The New Life of Images. The Case of Postmodern Cinema in L. Malavasi, S. Tongiani (eds.), Technophobia and Technophilia in the Media, Art and Visual Culture (original) (raw)
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy which deals with the beauty, the ugly, the sublime, the comic, etc. and on the other hand technology is a branch of knowledge which deals with the creation and use of technical means and their interrelation with life, society, and the environment, drawing upon such subjects as industrial arts, engineering, applied science and pure science. It is difficult to define the words aesthetic and technology, wherein twenty-first century the post-modernist contemporary era, these two sectors are playing a vital role to change the meaning of their definitions with the new inventions, methods, and necessities. In which the work of art has been influenced by these new inventions of methods and techniques to produce a more complicated visual experience and output. If we try to figure out what would be the future of our cultural industry and how it would behave in this utopian condition? Where art is controlling peoples lifestyle, dreams, emotions, and the overall psychological world. If we focus on the effects of technology, we will be able to identify that in every decade or sooner the technology and the medium of communicating with the spectators are changing. Form the beginning of the 19th century there are museums, theatre halls, then cinema halls, television channels came forward and took their place, and now along with all of these old media platforms, new media platforms also come forward with the interactive communicative
Media Art. Towards a New Definition of Arts in the Age of Technology
2015
As stated Oliver Grau, «Media art is the art form that uses the technologies that fundamentally change our societies». In the Italian publishing system this book represent the first attempt that try to systematize the phenomenon of Media Art. The book is separated in three parts: Theories, Histories, Perspectives. The last part is dedicated to the exhibition "From Body to Mind. New Generations of Italian Media Artists" hosted in the Roma Media Art Festival which this book is strictly tied.
Philosophy of Engineering and Technology, 2020
First, technologies (photography, tape recorder, telephone, radio, television) and, afterwards, neo-technologies (total digitalisation, Internet, mobile phones) have created the conditions for overcoming the arts towards what the author calls "technological sublime". Within this new dimension, not only the category of art reaches its own decline, but the very aesthetic dimension experiences a profound transformation of its own essence, exercising its ancient function and, yet, at the same time, assuming a novel anthropological character. The author supports his thesis by founding it, as he has always done before, on the works of a certain number of artists, whom he considers as the most meaningful of our age.
'The Posthuman Theory, Digital Culture and Cinema' course profile
The course analyzes and compares selected perspectives seen in the form of motion pictures to express the concepts of 'Humanism, 'Posthumanism, and 'Transhumanism'. The content of the course consists of researching and examining the phenomena of Nature and City, cyborgian embodiment, epistemological accumulation and alienation in the context of language, advanced technological developments that penetrate the human body, and the role and expression of art in such developments. Since the course examines current technological development and contemporary social structuring on a sociological and philosophical basis, it differs from science fiction cinema with a clear line. Within the scope of the course, posthuman subjectivity, space, and our relations with all living things with whom we share this planet, as well as the effect of technological culture seen in contemporary cinema on sociological development will be examined in the context of posthumanism.
Out of the post. How Media Defined, Un-Defined and Re-Defined Modernity
in Elisa Bricco, Luca Malavasi (eds.), The Future of the Post. New Insights in the Postmodern Debate, Milano, Mimesis International, pp. 165-179, 2022
This intervention proposes three mutually related arguments (and this neo-modern style yet promises an overcoming of postmodernity…) My first point is that both the definitions of the postmodern trend and the various movements pretending to overcome it are affected by the concurrent transformations of the media system to a greater extent than they usually admit. In other words, to correctly understand the debates on postmodern and post-postmodern tendencies, it is essential to consider the evolution of the media over the last fifty years or so. Second, in more detail, I argue that the spring of the postmodern condition is intimately linked to the last season of electric media, between the 1970s and 1990s of the twentieth century: during this period, the multiplication and ubiquity of media screens lead to the birth of “mediascapes”; these new media environments exasperate the contrast between media experience and real experience, which has already arisen since the end of the 1950s. In turn, the overcoming of the postmodern trend is linked to a complete affirmation of electronic and digital media from the 1990s onwards: the images they carry become part of more general data flow management processes that transcend the medial sphere and expand to various social practices (defense, surveillance, medicine, trade, etc.); the new images that derive from it are operational, that is, they imply not only being observed but instead effectively operating within and on different environments. Finally, my third argument is that the transition from electric media to electronic-digital media is linked to the shift from postmodern to post-post-modern trends because of transformations that take place in the epistemic status of images. Indeed, the last phase of electric media is marked by a tendential scepticism towards images, while digital electronic media introduce a renewed confidence in their ability to render the real and operate on it – yet no longer directly but through the visualization and manipulation of data structures that constitute world models and that can actually oper-ate within and on the world. This renewed trust in the relationship between images and reality, however, does not imply a return to a pre-postmodern situation at all but, rather, the opening of a new phase based on the use of algorithmic models for the control and appropriation of the world.
Towards “post-digital”. A media theory to re-think the digital revolution.
Ethics in Progress, 2019
Can we say we live in a post-digital condition? It depends. This paper sets out to distinguish between the current mass digital culture and an authentic post-digital culture. If we mean “post-digital” as the full internalization and awareness of the result of the so-called digital revolution, then it is necessary a philosophical work to discuss related problems, identify the causes and propose solutions. An authentic philosophy of digital will, however, have to start from a clarification of the terms and basic objects of its investigation. Here media theory is inserted as an analytical tool: the purpose of this essay is to outline a road map for a good media theory that interfaces with questions of definition of digital, also in light of the notions of space, time, and matter. As will be seen, the description given here for a “good media theory” does, in fact, coincide with an already existing – and inserted in the contemporary debate – school. In conclusion we will try to delineate the field of philosophical inquiry opened by the clarification brought by the previous analysis, and to suggest a general framework within which philosophy will have to move in order to finally reach the authentic postdigital condition.
Media technologies and their people. A posthumanistic view
Prace Kulturoznawcze, XIV/2
Inspired by Donna Haraway's writings, the author indicates that a significant part of post-humanities could be regarded as a reflection on technologies, of which the digital and network (so-called new) media seem to show a particularly strong non-anthropocentric potential. This reflection, distinct from earlier established technophilic and technophobic positions, lies within the framework of critical posthumanism. The scientific and artistic undertakings mentioned in the article, but also the daily encounters of humans and machines are shown as cyborgising phenomena. Accentuating the non-human agency and reassembling the organic and non-organic, the relations between people and technology have grown to be a challenge for "ontological hygiene" and bring about many epistemological and ethical tasks.