Nocek, Adam; Pisters, Patricia and Fairfax, Duncan. 2017. GeoMedia Research Network - Position Paper. "Negentropic Apparatus: Stiegler and the Possibilities of Algorithmic Resistance". [Professional Activity]

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Abstract or Description

A research symposium + small-scale exhibition + public event

The GeoMedia Research Network (GMRN) aims to bring together a vibrant cast of scholars and practitioners from across North America, Africa, Asia, Europe, and Australia to engage in the varied and complex entanglements of media and geological materials. With the discourse of the “immateriality” of media thankfully fading and it becoming clearer that media have a materiality (geophysical, computational, infrastructural, financial, etc.) that significantly impacts life on Earth, there is an urgent need to situate media and mediation in terms of its earthly materials and practices. The GMRN brings together a wide ensemble of voices from across academic and non-academic specialties to engage this urgency in a variety of contexts: academic presentation, artistic experimentation, curated exhibitions, socially engaged design practice, and publication.

Broadly, the GMRN’s concerns stem from two interrelated and mutually informing research trajectories. The first trajectory seeks to situate media objects and digital culture in terms of the materiality of geological processes. The entanglement of our digital culture and earthly materials, as well as the wide-spread use of geo-computing, are concerns that we want to investigate in creative encounters between the different disciplines that we bring together. The other research trajectory that informs the network addresses the need for a broad understanding of what constitutes mediation in the Anthropocene. Drawing on media theorists who suggest that media studies is often too narrowly focused on media objects instead of broader modes of mediation, we’re interested in how the Earth itself mediates human and nonhuman life in such a way that no future life will ever again have the privilege of ignoring. We might think about how to go about designing interventions within this complex milieu when there are no ready-made answers. How might architects, media artists, fashion designers, and other practitioners respond to this type of geo-mediation?

These problems of geo-media are “matters of concern” with a global impact. We investigate how the “global,” defined on a material, planetary scale, will bring new perspectives to bear on other important questions of globalization such as capitalism, migration and transnational diversity. We will acknowledge the interconnected complexity of many different agents in geo-media ecologies and look to address in critical and creative ways questions of ubiquitous mediation.

These and many other questions will be raised in the course of GMRN’s first meeting in June 2017. At this two-day event, there will be a combination of scholarly and artistic presentations, a workshop, a small-scale exhibition, and a public event.

Item Type:	Professional Activity
Departments, Centres and Research Units:	Design
Date:	2017
Item ID:	20285
Date Deposited:	21 Apr 2017 09:20
Last Modified:	02 Aug 2018 14:55
URI:	https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/20285

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