Dear all,
I hope this e-mail finds you well and rested after the holidays. Soon the new semester begins, and we have much to look forward to, questions that need to be formulated and problems to be solved. This e-mail is just to give you all a little heads-up on what we have in the pipeline.
A new name and a new direction: IMS Green becomes IMS Environment
Things are moving in the world and in academia — and in our research interests. This year we will pursue a partially new line of inquiry that theoretically can be understood as an attempt to integrate the semiotic Växjö school of intermediality with the post-phenomenological and/or Heideggerian strand of media history. This attempt is motivated by an interest in how our environments are shaped by media and how our environments shape our forms of life. This interest does not exclude, we would argue, analyses of texts, films, and other media products that represent environmental issues. On the contrary, they are part and parcel of the processes that shape our environments.
When we meet for the IMS colloquium in Malmö in January, we would like to open the discussion once again on this new direction. Attached you find a revised version of the text that me and Jørgen shared with you when we met before christmas. It gives a general idea of what we want to do with this cluster and will serve as a presentation of the cluster on the LNU website.
[https://res.public.onecdn.static.microsoft/assets/fluentui-resources/1.1.0/app-min/assets/item-types/24/docx.png]IMS Environment förslag.docx<https://linnaeus-my.sharepoint.com/:w:/g/personal/ereraa_lnu_se/IQDW_oPzROI…>
The cluster meetings
This semester, our cluster will share the monthly Wednesday slots with the newly formed IMS Affect cluster. Our cluster has the last February 25 and April 29.
February 25: Critique and environmental media
The theme of the first meeting is critique and environmental media. By the latter we mean media that operate in relative independence of human consciousness but nevertheless have an impact on the world that we experience in a particular way: they produce and order the data of experience. In the meeting we will discuss Mark Hansen's "The Critique of Data, or Towards a Phenomenotechnics of Algorithmic Culture". In this text, Hansen argues that environmental media poses a challenge to established critical practices. They are calibrated for a situation in which norms, categories and habits structure our experience. Of course, this situation has not disappeared, but it has become more complex with the emergence of environmental media. Today it is not only our habits of thought that determine what is sayable and visible. When we start talking and experiencing, we are talking about and experiencing data that have already been mediated by algorithms. The question that Hansen poses is how to calibrate our critical practices for such a situation? What we want to do in this meeting is to discuss Hansen's response. Is it a direction that we can follow? Or do we need something else?
We are very grateful that our expert in media ecology Per Israelsson will lead the seminar and introduce the text.
The text is attached.
[https://res.public.onecdn.static.microsoft/assets/fluentui-resources/1.1.0/app-min/assets/item-types/24/pdf.png]hansen_critique_of_data.pdf<https://linnaeus-my.sharepoint.com/:b:/g/personal/ereraa_lnu_se/IQBJHlSXsu6…>
April 29: Yet to be decided
Workshop: The semiotic modalities reconsidered
The December workshop had to be postponed. As soon as we have a new date, we will share it with you.
Guest lecture: Claudio Paolucci (University of Bologna)
We will host a visit to Linnaeus University by Claudio Paolucci, professor in Philosophy and Theory of Languages at the University of Bologna. The date for his visit has not been set yet, most likely late April or early May.
Best wishes,
Erik and Jørgen
