#2 Ecologies of Change

Recent Submissions

Now showing 1 - 15 of 15
  • Review
    Critique Matters
    Ardner, Rebecca (2015)
  • Review
    De-Anonymizing Anonymous
    Heinrichs, Randi (2016)
    Review of: Gabriella Coleman, Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy. The Many Faces of Anonymous, London/New York, Verso, 2014
  • Article
    Ecologies of Change
    Spheres Editorial Collective (2015)
    The title “ecologies of change” might seem paradoxical to some; to others even tautological. Is ecology synonymous with the lasting and unchanging and thus in urgent need of preservation, to be defended against human interventions and technological change? Or is change inherent to ecologies and thus an ecological mode of thinking puts forward a dynamic, procedural and open way to conceptualise the world? Homeostasis, or the self-regulation of nature presupposes a concept of nature as separate from culture. Thus nature always already is a discursive construct, onto which ideals of regulation and (self) control are projected. There is no easy or singular answer to the question of what media ecology is. The contributions in this issue of spheres touch upon this plurality and are concerned with the concept of (media) ecologies in diverse ways.
  • Review
    Going Underground. An Expanded Materialism of Media Theory
    Olsson, Jesper (2015)
    Review of: Jussi Parikka, A Geology of Media, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2015.
  • Article
    Hexing the Alien
    da Rimini, Francesca; Barratt, Virginia (2015)
  • Article
    Making Change. A Report from Bogotá
    Morais dos Santos Bruss, Sara (2015)
  • Review
    Micropolitics of Hope
    Genosko, Gary (2015)
  • Article
    Noise and Error in Contemporary Technoculture – An Interview with Peter Krapp
    Luersen, Eduardo Harry; Maschke, Guilherme Malo (2015)
    The following article is an interview with Peter Krapp (UCI), which was conducted due to his participation as a lecturer in the 16th Week of Image. At the heart of this work, Krapp re-examines information theory and the history of design to address the creative expressions related to noisy phenomena in current forms of human-computer interaction. On our questioning, we approach Krapp to discuss themes such as the ergonomic principles which play a central role in graphical user interfaces infrastructural development, the aestheticization of error in digital culture, and the unstable relationship between noise ratio and technological conditions in digital music production.
  • Article
    Renegotiating Data Ecologies Through Trees, Soil, and Pigs' Lungs
    Bjørnsten, Thomas; Løhmann Stephensen, Jan (2015)
  • Article
    Resisting the Disaster: Between Exhaustion and Creation
    Glowczewski, Barbara (2015)
  • Video
    The Collapse of Change: A View from the Future
    Fleischman, Luciana; Shwafaty, Beto; Ilich, Fran (2015)
    The ship’s log of Novo Potosi is an exploration of the future looking backward to recent Latin American history. Almost like an anthropology of the future, Potosi explores a dystopian scenario where Latin America as a place and imaginary, ceases to exist. Causes and reasons for the extinction of Latin America are uncertain in the story, but generally point to situations of a lock-in, where different socio-technical trajectories reach a tipping point toward collapse but actors and institutions found themselves unable to change. The idea of collapse is very different from the notion of a ‘tipping bomb’ or the prospect of nuclear winter in the 60s, 70s and 80s. The collapse traced in the video is something much deeper. It is something that is already going on at the economic, social and environmental level and cannot be cancelled in a single action. There is no cutting the red cord there. The collapse informing this future is a process with enormous inertia. Indeed, it is a more than human inertia that was triggered by a process called Anthropocene. Perhaps uncertainty about the collapse is related to the inability to change? This is difficult to know from the perspective of an anthropology of the future. There are only remaining fragments. Like the little residues that the sea brings back to the shore, you never find a complete story. That’s why, in the anthropology of the future, reality easily mixes with fiction and becomes myth. Perhaps the saddest finding of the exploration of the future is not the collapse, nor the failure to take alternative pathways, but the utter disappearance of the imagination for change.