ground-making: the medium as environment
DESCRIPTION
Slides of my presentation at the McLuhan Galaxy, Barcelona May 2011TRANSCRIPT
Ground-making. The Medium As Environment
CARLO PERONI
BARCELLONA MAY2011
Aims of the Paper
Considering the media concept as a theoretical device
Developing a conceptual analysis
Proposing some concepts to set a new cultural framework
Presentation’s Structure
1. role of the media theory
2. interpretation of the medium as
environment
3. concepts for an ecological approach
Section 1
‘the content of any medium is another medium’
‘the message of any medium or technology is the change that it introduces into human affairs’
McLuhan, Understanding media
Local Theories
theory of literature
game studies
television studies
theory of art
Meta-theory
Media theory is a meta-theory of communication
Environments created by the interactions in the media system
Minimal definition of medium
Section 2
Summarazing the medium is:
a theoretical proposal that explains the effects of technology on the social body
a real space of communication becoming environment and, as such, can be experienced, occupied and changed
Opposition
Prosecution
Nature…
…Technology
[we used to have] the human world or artifice on one hand and nature on the other remained two distinctly separate entities.
Arendt
Unchained nature
Today we have begun to "create," as it were, that is, to unchain natural processes of our own (…), and instead of carefully surrounding the human artifice with defenses
against nature's elementary forces, keeping them as far as possible outside the man-made world, we have channeled these forces, along with their elementary power, into the world itself.
Arendt
No opposition
Social productio
n
hand made
vsnatural facts
self-producin
g
in the ecologies of communication these distinctions are no more valid
Section 3
Hybridization is the interpenetration of one medium by another
whenever two cultures, or two events, or two ideas are set in proximity to one another, an interplay takes place, a sort of magical change. The more unlike the interface, the greater the tension of the interchange
McLuhan
Hybridization
electric hybridization: the invasion of traditional environment by electric technologies
a community of people and and the electric environment they occupy create a psycho-ecology populated by intelligent actors
a psycho-ecology is an intelligent environment that behaves as a whole, manifesting a psychic depth.
Making aware
It has now been explained that media, or the extensions of man, are "make happen" agents, but not "make aware" agents. The hybridizing or compounding of these agents offers an especially favorable opportunity to notice their structural components and properties.
The hybrid or the meeting of two media is a moment of truth and revelation from which new form is born (...). The moment of the meeting of media is a moment of freedom and release from the ordinary trance and numbness imposed by them on our senses.
McLuhan
The Ground
Conclusions
world is more than just a physical environment, a "nature" transformed by the presence of human artifacts
variety of levels
actors can inhabit simultaneously different levels
it is not possible to establish a hierarchy where a level (for example, the material one) is more helpful in foundation than others
