Paolo Granata | University of Toronto (original) (raw)

PAOLO GRANATA is an Associate Professor in Book and Media Studies at St. Michael’s College in the University of Toronto. He joined the University of Toronto in 2017 after spending fifteen years at the University of Bologna, Italy, where he almost entirely established his own academic career in research, teaching, and public engagement.

Nurtured by the centuries-old tradition of his Alma Mater, Professor Granata’s research and teaching interests lie broadly in the area of Aesthetics, Medium Theory, Ethics of Technology, Heritage Communication, Print and Visual Culture. He has authored a number of essays and book-chapters published in Italian, English, French, and Spanish. His main books are: Arte in Rete (2001), Arte, estetica e nuovi media (2009), Mediabilia (2012), and Ecologia dei media (2015); his latest works is the forthcoming Introduction to Media Ecology (2021).

From 2015 to 2017, he was Visiting Professor and Program Curator at the McLuhan Centre for Culture & Technology, University of Toronto.

Currently, he is the Coordinator of the Book & Media Studies program at St. Michael's College, Faculty of Arts and Science at UofT, Curator of the McLuhan Salons series (www.mcluhansalons.ca) presented by St. Michael's College, and Chair of the Toronto School Initiative (www.thetorontoschool.ca) at the University of Toronto.
He is the vice-president elect of the Media Ecology Association (www.media-ecology.org) and conference chair of Media Ethics: Human Ecology in a Connected World global conference taking place in Toronto, June 27-30, 2019 as the 20th Annual Convention of the Media Ecology Association (www.mediaethics.ca).

As a cultural strategist and champion of urban sustainable development, he is also involved in the designation of Toronto as UNESCO Creative City of Media Arts (www.torontocreativecity.ca).

Professor Granata aims to raise public awareness about the role that Universities should play in the 21st century: to provide an environment of social cohesion; to create the conditions for human development; and to strength participation in cultural life.
Address: Dipartimento delle Arti
Piazzetta G. Morandi, 2
40128 Bologna (Italy)

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Books by Paolo Granata

Questo testo introduce un ambito di indagine per molti versi ancora inedito in Italia: la media e... more Questo testo introduce un ambito di indagine per molti versi ancora inedito in Italia: la media ecology.
Superando la convinzione secondo cui i media sono semplici mezzi o strumenti per comunicare e interagire, l’ecologia dei media propone una visione sistemica in base alla quale questi sono concepiti come veri e propri ambienti, un insieme di forme culturali, tecnologiche e comunicative al cui interno l’uomo si trova a vivere e ad agire. L’ambiente dei media è perciò considerato un ecosistema coeso, aperto e dinamico in cui hanno modo di manifestarsi le tante forme espressive della cultura umana.
Con un approccio sintetico e strutturato, il volume offre un quadro organico dei più autorevoli protagonisti – Mumford, Postman, McLuhan, Bateson, Ellul, per citarne solo alcuni – delle principali scuole di pensiero – New York, Toronto, Chicago – delle discipline coinvolte e dei concetti chiave attraverso cui tracciare una mappa storiografica di questa tradizione intellettuale diffusa nel contesto nordamericano ma radicata anche nell’ambiente culturale europeo.
Una serie di riferimenti antologici, il taglio introduttivo e un ricco apparato bibliografico fanno di questo testo un punto di partenza essenziale per quanti – studenti, studiosi, ma anche non specialisti – vogliano accostarsi a questo nuovo campo di studi.

Mediabilia è un’espressione che intende evocare il fascino e lo stupore esercitato dai media; l’i... more Mediabilia è un’espressione che intende evocare il fascino e lo stupore esercitato dai media; l’incanto di un mondo fatto di forme in continua evoluzione che plasmano i processi della percezione e della conoscenza. Il modo in cui rappresentiamo, sentiamo e facciamo esperienza del mondo è infatti connaturato all’esistenza stessa dei media. Non solo semplici strumenti attraverso cui gestire il nostro rapporto col mondo: i media rappresentano in realtà dei veri e propri ambienti che trasformano la nostra sfera cognitiva e sensoriale, e così anche il nostro modo di percepire e conoscere il mondo. Mediabilia mette a fuoco il ruolo dell’arte e dell’estetica per comprendere la portata di tali trasformazioni, a livello individuale e culturale, attribuendo a entrambe una particolare valenza critica per cogliere la profonda natura dei media in tutta la loro complessità e riconoscere nell’ambiente dei media le forme di una nuova ecologia umana.

"Lightness, Quickness, Multiplicity, Exactitude, Visibility and Consistency are the Six Memos – s... more "Lightness, Quickness, Multiplicity, Exactitude, Visibility and Consistency are the Six Memos – six qualities or values – that Italo Calvino was due to deliver in the context of the Harvard Charles Eliot Norton lectures in 1985- 86, but left unfinished at his death. Read today, the Six Memos, or “not just literary proposals”, are evidently part of the new social and cultural sensitivity that emerged at the end of the 20th century in conjunction with the evolution of the media system, accelerated by the convergence of digital information technologies and communication networks.
Through a series of impressive matches, the spirit of the Six Memos takes the form of a new interpretative plot that reveals the sensory component of the art and media world, and casts light and shadows on the facts of aesthetic art and technology of our time, open to the postmodern horizon. Bringing the aesthetic discourse back to its etymology, to the diverse cultural and material facts affecting the sensory and intellectual spheres, the new media appear for what they are: processes of mediation to the world, mechanisms of formation and aesthetization of experience.
The field of aesthetics and the media come together within a single project where one builds upon the other. In the interdisciplinary pattern that define the boundaries of this research, the traits of the “Digital World” emerge. This is how the new media will appear in all their Lightness, Quickness, Multiplicity, Exactitude, Visibility and Consistency. "

Papers by Paolo Granata

Since late 15th century, Aldus Manutius plays an essential role in the development of print cultu... more Since late 15th century, Aldus Manutius plays an essential role in the development of print culture not only in the construction of the typographic consciousness of Modernity, but also in the implementation of a humanistic project that underlies communication history. For Aldus, the book becomes an interface of knowledge. If the invention of printing press had in fact initiated profound changes in the nature of the book, with Aldus, the medium, or rather the form of the printed text, becomes the message, the expression of a new way of looking at and perceiving the world, but also of constructing new worlds, new cognitive and sensory environments of human experience.

Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies, 2013

Inmediaciones de la Comunicación, 2017

Journal of Visual Culture, 2014

The nature of contemporay media forms has become so wide that the transformational processes they... more The nature of contemporay media forms has become so wide that the transformational processes they trigger in human experience cannot be distinguished from one another any more. Who can say what a medium is, who can describe the ontological nature of an individual medium without referencing the other media? Today, we discuss the new media in the plural, while their impact actually seems to have taken the shape of one macro entity that, complex, dynamic and manifold, affects the modes of sensorial perception and the forms of knowledge at the same time and on many levels. In other words, it is not so easy to tell the effects of a particular media apart from those of another, as it was still possible until a few decades ago.

In/mediaciones de la Comunicación, 2016

ThisarticleaimstopresentareviewofEdwardT.Hall’sethnographicandanthropological research to critica... more ThisarticleaimstopresentareviewofEdwardT.Hall’sethnographicandanthropological research to critically look at mediatization as a complex cultural process. This implies an explicit support of linguistic relativism and cultural materialism. Hall’s belief in lin- guistic relativism led him to further research the communication processes by relying on a meditation that directly resulted from the anthropological research conducted by Sapir and Whorf in line with Boas’ tradition. Hall realized that the principles defined in relation with the study of languages and interpersonal communication could be applied with equally good results to the study of human behavior in general or to the entirety of cultural facts and culture in general.
Moreover, he develops his concept of culture from a strictly ecological perspective or the idea that it results from the special connection between man and his environment. Hall’s approach combines and mixes within a systemic view of culture both the cultural ma- terialism advocated by Harris and White and the cognitivist tradition founded by Boas. This article shows the essence of Hall’s ecological approach according to which culture is conceived as a whole: a dynamic system, a coherent process of mediatization within which all the elements are deeply connected and therefore co-dependent.

Accostare due figure del calibro di Elémire Zolla e Marshall McLuhan costituisce un’impresa trop... more Accostare due figure del calibro di Elémire Zolla e Marshall McLuhan costituisce un’impresa troppo ardua da risolversi nello spa- zio di queste brevi note. Il peso di entrambi nella cultura novecentesca è difficilmente misurabile senza le dovute accortezze interpretative, e un confronto serio tra i due, data la complessità del loro pensiero, esigerebbe uno sforzo critico che va ben al di là delle possibilità di chi scrive. Eppure, per chi, come il sottoscritto appunto, si occupa di cultura dei media, quella in questione rappresenta una sfida talmente affascinante da non riuscire a rinunciarvi, se non altro per il gusto della curiosità, in ossequio a quel sano senso di provocazione che a volte guida la ricerca umanistica.

The nature of contemporay media forms has become so wide that the transformational processes they... more The nature of contemporay media forms has become so wide that the transformational processes they trigger in human experience cannot be distinguished from one another any more. Who can say what a medium is, who can describe the ontological nature of an individual medium without referencing the other media? Today, we discuss the new media in the plural, while their impact actually seems to have taken the shape of one macro entity that, complex, dynamic and manifold, affects the modes of sensorial perception and the forms of knowledge at the same time and on many levels. In other words, it is not so easy to tell the effects of a particular media apart from those of another, as it was still possible until a few decades ago. Therefore, would it be possible to conceive a book today the way McLuhan conceived Understanding Media? What would be the use of defining the effects of one medium, when that same medium would be pointless without the presence of the other media? The relations, and reactions, connecting the expressive forms have overridden the individual forms, their reciprocal connections have become so tight they have started to crossbreed, in other words they have established, or revealed, a new kind of entity, to define which new terms and paradigms of thought are required. Rather than the existence of one form, it is necessary to recognize that this systemic configuration of the contemporary media environment implies the existence of a new kind of forming function that transcends the individual forms all while embracing them. Such transcendent forming function of the media is not just literally transforming , or capable of inducing a change in the forms of human experience. The process through which the contemporary media environment exerts its shaping power should be defined as a wider ranging, more complex process, that it is therefore only apt to literally define as a meta-process.

The originality of McLuhan’s approach to the spiritual dimension of existence seeps through many ... more The originality of McLuhan’s approach to the spiritual dimension of existence seeps through many of his writings. If he could leave such a deep track in twentieth century thought, it was because of an really uncommon aesthetic insight that led him to explore the milieu of art and literature with a sense of respect and devotion—I would even say with something of a believer’s awe. His investing the arts with such a relevant social and spiritual role in the processes of critical awareness and cultural con‐ science also led him to an array of brilliant insights about another symbolic element inherent in the spiritual aspect of human culture: the magic dimension. Marshall McLuhan’s thought may indeed be explored from the viewpoint of magic which will, I hope, hopefully contribute something new to the already massive and multi‐faceted bulk of McLuhanian studies. This paper is my attempt aims to at showing how relevant the concept of magic is in McLuhan’s theoretical framework and how such a path may lead to a most fitting reading of the perspective and ritual dynamics of the current media environment, in particular the system of cultural forms defined as social media.

In 1984 Italo Calvino was officially invited by the Harvard University to deliver the celebrated ... more In 1984 Italo Calvino was officially invited by the Harvard University to deliver the celebrated Charles Eliot Norton Poetry Lectures. That invitation gave Calvino an opportunity to define six proposals, or six memos, as indicated in the original manuscript's subtitle, illustrated as six qualities, or specificities, six values to be passed on to the new millennium that was about to start. He only managed to write five out of the six lectures before death surprised him prematurely.
The spirit of the Six Memos, their rich interweaving of references, speculations and quotations, the fascinating rhetorical insights they offer, are nothing but the evocation of characters and assonances that clearly express, with a clear-headed and mature awareness, the sense of the challenge declared by Postmodernism, which is clearly recognizable in the features of the so-called digital world.
Indeed, these six 'memes', and the brilliant insights they offer, are surprising as they seem to anticipate the current scene of the media ecology, precisely defined by the characters of Lightness, Exactitude, Quickness, Visibility Multiplicity, and Consistency.

Il Contemporaneo (Silvia Grandi, ed.), Fausto Lupetti Editore, Bologna, 2012

Immagine e realtà continuano a rincorrersi nell’immaginario contemporaneo attraverso forme sempr... more Immagine e realtà continuano a rincorrersi nell’immaginario contemporaneo attraverso forme sempre inedite, direttamente connaturate all’evoluzione dei media. Nonostante ciò, lo statuto del- l’immagine digitale sembra essersi invece adagiato su una posizione ben precisa, che metteremo a fuoco fra poco, e che queste pagine in- tendono emendare, superare. Anzi, l’intento è celebrarne un vero e proprio requiem, al contempo inneggiando ad una ipotesi interpretativa alternativa.

In Yoni Van Den Eede, Joke Bauwens, Joke Beyl, Marc Van den Bossche, and Karl Verstrynge, editors (2012). Proceedings of 'McLuhan's Philosophy of Media' - Centennial Conference / Contact Forum, 26-28 October 2011, Brussels: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts., 2012

Marshall McLuhan was an encyclopedic thinker, and as such difficult to categorize. His intellectu... more Marshall McLuhan was an encyclopedic thinker, and as such difficult to categorize. His intellectual roots penetrate transversely the entire Western tradition of the humanities, his insights mock rigid disciplinary specializations. Being indeed intuitive, experiential, explorative, McLuhan’s approach to knowledge can embrace different pursuits and combine disciplines that are apparently diverging. In other words, McLuhan’s method is essentially holistic, and can only be approached having accepted such peculiarity that made him one the most brilliant minds of the entire 20th century.
For these reasons, in order to capture the essence of McLuhan’s encyclopedism, it is first of all necessary to consider the function the different disciplinary fields perform within his thought system, just like it is necessary to look for the relations, or reactions, the different disciplines express when they connect with McLuhan. Only in this way, could a serious survey be similarly developed about McLuhan’s peculiar contribution to enlarge the borders of a specific discipline, or about what might be the effects of applying McLuhan.
The case this essay intends to consider is that of aesthetics, and its reinstatement, according to McLuhan’s sophisticated interpretation, into the media realm. First of all, it should be recognized that combining aesthetics and media means defining a disciplinary field that in many ways is still untapped. Therefore, new functions emerge when aesthetics is read through McLuhan, just like untapped reactions and relations emerge when aesthetics, and in this a certain primacy should be recognized to McLuhan, is applied in the media field. If one reads his works in the light of this preventive consideration, or of the attempt to survey the relations between media and senses – aesthetics’ specific domain – McLuhan clearly appears as the one thinker who first recognized such connection. For this reason, I provocatively propose that this great belletrist is awarded yet another label, that of “aesthetician”.

Questo testo introduce un ambito di indagine per molti versi ancora inedito in Italia: la media e... more Questo testo introduce un ambito di indagine per molti versi ancora inedito in Italia: la media ecology.
Superando la convinzione secondo cui i media sono semplici mezzi o strumenti per comunicare e interagire, l’ecologia dei media propone una visione sistemica in base alla quale questi sono concepiti come veri e propri ambienti, un insieme di forme culturali, tecnologiche e comunicative al cui interno l’uomo si trova a vivere e ad agire. L’ambiente dei media è perciò considerato un ecosistema coeso, aperto e dinamico in cui hanno modo di manifestarsi le tante forme espressive della cultura umana.
Con un approccio sintetico e strutturato, il volume offre un quadro organico dei più autorevoli protagonisti – Mumford, Postman, McLuhan, Bateson, Ellul, per citarne solo alcuni – delle principali scuole di pensiero – New York, Toronto, Chicago – delle discipline coinvolte e dei concetti chiave attraverso cui tracciare una mappa storiografica di questa tradizione intellettuale diffusa nel contesto nordamericano ma radicata anche nell’ambiente culturale europeo.
Una serie di riferimenti antologici, il taglio introduttivo e un ricco apparato bibliografico fanno di questo testo un punto di partenza essenziale per quanti – studenti, studiosi, ma anche non specialisti – vogliano accostarsi a questo nuovo campo di studi.

Mediabilia è un’espressione che intende evocare il fascino e lo stupore esercitato dai media; l’i... more Mediabilia è un’espressione che intende evocare il fascino e lo stupore esercitato dai media; l’incanto di un mondo fatto di forme in continua evoluzione che plasmano i processi della percezione e della conoscenza. Il modo in cui rappresentiamo, sentiamo e facciamo esperienza del mondo è infatti connaturato all’esistenza stessa dei media. Non solo semplici strumenti attraverso cui gestire il nostro rapporto col mondo: i media rappresentano in realtà dei veri e propri ambienti che trasformano la nostra sfera cognitiva e sensoriale, e così anche il nostro modo di percepire e conoscere il mondo. Mediabilia mette a fuoco il ruolo dell’arte e dell’estetica per comprendere la portata di tali trasformazioni, a livello individuale e culturale, attribuendo a entrambe una particolare valenza critica per cogliere la profonda natura dei media in tutta la loro complessità e riconoscere nell’ambiente dei media le forme di una nuova ecologia umana.

"Lightness, Quickness, Multiplicity, Exactitude, Visibility and Consistency are the Six Memos – s... more "Lightness, Quickness, Multiplicity, Exactitude, Visibility and Consistency are the Six Memos – six qualities or values – that Italo Calvino was due to deliver in the context of the Harvard Charles Eliot Norton lectures in 1985- 86, but left unfinished at his death. Read today, the Six Memos, or “not just literary proposals”, are evidently part of the new social and cultural sensitivity that emerged at the end of the 20th century in conjunction with the evolution of the media system, accelerated by the convergence of digital information technologies and communication networks.
Through a series of impressive matches, the spirit of the Six Memos takes the form of a new interpretative plot that reveals the sensory component of the art and media world, and casts light and shadows on the facts of aesthetic art and technology of our time, open to the postmodern horizon. Bringing the aesthetic discourse back to its etymology, to the diverse cultural and material facts affecting the sensory and intellectual spheres, the new media appear for what they are: processes of mediation to the world, mechanisms of formation and aesthetization of experience.
The field of aesthetics and the media come together within a single project where one builds upon the other. In the interdisciplinary pattern that define the boundaries of this research, the traits of the “Digital World” emerge. This is how the new media will appear in all their Lightness, Quickness, Multiplicity, Exactitude, Visibility and Consistency. "

Since late 15th century, Aldus Manutius plays an essential role in the development of print cultu... more Since late 15th century, Aldus Manutius plays an essential role in the development of print culture not only in the construction of the typographic consciousness of Modernity, but also in the implementation of a humanistic project that underlies communication history. For Aldus, the book becomes an interface of knowledge. If the invention of printing press had in fact initiated profound changes in the nature of the book, with Aldus, the medium, or rather the form of the printed text, becomes the message, the expression of a new way of looking at and perceiving the world, but also of constructing new worlds, new cognitive and sensory environments of human experience.

Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies, 2013

Inmediaciones de la Comunicación, 2017

Journal of Visual Culture, 2014

The nature of contemporay media forms has become so wide that the transformational processes they... more The nature of contemporay media forms has become so wide that the transformational processes they trigger in human experience cannot be distinguished from one another any more. Who can say what a medium is, who can describe the ontological nature of an individual medium without referencing the other media? Today, we discuss the new media in the plural, while their impact actually seems to have taken the shape of one macro entity that, complex, dynamic and manifold, affects the modes of sensorial perception and the forms of knowledge at the same time and on many levels. In other words, it is not so easy to tell the effects of a particular media apart from those of another, as it was still possible until a few decades ago.

In/mediaciones de la Comunicación, 2016

ThisarticleaimstopresentareviewofEdwardT.Hall’sethnographicandanthropological research to critica... more ThisarticleaimstopresentareviewofEdwardT.Hall’sethnographicandanthropological research to critically look at mediatization as a complex cultural process. This implies an explicit support of linguistic relativism and cultural materialism. Hall’s belief in lin- guistic relativism led him to further research the communication processes by relying on a meditation that directly resulted from the anthropological research conducted by Sapir and Whorf in line with Boas’ tradition. Hall realized that the principles defined in relation with the study of languages and interpersonal communication could be applied with equally good results to the study of human behavior in general or to the entirety of cultural facts and culture in general.
Moreover, he develops his concept of culture from a strictly ecological perspective or the idea that it results from the special connection between man and his environment. Hall’s approach combines and mixes within a systemic view of culture both the cultural ma- terialism advocated by Harris and White and the cognitivist tradition founded by Boas. This article shows the essence of Hall’s ecological approach according to which culture is conceived as a whole: a dynamic system, a coherent process of mediatization within which all the elements are deeply connected and therefore co-dependent.

Accostare due figure del calibro di Elémire Zolla e Marshall McLuhan costituisce un’impresa trop... more Accostare due figure del calibro di Elémire Zolla e Marshall McLuhan costituisce un’impresa troppo ardua da risolversi nello spa- zio di queste brevi note. Il peso di entrambi nella cultura novecentesca è difficilmente misurabile senza le dovute accortezze interpretative, e un confronto serio tra i due, data la complessità del loro pensiero, esigerebbe uno sforzo critico che va ben al di là delle possibilità di chi scrive. Eppure, per chi, come il sottoscritto appunto, si occupa di cultura dei media, quella in questione rappresenta una sfida talmente affascinante da non riuscire a rinunciarvi, se non altro per il gusto della curiosità, in ossequio a quel sano senso di provocazione che a volte guida la ricerca umanistica.

The nature of contemporay media forms has become so wide that the transformational processes they... more The nature of contemporay media forms has become so wide that the transformational processes they trigger in human experience cannot be distinguished from one another any more. Who can say what a medium is, who can describe the ontological nature of an individual medium without referencing the other media? Today, we discuss the new media in the plural, while their impact actually seems to have taken the shape of one macro entity that, complex, dynamic and manifold, affects the modes of sensorial perception and the forms of knowledge at the same time and on many levels. In other words, it is not so easy to tell the effects of a particular media apart from those of another, as it was still possible until a few decades ago. Therefore, would it be possible to conceive a book today the way McLuhan conceived Understanding Media? What would be the use of defining the effects of one medium, when that same medium would be pointless without the presence of the other media? The relations, and reactions, connecting the expressive forms have overridden the individual forms, their reciprocal connections have become so tight they have started to crossbreed, in other words they have established, or revealed, a new kind of entity, to define which new terms and paradigms of thought are required. Rather than the existence of one form, it is necessary to recognize that this systemic configuration of the contemporary media environment implies the existence of a new kind of forming function that transcends the individual forms all while embracing them. Such transcendent forming function of the media is not just literally transforming , or capable of inducing a change in the forms of human experience. The process through which the contemporary media environment exerts its shaping power should be defined as a wider ranging, more complex process, that it is therefore only apt to literally define as a meta-process.

The originality of McLuhan’s approach to the spiritual dimension of existence seeps through many ... more The originality of McLuhan’s approach to the spiritual dimension of existence seeps through many of his writings. If he could leave such a deep track in twentieth century thought, it was because of an really uncommon aesthetic insight that led him to explore the milieu of art and literature with a sense of respect and devotion—I would even say with something of a believer’s awe. His investing the arts with such a relevant social and spiritual role in the processes of critical awareness and cultural con‐ science also led him to an array of brilliant insights about another symbolic element inherent in the spiritual aspect of human culture: the magic dimension. Marshall McLuhan’s thought may indeed be explored from the viewpoint of magic which will, I hope, hopefully contribute something new to the already massive and multi‐faceted bulk of McLuhanian studies. This paper is my attempt aims to at showing how relevant the concept of magic is in McLuhan’s theoretical framework and how such a path may lead to a most fitting reading of the perspective and ritual dynamics of the current media environment, in particular the system of cultural forms defined as social media.

In 1984 Italo Calvino was officially invited by the Harvard University to deliver the celebrated ... more In 1984 Italo Calvino was officially invited by the Harvard University to deliver the celebrated Charles Eliot Norton Poetry Lectures. That invitation gave Calvino an opportunity to define six proposals, or six memos, as indicated in the original manuscript's subtitle, illustrated as six qualities, or specificities, six values to be passed on to the new millennium that was about to start. He only managed to write five out of the six lectures before death surprised him prematurely.
The spirit of the Six Memos, their rich interweaving of references, speculations and quotations, the fascinating rhetorical insights they offer, are nothing but the evocation of characters and assonances that clearly express, with a clear-headed and mature awareness, the sense of the challenge declared by Postmodernism, which is clearly recognizable in the features of the so-called digital world.
Indeed, these six 'memes', and the brilliant insights they offer, are surprising as they seem to anticipate the current scene of the media ecology, precisely defined by the characters of Lightness, Exactitude, Quickness, Visibility Multiplicity, and Consistency.

Il Contemporaneo (Silvia Grandi, ed.), Fausto Lupetti Editore, Bologna, 2012

Immagine e realtà continuano a rincorrersi nell’immaginario contemporaneo attraverso forme sempr... more Immagine e realtà continuano a rincorrersi nell’immaginario contemporaneo attraverso forme sempre inedite, direttamente connaturate all’evoluzione dei media. Nonostante ciò, lo statuto del- l’immagine digitale sembra essersi invece adagiato su una posizione ben precisa, che metteremo a fuoco fra poco, e che queste pagine in- tendono emendare, superare. Anzi, l’intento è celebrarne un vero e proprio requiem, al contempo inneggiando ad una ipotesi interpretativa alternativa.

In Yoni Van Den Eede, Joke Bauwens, Joke Beyl, Marc Van den Bossche, and Karl Verstrynge, editors (2012). Proceedings of 'McLuhan's Philosophy of Media' - Centennial Conference / Contact Forum, 26-28 October 2011, Brussels: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts., 2012

Marshall McLuhan was an encyclopedic thinker, and as such difficult to categorize. His intellectu... more Marshall McLuhan was an encyclopedic thinker, and as such difficult to categorize. His intellectual roots penetrate transversely the entire Western tradition of the humanities, his insights mock rigid disciplinary specializations. Being indeed intuitive, experiential, explorative, McLuhan’s approach to knowledge can embrace different pursuits and combine disciplines that are apparently diverging. In other words, McLuhan’s method is essentially holistic, and can only be approached having accepted such peculiarity that made him one the most brilliant minds of the entire 20th century.
For these reasons, in order to capture the essence of McLuhan’s encyclopedism, it is first of all necessary to consider the function the different disciplinary fields perform within his thought system, just like it is necessary to look for the relations, or reactions, the different disciplines express when they connect with McLuhan. Only in this way, could a serious survey be similarly developed about McLuhan’s peculiar contribution to enlarge the borders of a specific discipline, or about what might be the effects of applying McLuhan.
The case this essay intends to consider is that of aesthetics, and its reinstatement, according to McLuhan’s sophisticated interpretation, into the media realm. First of all, it should be recognized that combining aesthetics and media means defining a disciplinary field that in many ways is still untapped. Therefore, new functions emerge when aesthetics is read through McLuhan, just like untapped reactions and relations emerge when aesthetics, and in this a certain primacy should be recognized to McLuhan, is applied in the media field. If one reads his works in the light of this preventive consideration, or of the attempt to survey the relations between media and senses – aesthetics’ specific domain – McLuhan clearly appears as the one thinker who first recognized such connection. For this reason, I provocatively propose that this great belletrist is awarded yet another label, that of “aesthetician”.

in "The Scientific Imaginary in Visual Culture", Anneke Smelik (ed.), 2009

By explicitly hinting in my title at Erwin Panofsky’s essay “Perspective as symbolic form” (1991 ... more By explicitly hinting in my title at Erwin Panofsky’s essay “Perspective as symbolic form” (1991 [1927]), I try to understand in this article if it is possible to develop a discourse on the situation of contemporary visual culture that echoes the one proposed by the German art historian.

Volume: 3 – Issue: 3, Jul 2013

In this article I try to outline a hermeneutics of communication, in which the articulation of th... more In this article I try to outline a hermeneutics of communication, in which the articulation of the discourse lies in the environmental component of media. Overcoming the conception of media understood only as technologies or tools at the service of communication, one understands their worth as expressive forms of the social and cultural environment. And, following this approach, one discovers that communication is not the transmission of messages, but rather an interactive, environmental, ecological system; it is an event, a self-referential process strengthened by the interweaving of connections that form a system of global, participatory, and plural communication, created through proximity and through contact. In this way, there emerges a hermeneutics of communication which reveals its interlocutory and pragmatic aspects.

DoppioZero, Oct 2013

Lightness, Quickness, Multiplicity, Exactitude, Visibility and Consistencyare the Six Memos – six... more Lightness, Quickness, Multiplicity, Exactitude, Visibility and Consistencyare the Six Memos – six qualities or values – that Italo Calvino was due to deliver in the context of the Harvard Charles Eliot Norton lectures in 1985- 86, but left unfinished at his death. Read today, the Six Memos, or “not just literary proposals”, are evidently part of the new social and cultural sensitivity that emerged at the end of the 20th century in conjunction with the evolution of the digital world.

Interview by Raureano Ralon for Figure/Ground Communication ™, April 2013