Jussi Parikka – medieninitiative

“The Environmental Data Stack” — Jussi Parikka at Digital Aesthetics Workshop, January 7, 2025

We’re pleased to announce our first event of 2025! Please join us in welcoming Jussi Parikka, who will present on “The Environmental Data Stack” on Tuesday, Jan 7, 5-7pm PT. The event will take place in the Stanford Humanities Center Board Room, where refreshments will be served. We look forward to seeing you there after the holiday break!

Zoom link for those unable to join in-person: tinyurl.com/ykhvtu63

Abstract:

This talk tests the notion of “environmental data stack” as a particular kind of a methodological problem space (Lury 2021). The term defines the multiple levels of “problematics” of grounding environmental data in alternating scales of reference, in different technological forms of capture of data, and in various interacting registers of sensing. The environmental data stack builds on existing work in critical data studies where the situated, even spatialized notions of data are developed – and it also lends itself to a sense of the politics and aesthetics of data, where aesthetics is not necessarily about art (it can be though) but about the wider context of materials, sensing, and modeling. This work relates to my interest in cultural techniques of data and software studies, including the intersection of ecomedia and computational practices. The talk will thus feature some examples from recent and on-going work in different projects such as the Design and Aesthetics for Enviornmental Data (https://cc.au.dk/en/dafed/).

Bio:

Jussi Parikka is professor of Digital Aesthetics and Culture at Aarhus University where he leads the Digital Aesthetics Research Centre (DARC) as well as is the founding co-director of the Environmental Media and Aesthetics -research program. He also holds a visiting professorship at Winchester School of Art (University of Southampton). His books have addressed media archaeology, the ecological underpinnings of discourses of digital culture from animals to geology, and most recently, transformations of visual culture. The more recent books include Operational Images (2023) as well as the co-authored Living Surfaces: Images, Plants, and Environments of Media (2024, with Abelardo Gil-Fournier). Both are available as open access. His books have been translated into 12 languages. Currently he is developing a new project on datafication of agriculture.

This event is generously co-sponsored by The Europe Center.

Out Now: Network Ecologies

Network Ecologies is a great new open-access collection edited by Amanda Starling Gould and Florian Wiencek and published by the Duke Franklin Humanities Institute. The collection takes advantage of the Scalar publishing platform to include a variety of media alongside scholarly texts. Among other things, it includes a collection of artworks by Karin Denson and myself, which we developed for an exhibit at Duke in 2015 (also organized by Amanda Starling Gould) and which grew out of a collaboration with the Duke S-1: Speculative Sensation Lab. There is also an archive of videos from a 2013 symposium, including contributions from Jussi Parikka, Mark Hansen, Stephanie Boluk, Patrick LeMieux, and many others. Lots of great things to discover here–check it out!

Imagining Media Change — Photos from the Symposium

Here are some images from our symposium “Imagining Media Change,” which took place on June 13, 2013:

Above, Ruth Mayer opening the symposium with some nice words of welcome.

Jussi Parikka talking about “Cultural Techniques of Cognitive Capitalism: On Change and Recurrence” in his wonderful opening keynote.

Florian Groß delivering his talk “The Only Constant is Change: American Television and Media Change Revisited” — with examples from Mad Men.

Bettina Soller on hypertext and fanfic in her talk “How We Imagined Electronic Literature and Who Died: Looking at Fan Fiction to See What Became of the Future of Writing”.

Me, Shane Denson, on escalators and “On NOT Imagining Media Change”.

Wanda Strauven delivering the second keynote, “Pretend (&) Play: Children as Media Archaeologists” — a lively talk with great examples!

Christina Meyer talking about the Yellow Kid and “Technology – Economy – Mediality: Nineteenth Century American Newspaper Comics”.

Ilka Brasch talking about early film serials and “Facilitating Media Change: The Operational Aesthetic as a Receptive Mode”.

Alexander Starre wrapping up the symposium with an excellent talk on “Evolving Technologies, Enduring Media: Material Irony in Octave Uzanne’s ‘The End of Books’”.

And finally, here are a few more random pictures:

Symposium Program: “Imagining Media Change”

Here is the final program for our symposium “Imagining Media Change” (print version above, and links to each speaker’s abstract below):

Imagining Media Change — June 13, 2013, Leibniz Universität Hannover

9:30 — Welcome, Ruth Mayer (Chair of American Studies, Hannover)

9:45 – 11:15 — Keynote I, Jussi Parikka (Southampton): “Cultural Techniques of Cognitive Capitalism: On Change and Recurrence”

11:15 – 11:45 — coffee break

11:45 – 13:15 — Panel I:

11:45 — Florian Groß (Hannover): “The Only Constant is Change: American Television and Media Change Revisited”

12:15 — Bettina Soller (Göttingen): “How We Imagined Electronic Literature and Who Died: Looking at Fan Fiction to See What Became of the Future of Writing”

12:45 — Shane Denson (Hannover): “On NOT Imagining Media Change”

13:15 – 15:00 — lunch break

15:00 – 16:30 — Keynote II, Wanda Strauven (Amsterdam): “Pretend (&) Play: Children as Media Archaeologists”

16:30 – 17:00 — coffee break

17:00 – 18:30 — Panel II:

17:00 — Christina Meyer (Hannover): “Technology – Economy – Mediality: Nineteenth Century American Newspaper Comics”

17:30 — Ilka Brasch (Hannover): “Facilitating Media Change: The Operational Aesthetic as a Receptive Mode”

18:00 — Alexander Starre (Berlin): “Evolving Technologies, Enduring Media: Material Irony in Octave Uzanne’s ‘The End of Books'”

19:30 — symposium dinner

Jussi Parikka, “Cultural Techniques of Cognitive Capitalism”

Abstract for Jussi Parikka’s keynote talk at the symposium “Imagining Media Change” (June 13, 2013, Leibniz Universität Hannover):

Cultural Techniques of Cognitive Capitalism: On Change and Recurrence

Jussi Parikka

This talk has primarily two functions and aims. Firstly, it discusses the concept of cognitive capitalism from the perspective of its constituent cultural techniques. It proposes the ever so slightly unholy wedding together of post-fordist political theory with some currents in German media theory. This is done in order to discuss some of the mediatic aspects of the notion of cognitive capitalism (Yann Moulier Boutang). Secondly, the talk discusses media cultural change and the temporalities in which such notions like cognitive capitalism are distributed. By discussing software culture it argues for the various temporalities of change that are always at play in media cultural perspective.

Imagining Media Archaeology

On Wednesday, June 5, 2013 (at 6:00 pm in room 608 in the Conti-Hochhaus), the Film & TV Reading Group will meet to discuss two texts relevant to the larger theme of “Imagining Media Archaeology” (part of a semester-long series of events detailed here). The texts are:

1) Jussi Parikka, “Imaginary Media: Mapping Weird Objects.” In:What Is Media Archaeology? Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2012. 41-62.

2) Wanda Strauven, “The Observer’s Dilemma: To Touch or Not to Touch?” In: Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications, and Implications. Eds. Erkki Huhtamo and Jussi Parikka. Berkeley: U of California P, 2011. 148-163.

In case you missed it: both Jussi Parikka and Wanda Strauven will be keynote speakers at our symposium “Imagining Media Change,” which will be held on June 13, 2013 — for more info, check here and here.

As for the Film & TV Reading Group: we are always happy to welcome new participants to our informal discussion group! For more information, please contact Felix Brinker.

Imagining Media Change — Symposium Poster

[UPDATE: See here for the complete symposium program and abstracts.]

Recently, I posted the description for the symposium on “Imagining Media Change” that we’re organizing this June, with keynote speakers Jussi Parikka and Wanda Strauven — part of this semester’s larger series of events. Now I am proud to present the poster for the symposium (designed by Ilka Brasch and Svenja Fehlhaber), which includes an overview of the schedule and speakers. A more detailed schedule, including the titles of talks, will be made available soon.

Symposium: Imagining Media Change

[UPDATE: See here for the complete symposium program and abstracts.]

Imagining Media Change

Symposium of the Initiative for Interdisciplinary Media Research and the American Studies department at the Leibniz University of Hannover, 13 June 2013 (Niedersachsensaal, Conti-Campus)

In the midst of the ongoing digitalization of our contemporary media environment, recent media and cultural studies have developed a renewed interest in the production and staging of technological innovation, in the occurrence and impact of media change, and in the ways these transformations inform the production, circulation, reception, and aesthetics of popular texts and media forms. The emergence of ‘new media’ in particular, it would seem, prompts us to rethink the role of mediating technologies within social and cultural spheres, and to explore how our everyday lives are transformed by a newly digitalized technical infrastructure. Such explorations are necessarily reflexive, however, as our attempts to imagine media change are themselves mediated by cultural texts and technologies in the grip of change. Dynamics of medial self-historicization guide our very thinking about media history: commercial logics, in particular, emphasize the superiority of the new, attest to the inevitability of the past’s obsolescence, and seek to captivate our imaginations with branded visions of the media-technological future. Seeking to look beyond these pressures, a reflexive engagement with recent media change is therefore called upon to reevaluate the impact of previous transitions and transformations throughout media history, and to excavate, if possible, discontinuities and ruptures in the development of modern media as they relate to broader social, cultural, and material processes of change. From a media-archaeological perspective, the history of media emerges not as a straightforward, linear process of technological innovation and implementation, but rather as a discontinuous series of media crises and negotiations of change. Understanding the uneven historical emergence and transformation of different types of media thus promises a renewed understanding not only of historical media, but also of contemporary media change and our present (in)ability to imagine its scope and impact. Crucial to this enterprise is an appreciation of reflexivity itself – a recognition of the fact that when media change, they also change our imaginations, including our imagination of media change. In the face of corporate and other interests that seek to capitalize on this logic and to steer our imaginations of the digital transition for their own benefit, what’s ultimately at stake in a media-archaeological excavation of our medial past and present is therefore nothing less than a political question: Will we be the subjects or merely the objects of “imagining media change”?

The symposium “Imagining Media Change” takes a broad view of media-historical and counter-historical developments and transformations since the nineteenth century, focusing in particular on the reflexive interactions between media undergoing change and media being used to imagine the parameters, effects, and significance of media-technological transformations. We are interested in historical and contemporary visions of change as they are articulated in or pertain to a wide range of media (including film, television, literature, and other visual, aural, textual, or computational media). The one-day symposium aims to bring together a variety of disciplinary perspectives and interests and to facilitate discussion of the material, political, aesthetic, and speculative dimensions of media change. Keynote lectures will be held by Jussi Parikka (University of Southampton, UK) and Wanda Strauven (University of Amsterdam, NL).

For more information about the symposium “Imagining Media Change,” please contact felix.brinker@engsem.uni-hannover.de or refer to the events page (http://medieninitiative.wordpress.com/events/).

Film & TV Reading Group: Imagining Technological Innovation

In the summer semester 2013, the meetings of the Film & TV Reading Group will be organized around thematic units related to this semester’s overarching theme of “Imagining Media Change.” The first meeting, coming up on April 10, is devoted to “Imagining Technological Innovation.” (It will be followed by “Imagining Cinematic Transformation” on May 8 and “Imagining Media Archaeology” on June 5).

The texts for the first session are:

Franco Piperno, “Technological Innovation and Sentimental Education” (in: Radical Thought in Italy. A Potential Politics. Eds. Paolo Virno and Michael Hardt. Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. 122-130.)

and

Jussi Parikka, “Introduction: Cartographies of the Old and New” (in: What Is Media Archaeology? Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2012. 1-18.)

We are always happy to welcome new participants to our informal discussion group! For more information, please contact Felix Brinker.

Imagining Media Change

This coming semester, the Initiative for Interdisciplinary Media Research is proud to present a series of events organized around the topic “Imagining Media Change.” The flyer above (click for a larger view) details these events, which include a series of film screenings, thematically focused discussion groups, and a symposium featuring keynotes by Jussi Parikka and Wanda Strauven!

More details to follow soon…