MEDIA SOUP - Dr. Jussi Parikka: "Medianatures"

FOR THE MISSING SCENES AT 33:29 MIN. SEE BELOW!

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MEDIA SOUP is an open colloquium of the Institute for Media Theories at Humboldt University Berlin, hosted by Paul Feigelfeld.

For informations about the lecturer and the abstract go to:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=155936841139458

THE MISSING PART:

"In addition to the "low-tech" approach of the Ecomedia project, a variety of works have engaged in thinking about the interconnections of high tech and media. The same Harwood-Wright-Yokokoji-trio was awarded in 2009 the Transmediale award for their Tantalum Memorial - a hybrid installation that addresses the raw material columbite-tantalite, and tantalum extracted from it, as essential for mobiles and computers as used for capacitators, but also, and because of that, an ore that is valued higher than gold and hence of interest to various international companies - and thus acting as the link between the sheer affording materiality of coltan itself, and the various more abstracts flows of capital, etc.

In another way, slightly more high tech, but still embedded in practices of tinkering, relatively straight forward electronics and easy to use equipment, the artist Paul Demarinis - often branded also as a media archaeological artist - has engaged in the links between circuit based media and nature. In early work such as the Pygmy Gamelan a modified car radio was turned into a simple receptor/music instrument that turned electrical fields from people near it to radio transmissions of galaxies into musical patterns; in other works, the materiality of tinkering is revealed when you start picking high tech components into their basic elements, and thinking technical media through its materiality - also in differing ways, constructing your own alternative old media. Hence, for instance "semiconductors", such essential standardized parts of our transmission culture, are according to Demarinis "everywhere to be found. I have made junction diodes from burnt out lightbulbs, mesquite barbeque charcoal, rusty batteries and eighteenth century nails; variable and fixed capacitators from packs of chewing gum, bibles and discarded AOL CD's; coils and vario-couplers from votive candles, whisky bottles and shotglasses. These diverse materials serve to make the pieces both playful and instructive." and continues: "The reveal that the manufactured material world is still part of the greater universe and that, unbeknowst to Bill Gates, semiconductor physics is unaccountably breeding in hidden places. Because they actually function as radios, they may help us to feel at home in the world. At any given time and place Frank Sinatra's voice can be heard in the radio waves."

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• media
• theory
• berlin
• sophienstrasse
• lecture
• discussion