Post media at the ICA– German new media philosophy.

26/05/11

‘Media does not distribute sense or convey meaning, if it does it is a secondary

function’.

This talk was curated by Peter Osbourne of the philosophical department of

Kingston University. Speakers included Boris Groys, Lorenz Engell, Bernhard
Siegert and Eric Alliez. Groys, Engell and Siegert were there to help clear the
German philosophy of new media. Each speaker delivered a paper with their
position and concerns regarding the philosophy of new media.

Boris talked first announcing that many of his students now talk about the ‘death
of the subject’ that initially sounds as ambiguously utopian as ‘the death of the
audience’. There is no longer a subject, as we attempt to find ways to analyse
communication mediums. It has been long noted that content and subjects are
not the analysis, it’s the form that carries the content that contains the mechanics
of new media theory. So nothing changed since McLuhan released ‘the medium is
the massage’ in 1967. Groys then connected Hegel and talked about society never
being able to master its own desire. He talked of a capitalised subject where the
content provider was the master, we are serving subjects to the Internet
agencies (facebook, google etc). These agencies that have operational control
where the subject surrenders to these networked agencies. This still felt like
familiar territory, lefty paranoia of corporate media giants. Groys pushed further
the need to analyse the mechanics of these operational agencies, by relating
them to current news regarding the arrest of Julian Assange. Groys quoted
Assange’s comment on Wikileaks and how it allows information to flow free in an
anarchic way. However this is example emphasises the importance of the
medium over the message, as Julian and wikileaks is more discussed than the
content it exposes.

Groys ended his paper by asking how the subject can challenge being a servant of
the oppressive systems of the media provider.

Lorenz Engell illustrated the trend of media studies to attempt to classify the
properties of media, when the most important element of understanding media
theory is in identifying the processes and operations of the medium. This seems
pointless when media is so self-aware already, medias self-awareness makes it
stronger. Through media we have an inter production of operative assembles
that reproduce objects, artefacts and ourselves. The subject is the effect of all
these tactile operations. ‘Media does not distribute sense or convey meaning, if it
does it is a secondary function’.

Bernard Siegel ‘The map is not the territory’. Siegel took a historical abstraction
of new media theory, telling a mythical tale of when a King desired a map so life-
size, to a 1:1 scale. Maps are instruments that portray spaces of representation.
Maps have proved useful artefacts as markers to how society interpreted the
semiotics of the world that surrounded them. Siegel suggests that the media
forms of today will be studied as portrayals of society during this time. Because
like maps in ancient history they provide information on how meaning and
understanding were communicated. They are agents of subjective constitution.
Once again emphasising that the conditions of meaning are more important that
the representation of meaning. This is nicely observed with this comment; ‘There
was calculating before the concept of numbers, people were using their fingers to
count before understanding of math’

Overall the discussion was very restricted in its robustness and there left no time
to open up interesting points made. ICA doubled their money again by
appropriately creating a live feed short circuit; we watched a live stream of the
discussion happening next door. Im glad I got this robust, complicated
introduction to German new media philosophy and will be reading into it some
more to see what new it is saying and what exactly ‘post media’ is.