Dynamics of Lawrence Norfolk, Hari Kunzru and David Mitchell

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    The notion that we have entered a global age of human relations has been the driving force behind many of the most persuasive cultural inquiries published over the last few decades, including fictional ones, into the conditions of contemporary existence, perhaps the most prominent of these being Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's Empire (2000). In the era of mass migrations, proliferating media technologies and the deterritorialised movements of labour and capital, it has become increasingly necessary to speak of identity and citizenship in terms of 'flows', 'routes' and 'networks' that cut across the traditional boundaries of the nation-state. Though it is through various cultural productions that such transformations are at once performed, symbolised and comprehended, discussions about how these changes have impacted on modes of literary representation have largely been framed by the older discourses of postmodernism and postcolonialism, which anticipate present circumstances while arguably offering rather limited perspectives on them. This text-focused thesis explores in detail the narrative strategies and thematic concerns of three British writers who have risen to prominence since 1990 - Lawrence Norfolk, Hari Kunzru and David Mitchell - whose work announces literary developments that may be attributed to the fluidity and multiplicity of millennial relations and the phenomenon of globalisation. Informed by broader debates about multinational capitalism, transnational culture, and the emergence of new cybernetic infrastructures, this research argues that recent novels such as Lempri6re's Dictionary (Lawrence Norfolk), Transmission (Hari Kunzru) and Ghostwritten (David Mitchell) demonstrate an aesthetic consciousness of new patterns of human Interaction and geo-historical interconnectedness that is substantially different from the conceptual coordinates mapped in the fictions of a previous generation. The work of these three important authors has yet to enter fully into the mainstream of critical discussion, and the present study represents the first sustained critical contextualisation of their fiction. Following an introductory chapter that, firstly, provides a wide-ranging analysis of globalisation understood as a constellation of multidimensional processes and, secondly, considers how these material transformations articulated themselves in the cultural context of Britain in the 1980s and '90's, this thesis engages in close readings of the selected authors' complex fictions over three extensive chapters

    The Object of Platform Studies: Relational Materialities and the Social Platform (the case of the Nintendo Wii)

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    Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System,by Ian Bogost and Nick Montfort, inaugurated thePlatform Studies series at MIT Press in 2009.We’ve coauthored a new book in the series, Codename: Revolution: the Nintendo Wii Video Game Console. Platform studies is a quintessentially Digital Humanities approach, since it’s explicitly focused on the interrelationship of computing and cultural expression. According to the series preface, the goal of platform studies is “to consider the lowest level of computing systems and to understand how these systems relate to culture and creativity.”In practice, this involves paying close attentionto specific hardware and software interactions--to the vertical relationships between a platform’s multilayered materialities (Hayles; Kirschenbaum),from transistors to code to cultural reception. Any given act of platform-studies analysis may focus for example on the relationship between the chipset and the OS, or between the graphics processor and display parameters or game developers’ designs.In computing terms, platform is an abstraction(Bogost and Montfort), a pragmatic frame placed around whatever hardware-and-software configuration is required in order to build or run certain specificapplications (including creative works). The object of platform studies is thus a shifting series of possibility spaces, any number of dynamic thresholds between discrete levels of a system
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