Media matter: the materiality of media, matter as medium

164 Pages·2015·16.936 MB·English

by  Bernd Herzogenrath (ed.)

media|matter
thinking I media medialmatter
series editors:
the materiality of media|matter as medium
bernd herzogenrath
patricia pisters
edited by
bernd herzogenrath
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbiury Pubbshing Inc
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Contents
Bloomsbury Academic
An innprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc
1385 Broadway 50 Bedford Square
New York London Acknowledgments vii
NY 10018 WC1B 3DP Contributors viii
USA UK
www.bloomsbury.com Media|Matter: An Introduction Bernd Herzogenrath 1
BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks
of Bloomsbury Publishing Pic Part 1 [TheorylMatter]
First published 2015 1 [Meta] physics of Media Walter Seitter 19
© Bernd Flerzogenrath and Contributors, 2015
2 Media Matter: Materiality and Performativity in
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted Media Theory Katerina Krtilova 28
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior
permission in writing from the publishers. Part 2 [Text] Matter]
No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on 3 Between Print Matter and Page Matter: The Codex
or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication
Platform as Medial Support Garrett Stewart 47
can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author.
4 “Local Color”: Light in Faulkner Hanjo Berressem 69
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Media matter: the materiality of media, matter as medium/edited by
Bernd Flerzogenrath.
Part 3 [FilmjMatter]
pages cm—(Thinking media)
Summary: "A materialist attempt to redefine the concept of 'medium'
5 FigurejGround: Stills from the Films of Bill Morrison
by expanding it to include the elemental"—Provided by publisher.
Bill Morrison 99
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-62892-383-4 (hardback)
6 Matter that Images: Bill Morrison’s Decasia
1. Mass media-Philosophy. I. Flerzogenrath, Bernd, 1964- editor.
P90.M3675 2015 Bernd Herzogenrath 111
302.2301-dc23
2015004741 7 Moving Images as Ontographic Images
(According to Pier Paolo Pasolini) Lorenz Engell 138
ISBN: HB: 978-1-6289-2383-4
ePDF: 978-1-6289-2384-1
8 Brain Matter and New Phrenologies: Challenging Brains
ePub: 978-1-6289-2385-8
with Melancholy and Vice Versa Benjamin Betka 156
Series: ThinkinglMedia
9 The Media Boundary Objects Concept: Theorizing Film
Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
and Media PlorianHoof 180
Printed and bound in the United States of America
vi Contents
Acknowledgments
Part 4 [ArtlMatter]
10 Borderline: Nauman’s Balls and Acconci’s Shoot
Eva Ehninger
I would like to express my gratitude to Bloomsbury (in particular
11 The Romantic Readymade: Toward a Material the wonderfiol Katie Gallof and Mary Al-Sayed) for giving me and us
Vitalism of Contemporary Art Stephen Zepke 226 tbr opportxmity to pubhsh this book, and to all those wonderful people
fibat contributed to this voliune—it has been a pleasure!
Part 5 [SoundjMatter] Special thanks go out to Yasmin Afshar and Sebastian Scherer, for all
the work you have put into this!
12 Revisiting the Voice in Media and as Medium:
I would also like to thank the DEG (the German Research Founda­
New Materialist Propositions Milla Tiainen 251
tion) for their generous support of the media\matter conference, which
13 Sonic Matter: The Material Cut-ups of Christian was the original seed of this book.
Marclay Sebastian Scherer
I dedicate this book to Janna and Claudia, and to the memory
14 Media Disenchantments Thomas Koner 302 of Frank.
Two of the essays in this book had a previous life in online journals,
Index in slightly different versions and both are repubhshed with kind
Concepts/keywords permission:
Bernd Herzogenraths essay appeared in Cinema: Journal of Philosophy
and the Moving Image 6 (2014)
Milla Tiainen’s essay appeared in Necsus: European Journal of Media
Studies (Autumn 2013)
Contributors ix
action (2002-10), Fulbright Commission (2003-4), Getty
Contributors
rch Institute, Los Angeles (2009), Max Weber Stiftung (2013). She
^Wished the book Vom Farbfeld zur Land Art. Ortsgebundenheit in
.mnerikanischen Kunst 1950-70 (Silke Schreiber 2013) and coedited
Hanio Berressem teaches American Uterature and culture at t e yvlnmp Jheorie^ Potenzial und Potenzierung kiinstlerischer Theorie
university of Cologne. He has pnbUshed books on Tbomas ^chon to: Lang 2014). Recent essays include ‘“Man is Present.’ Barnett
(FynclionS Poetics: Interfndnj Thecoj and Text. University of UltnoB ifinan’s Search for the Experience of the Self” (2012); “What’s
Press 1992) and on Witold Gombrowta (Lines of Desire: Rendmg ppening? Allan Kaprow and Claes Oldenburg Argue about Art
L in tn o ai Pietioo — Lnenn. Notthwestern Univetsity Press d Life” (2014); “Mobile Criticism. Mike Kelleys passiv-aggressive
1998). He has coedited, Crenziiberschreibungeti: Femtoismus m ^^alitutionskritik,” kritische berichte 2 (2014), 46-57. Her current
Culmol Studies (with D. Bnchwald nnd H. Volkening, Aisthests, 20m h -iesearch is focused on the norms of photographic representation.
Choos-CoutroUCompk»ty:ChoosTheoryaudtlieHimanSc,eueestyii
D. Bnchwald, Special Issue, American Studies. 1. 2000 , fljlBitoiz Engell is professor of media philosophy at the Bauhaus-
from nnd.cn to zwolfklnde,-pyncl,on\gemuiny ^ l^ftiversitat Weimar, Germany, where he was the founding dean
Special Issue. Pynchon Notes, 2008), Dekuzian Events: Wntin^Hutoy Faculty of Media from 1996 to 2000 and is now codirector
(vrith L. Haferkamp LPT, 2009), and Between Science and Fiction. ff, the Internationals KoUeg fiir Kulturtechnikforschung und
Hollow Earth as Concept and Conceit (with Michael Bucher and Uwe Msdlenphilosophie (IKKM), a research institute funded by the German
Schwagmeler, Lit, n-l|work_sclence-medlun, 2012). His athcte a^ ;!|^dfiral Government. His research interests comprehend philosophy
situated in the Selds of French theory, conteniporary American tomm jf .film and of television, media anthropology, philosophy of the
media studies, the interfaces of art and science, as well as natro ^itoiy and studies on seriality and causality. Recent pubhcations are
writing- and ecology. He has just completed two complementary ^i^nsehtheorie zur Einfuhrun^’ (2012), “Playtime” (2010), and “Kdrper
books, one on Gllles Deleuze and the other on Felix Guattan. ^l^nkens” (2013, co-ed.). Forthcoming is “Mediate Anthropologic”
i^fed.) and “Film Denken. Essays zur Philosophic des Films”
Beniamin Betka works on the relationship between films, brains, and ste^dthor). He is also the coeditor of the “Kursbuch Medienkultur”
existential desperation. After the first contact with commumcation and “Zeitschrift fiir Medien- und Kulturforschung (ZMK),” and the
information science he studied English, phUosophy, and pedagogics m Dewfcen” book series.
Lower Saxony and Texas. His main field of research Is the intersection
between media, ontologies, and concepts of suffering in a (post-.) Herzogenrath teaches American literature and culture at
-University, Frankfurt/Main, Germany. He is the author of An
Deleuzean context.
^mmrjcan Body\Politic: A Deleuzian Approach and editor of two books
Eva Ehninger is assistant professor at the Institute Browning, two books on Edgar G. Ulmer, The Farthest Place:
Universitkt Bern, Switzerland. She has taught at the ^“^he-U m i.^ ■ of John Luther Adams and Time and History in Deleuze and
Frankfint)Main,HochschulefteKilnste,Btemen,andIawahrfalNehrn
At the moment, he is planning a project, cinapses: thinkingfilm
University, New Delhi. Fellowships by the German Nanonal Academic
X Contributors Contributors XI
that brings together scholars from film studies, philosophy, and the Koner is continuing his close relationship with sound art by
neurosciences (members include Alva Noe and Antonio Damasio). creating radiophonic works for the National Radio in Germany
(Deutschlandradio Kultur, WDR Studio Akustische Kunst,), while also
Florian Hoof is an assistant professor at the department of Theatre, working as a hve performer and composer and producer. His music
Film and Media Studies at the Goethe-University, Frankfurt/Main. He compositions from the early 1990s, including albums Permafrost,
holds a PhD in media studies from the Department of Media Studies Nunatak, and Teimo, were considered pioneering in the field of
at the Ruhr-University Bochum. His PhD thesis “Angels of Efficiency. minimal electronic and are still in print. Koner’s acclaimed production
A Media History of Consulting, 1880-1930” was funded by a grant from ckills with his more beat-oriented duo Porter Ricks, whose album
the German National Academic Foundation. He was guest professor Biokinetics is considered “a classic of techno sound,” resulted in remix
at Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano; scientist in residence commissions for a.o. Trent Reznor’s Nine Inch NaUs.
at the Department of History of Technology at the Swiss Institute of
Technology (ETH), Zurich, and at AustraUan School of Business, Katerina Krtilova is a research assistant at the Internationales KoUeg
University of New South Wales, Sydney; visiting scholar at the Archives fiir Kulturtechnikforschung und Medienphilosophie (International
and Special Collection Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, and Research Institute for Gultural Technologies and Media Philosophy,
research assistant at the Department of Media Studies, Ruhr-University IKKM). Katerina Krtilova is a researcher and coordinator •
Bochum. His research interests include Historical Epistemology, Science of the KompetenzzentrumMedienanthropologie (Genter for Media
and Technology Studies, Sociomateriality Studies, History of Media Anthropology) at Bauhaus-Universitat Weimar. In 2013-14 she
Technology, Science-, Industrial- and Sport-Films, Production Studies. initiated and coordinated the DFG-funded research project Positions
and Perspectives of German and Gzech Media Philosophy.” Since 2014
Thomas Koner studied at Musikhochschule Dortmund and GEM she is a member of the editorial board of the Internationales Jahrbuch
Studio Arnhem. He is a distinctive figure in the fields of contemporary fiir Medienphilosophie (International Journal of Media Philosophy).
music and multimedia art. For more than three decades his work has She studied media studies, philosophy, and humanities in Prague and
been internationally recognized and he has excelled in all the areas Regensburg and worked as a research assistant at Gharles University
of his artistic activity, receiving awards such as Golden Nica Ars in Prague. Recent pubhcations: “Gesten des Denkens. Vilem Flussers
Electronica (Linz), Transmediale Award (Berlin), Best Young Artist at Theorie des Gesten als Medienphilosophie,” in; T. Hildebrandt, F.
ARGO (Madrid), and many more. His familiarify with both the visual Goppelsroder, U. Richtmeyer (eds), Bild und Geste. Figurationen des
and sonic arts resulted in numerous commissions to create music for Denkens in Philosophie und Kunst, Bielefeld 2014; “Intermediality in
sfient films for the Auditorium du Musee du Louvre, Musee d’Orsay, Media Philosophy,” in: B. Herzogenrath (ed.). Travels in Intermedia(lity).
Gentre Pompidou, and others. Likewise, he created installations for ReBlurring the Boundaries, Dartmouth 2012.
diverse situations, for example. International Symposium on Electronic
Art (ISEA), the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes Santiago de Ghile, to Sebastian Scherer completed his MA in art history and American
name a few. His works are part of the collections of significant museums studies at the Goethe-University, Frankfurt/Main in 2010. He
such as Musee national d’art moderne, Gentre Pompidou Paris, Musee subsequently taught International Journalism at the University for
d’art contemporain, Montreal. Applied Sciences in Darmstadt. Since 2011 he works as a scientific
Contributors xiii
xii Contributors
ethics of sound, cultural studies of music, feminist new materialisms,
assistant for the American Studies department at Goethe-University,
andposthumanistandenvironmentalhumanities.Herworkhas recently
Frankfurt/Main, where he teaches classes on American Avant-garde
geared in Body & Society and NECSUS—European Journal of Media
Music, the Electronic Frontier, and American Landscape Painting and
Studies. She is writing a book about a new Deleuze-inspired approach
Photography. His research interests include sound studies, modern and
to vocal and operatic performance (under contract with University of
contemporary art, music, and film, as well as audio engineering, and
Minnesota Press). Milla is a founding member of the COST-funded
American countercultures.
action New Materialism: Networking European Scholarship on “How
Currently, he is working on his PhD project on the artistic strategies
Matter Comes to Matter.” She coleads the network’s working group
of Christian Marclay.
titled New Materialisms Embracing the Creative Arts.
Walter Seitter was born in Austria and studied philosophy, political
Stephen Zepke is an independent researcher living in Vienna. He is the
sciences, history of art in Salzburg, Munich, and Paris (with Helmut
author of Sublime Art, Towards an Aesthetics of the Future (EUP 2016
Kuhn, Eric Voegelin, Hans Sedlmayr, Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault).
forthcoming) and Art as Abstract Machine, Ontology and Aesthetics in
He translated many philosophical books from French to German. In
Ddeuze and Guattari (Routledge 2005). He is the coeditor (with Sjoerd
Aix-la-Chapelle he wrote his habihtation thesis Menschenfassungen,
van Tuinen) of Art History After Deleuze (Leuven 2016 forthcoming),
and since 1985 he has been teaching media theory in Vienna. He is
and (with Simon O’Sullivan) of Deleuze and Contemporary Art
an active founding member of Vieima’s First Philosophical Coffeeshop,
(EUP 2010) and Deleuze, Guattari and the Production of the New
the New Vienna Group/Lacan School and the Hermes group. His main
(Continuum 2008).
fields of interest are Political Theory, Philosophical Aesthetics, and
Physics.
Garrett Stewart, James O. Freedman Professor of Letters at the
University of Iowa, has authored, among many books on literature and
film, including the Closed Circuits: Screening Narrative Surveillance
(2015), three studies of reading and its figuration; Dear Reader: The
Conscripted Audience in Nineteenth-Century British Literature (1996),
The Look of Reading: Book, Painting Text (2006), and Bookwork: Medium
to Object to Concept to Art (2011), all published by the University of
Chicago Press. He was elected in 2010 to the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences.
Milla Tiainen lectures in the Department of Musicology at the
University of Helsinki. She is also a postdoctoral researcher in the
Academy of Finland-funded project “Deleuzian Music Research.” Her
research interests include the voice in contemporary performing arts
and media, affect, rhythm and bodies-as-movement, the aesthetics and
Medial Matter: An Introduction
Bernd Herzogenrath
The philologies and the humanities are part of the modern media
society, and thus participate in a field of forces determined by
constantly changing parameters, be it cultural, material, theoretical,
scientific, or technical ones. Since the growing proliferation of media
and new technologies does not leave the field of the humanities
unchanged, they have answered that challenge by reorganizing
themselves as cultural studies and media studies. This basically
calls for a thorough investigation into and analysis of the concept of
“media,” which is even more desirable and necessary, since the largely
mono-causal attempts at defining the term “medium” have left such
an analysis still waiting in limbo.
Media transmit, save, and symbolize. They communicate an “Other”
that evades direct access, something that is neither only sign, nor
. only perception, nor only representation: media are the in-between,
that which facilitates transmission and thus belongs to neither of
the (at least) two sides between which it transmits and negotiates—a
status of difference, that makes a general definition of “medium” and
“media” next to impossible and thus has so far resulted in a myriad
of converging attempts to do exactly this. In a formula reminiscent of
a notorious Lacanian aphorism, Claus Pias, Joseph Vogl, and Lorenz
Engell state in their Kursbuch Medienkultur that “media do not exist,
at least not media in a substantial and historically stable sense” (Pias
et al. 2004: 10). The term “medium” is used to refer a.o. to biological,
physical, technological, institutional, and aesthetic media—a
theoretical positioning that oscillates between physical properties,
), qualities, technologies, materialities, and artistic means of expression,
term medium thus encompasses the realms of both culture and
2 . Media\Matter Media\Matter: An Introduction 3
nature—and still, current definitions mostly highlight medial aspects of the biological|physical notion of the term “medium”). On the other
symbolization and information transfer on a cultural level, instrumental hand, it would mean to understand media not only in the context
and organizational functions, that is. of cultural or discursive systems or apparatuses, relays, transistors,
Hence, the history of media (and of media studies) presents itself as hardware, or “Aufschreibesysteme” (discourse networks), but more
a history of man-made apparatuses and technologies. However—just inclusive in terms of a “media ecology” (McLuhan), so as to proceed,
as the field of cultural studies is currently experiencing a “turn,” so also as Regis Debray puts it, “as if mediology could become in relation to
media studies are about to re-adjust, re-structure, re-orientate (and semiology what ecology is to the biosphere. Cannot a ‘mediasphere’ be
in some circles, e.g., the IKKM Weimar, this new turn has had very treated like an ecosystem, formed on the one hand by populations of
promising and fruitful effects already—this volume thus also serves as signs and on the other by a network of vectors and material bases for
a part-time introduction to the field of “New German Media Theory,” the signs?” (108) an ecology that acknowledges the interdependency
or “German Media Philosophy,” of which people such as Lorenz of cultural and natural media. Rather than exclusively concentrating
EngeU, contributor to this volume, are among its prime agents and on a “technology a priori" of a “total media link on a digital base”
innovators). I am not so much referring to a widening of a historical (Kittler 1999: 2), as proposed by Friedrich Kittler, one should focus
perspective that extends the “medial perspective” from modernity on those excluded fields that a Media Theory conceived as a Theory
and the digital age also to antiquity and the early middle ages.' Such of technology cannot grasp: again, I am quoting Pias, Vogl, and EngeU
a perspective allows for a clearer distance vision, but such a version of from their logbook on Media Culture: “Media cannot be reduced to
media studies would still be monocular, would still have a blind spot. forms of representation such as theater and film, nor to technologies
In contrast to a media studies indebted to the “Holy Writ” of cultural such as printing or telecommunications, nor to symbolic systems such
studies (cultural, social, linguistic constructivism, that is), a more as writing, image, or number” (Pias et al. 2004:10).
inclusive version of media studies would also have to focus on what Niklas Luhmanhs differentiation between “medium” and “form”
cultural studies bracket off or only see as a retro-effect of the culturally points the way. By making this differential bear on the conceptual
constituted construction of the world: matter, materiality, or, to call tandem “loose coupling” and “tight coupling,” the loose coupling
it by its name usually safeguarded by quotation marks—nature. With of the medium becomes the “condition of possibihty” for the more
such terms—matter, materiality, nature—I by no means want to humor concrete consteUations and actuaUzations of the “tight coupling” of
any notion of substance. This is not about a return to some form of form—via this “detour” in defining media, Luhmann is able to grasp
essentialism, nor about the substitution of discursive “cultural laws” by something of a more “materialist” meaning of the term medimn which
“natural laws” (be it physical, biological, etc.), but about the modehng the exclusively technological and cultural versions of Media Theory
of systemic processes and dynamics that underlie both culture and have rather neglected. As a sociologist, Luhmann is mainly interested
nature: the materiality of biological and social systems seen as self­ in social systems. In Fritz Heider’s book Ding und Medium (Thing and
organizing aggregates that allow for the emergence of newness. For a Medium), however, from which Luhmann takes over the medium|form
re-adjustment of media studies, this would have a twofold consequence: distinction, Heider uses the example of sand: sand as infinitely divisible,
on the one hand, to extend the understanding of “medium” in such a way as a medium that functions “for” a form. The sand’s loose coupUng, its
as to include a concept of materiality that also includes “non-human” grain, can serve as a “carrier” for different traces, but can also generate
transmitters (e.g., the elements such as water, earth, fire, air ... thus different “forms”: sand castles, sand jets, etc. The sand consists of loosely
4 Media\Matter Media\Matter: An Introduction 5
coupled elements (small stones) that are structured by something the world (and thus stand in opposition to the world), or are they a
more solid that has been imprinted on it, the foot. The sand becomes poextensive part of that world? Related to this issue is the question if
a medium because of the form imprinted on it, and the footprint as jtnedia are more or less neutral and innocent transmitters of a merely
a form exists only because of the sand as medium. Through one external information, or if media as matter is not itself “informed”; the
imprinting foot, the sand elements are momentarily tightly coupled in material qualities of a medium, one might argue, are its information,
one way. Through another they become fixed differently. Only because to information that is transferred by coming into touch with another
the sand elements are so loosely coupled relative to the imprinting foot (itself informed) material, and thus both information are changed.
(the small stones do not fuse together into a solid mass for instance, They “inform” each other—as Deleuze and Guattari put it: “Matter ...
making it possible for human feet to alter the coupling of the small is not dead, brute, homogeneous matter, but a matter-movement
stones), they are able to function as an effective medium of indefinitely bearing singularities or haecceities, quaUties and even operations”
many discrete footprints. (1987: 512). Such processes are in operation continuously—they are
A “double interface” of this medium|form assemblage makes it quite never imidirectional and monocausal, but reciprocal and feedback
fruitful for a more inclusive concept of media, I would argue: on the looped, and they traverse both nature and culture. Media thus are
one hand, there is the connection to the radical constructivist theory always information and matter, that is Rigeuinformation (what Georg
of autopoietic systems (the theories of Humberto R. Maturana und Simmel has beautifully called the “Eigengesetzlichkeit des Materials”—
Francisco J. Varela, to which Luhmann’s Systems Theory refers), on the “laws governing the material” (1959: 259), its “material qualities”),
the other hand, there is the recursive structure of the medium|form plus “external information” (the information stored and transmitted by
assemblage—in the medium of language (loosely coupled phonemes)— these media)—media as an oscillation and communication between
words are the tightly coupled form; in the medium words, sentences are informed matter and materialized information.
the form; in the medium sentences, thoughts and texts are forms ... Hence, all modes of matter (with all the implications of the
media thus always are forms of more “loosely coupled” media. medium|fo'rm assemblage) can count as media: sound, air, light,
This structure can serve as a system-theoretical variant (and animals, human beings, communities, and complex technical
confirmation) of McLuhans dictum that “the ‘content’ of any medium machines—Luhmann’s structural intermediality might thus be a
is always another medium” (McLuhan 1964; 23). With regard to special case of a more fundamental material intermediality embedded
a wider conception of the term “medium,” this means that the in the interdependency of nature and culture, bio-media, and
medium|form differential spans nature and culture—sand|sandstone— scriptural|technological media—intermediality as an inclusive media
sandstone|sculptiu"e—sculpture|exhibition—exhibition|art scene, etc. ... ecology. Such an understanding of media cannot be covered by the
a recursive structure, which is open to both sides and which constitutes hxunanities single-handedly—a concept of media as matter, as “quahties
mediality always already as (structural) iwfermediality. Knut Hickethier’s and agencies” of matter, exphcitly calls for a transdisciplinary approach.
(rather dismissive) question in his introduction to media studies— ^Media History in its version as the History of Apparatuses has defined
“Should Media Studies deal with the medium ‘heat’ or ‘sand’?” (19) transdisciplinarity simply within the borders and confines of the
should be answered (with Luhmann and beyond) with a dear “Yes!” ■ humanities and cultural studies (with Kittler breaking through into the
Such an extended concept of media also questions the relation of ^Id of cybernetics and the history and science of technology), leaving
media and world, or environment—do media “mediate” an access to as biology, physics, chemistry aside, an expanded concept of