[-empyre-] No. 1, Day 3, Week 2

[Douglas Kahn]

Agreed. Although I get tired just thinking about the scale of such a
project! It is daunting enough to try to get "nature" back into notions of
media, especially from a radically positive approach. Hopefully, a
discourse on energies will lend more easily to the turbulences and
dynamical and complex systems at work driving the ecological disaster into
ever more drastic directions.   



> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> 
> > On 2014-06-11, at 9:59 PM, Douglas Kahn wrote:
> 
> >> >every now and then. (In the intro ESES I state my main reservation
> with
> >> >Kittler on his engineer/inscriptive basis viz. a science/transmission
> >> >approach, which means a media theory where 1/2, so to speak, of the
> >> >technological base of modern media is missing, and no uncontorted route
> to
> >> >an ecological standing).
> 
> A hybrid 'systems' approach will deal with the sustainability, biology,
> media, 
> and technology issues quite easily if you include models suggested by the
> likes 
> of Howard Odum, Bertalanffy, Kenneth Boulding, Capra, Varela, and so on
> (see 
> selected bibliography below). A liberal interpretation of systems ideas can
> be 
> quite powerful in interpreting the dynamic of human relation, especially
> that 
> mapped over/through techno-social systems. And, if you incorporate an even
> more 
> radical dimension to the model -- that of electromagnetic fields/flows (or
> even 
> more radical, simply energy flows -- which would include a
> cosmological/quantum 
> dimension -- then the discussion can range freely to address most/all(!) 
> pressing and present issues including sound!
> 
> Kittler seemed to me to consider technique before considering the
> embeddedness 
> of technique-as-codification-of-social-relation -- perhaps one reason that
> he 
> put off North Amurikans...?
> 
> my 2-cents for today...
> 
> Cheers,
> JOhn
> -- 
> 
> Bertalanffy, L. von, 1950. An Outline of General System Theory. The British
> 
> Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 1(2), pp.134-165.
> 
> Boulding, K.E., 1956. General Systems Theory � The Skeleton of Science. 
> Management Science, 2(3), pp.197-208.
> 
> Capra, F., 1997. The Web of Life: a new scientific understanding of living
> 
> systems, New York, NY: Anchor Books.
> 
> Hammond, D., 2003. The Science of Synthesis: Exploring the social
> implications
> of general systems theory, Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado.
> 
> Kleidon, A. & Lorenz, R., 2005. Entropy Production by Earth System
> Processes. In 
> Non-equilibrium Thermodynamics and the Production of Entropy: Life, Earth,
> and 
> Beyond. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.
> 
> Koizumi, T., 1997. Kata and Kata-Thinking in Eastern and Western Thought.
> In G. 
> Lasker, ed. The Proceedings of InterSymp �97. Windsor, Ontario, Canada: 
> International Institute for Advanced Studies in Systems Research and 
> Cybernetics, pp. 37-41.
> 
> Miller, J., 1995. Living systems, Niwot, CO: University Press of Colorado.
> 
> Odum, H.T., 1994. Ecological and General Systems: an introduction to
> systems 
> ecology Rev. ed., Niwot, CO: University Press of Colorado.
> 
> Odum, H.T., 2007. Environment, Power, and Society for the Twenty-First
> Century � 
> The Hierarchy of Energy, New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
> 
> Varela, F., Maturana, H.R. & Uribe, R., 1974. Autopoiesis: The Organization
> of 
> Living Systems, Its Characteristics and a Model. BioSystems, 5(1974),
> pp.187-196.
> 
> 
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD
> taking Manhattan as Berlin isn't possible right now
> http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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> 

Douglas Kahn
National Institute for Experimental Arts
College of Fine Arts
University of New South Wales, Sydney