Keywords:
materiality
;
waste
;
materials
;
energetics
;
ecosophy
Description / Table of Contents:
Medianatures picks up from Donna Haraway’s idea of naturecultures – the topological continuum between nature and culture, the material entwining and enfolding of various agencies, meanings and interactions. Medianatures gives the concept of naturecultures a specific emphasis, and that emphasis is at the core of this living book. It is a useful concept and framework for investigating some of the ways in which our electronic and high-tech media culture is entwined with a variety of material agencies. The notion of ‘materiality’ is taken here in a literal sense to refer, for instance, to ‘plasma reactions and ion implantation’ (Yoshida, 1994: 105) – as in processes of semiconductor fabrication, or to an alternative list of media studies objects and components which are studied from an e-waste management perspective: ‘metal, motor/compressor, cooling, plastic, insulation, glass, LCD, rubber, wiring/electrical, concrete, transformer, magnetron, textile, circuit board, fluorescent lamp, incandescent lamp, heating element, thermostat, brominated flamed retardant (BFR)-containing plastic, batteries, CFC/HCFC/HFC/HC, external electric cables, refractory ceramic fibers, radioactive substances and electrolyte capacitors (over L/D 25 mm)’, and which themselves are constituted from a range of materials – plastics, wood, plywood, copper, aluminum, silver, gold, palladium, lead, mercury, arsenic, cadmium, selenium, hexavalent chromium and flame retardants (Pinto, 2008).
In short, media are of nature, and return to nature – where the production process for our media devices, from screens to circuits, networks to interfaces, involves the standardization and mass-mobilization of minerals and other materialities. Discarded media technologies are themselves part of such a regime of natural ‘things’ – whether picked apart in an Asian recycling village, or then left to decay in urban or rural places. The natural affords our cultural agencies and assemblages – including media practices and concrete devices – and all of that comes back to nature. The articles selected express this materiality at the core of media technological culture, and the various ecological ties these themes share with the current political economy. They range from perspectives in environmental sciences concerning e-waste and the management of electronic media remains to computer science and ideas in green computing – as well as showcasing articles and reports about the production and dismantling of things such as Cathode Ray Tubes and LCD-displays. Hence, this living book is not only about life, but also about death and dead media – but dead media in a very concrete sense of media as the death of nature, biological processes and organisms (including humans).
URL:
http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Medianatures
Language:
English
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