Aesthetics, Digital Studies and Bernard Stiegler frames the intertwined relationship between artistic endeavours and scientific fields and their sociopolitical implications. Each chapter is either an explication of, or a critique of, some aspect of Bernard Stiegler’s technological philosophy; as it is his technological-political-aesthetical-ethical theorisations which form the philosophical foundation of the volume.
Emerging scholars bring critical new reflections to the subject area, while more established academics, researchers and practitioners outline the mutating nature of aesthetics within historical and theoretical frameworks. Not only is interdisciplinarity a prevailing topic at work within this collection, but so too is there a delineation of the mutating, hybrid role inhabited by the arts practitioner – at once engineer, scientist and artist – in the changing landscape of digital cultural production.
Table of Contents:
“Je suis philosophe”: A personal note to Bernard Stiegler
Noel Fitzpatrick (Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland)
Digital Studies and Aesthetics: Neganthropology
Bernard Stiegler (Centre Georges-Pompidou, France) interviewed by Noel Fitzpatrick (Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland)
Introduction: Prolegomenon to a Digital Studies Manifesto
Gerald Moore (Durham University, UK)
I – Tertiary Retention
Introduction
Cormac Deane (Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Dublin, Ireland), Néill O’Dwyer (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland), and Michael O’Hara (Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland)
1. Organology, Grammatisation and Exosomatic Memory in Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape
Néill O’Dwyer (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland)
2. A Therapeutics of the Image
Michael O’Hara (Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland)
3. The Control Room Imaginary and the Production of Sovereignty
Cormac Deane (Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Dublin, Ireland)
II – On Pharmacology
Introduction
Aidan Delaney (Middlesex University, UK) and Jeanette Doyle (Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland)
4. Film Studies Between Ekphrasis and Quotation
Aidan Delaney (Middlesex University, UK)
5. Thirty Years: An Analysis of the Exhibition Art Post-Internet through the Work of Bernard Stiegler with Reference to Jean-François Lyotard’s Exhibition Les Immatériaux
Jeanette Doyle (Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland)
6. Pokémon UNÉSGO: Grammatization, Gamification and Listification in Contemporary Culture
Connell Vaughan (Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland)
III – The Neganthropocene
Introduction
Noel Fitzpatrick (Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland)
7. Pregnant Pause: Technological Disruption and the Neganthropic Aesthetics of Landscape in Ireland’s Borderland
El Putnam (Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland)
8. Mischievous Hermes: Digital Hermeneutics and Stiegler’s Therapeutics
Noel Fitzpatrick (Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland)
Notes on Contributors
Bibliography
Index
About the Author :
Noel Fitzpatrick is the Head of Research at the College of Arts and Tourism at Technological University Dublin, Ireland, and the Dean of the Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media. He is regularly invited to speak at, and host, seminars internationally and is visiting lecturer at Saint Lucas University, Antwerp, Belgium. Noel is a member of Ars Industrialis, (Founded by Bernard Stiegler) and is a founding member of the Digital Studies network at the l’institut de recherche et innovation (IRI) at the Pompidou Centre in Paris. He is also the co-editor of the journal in|print.
Néill O’Dwyer is an artist and practice-based research fellow at the Arts Technology Research Lab, in the Department of Drama, at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. He is a co-editor of The Performing Subject in the Space of Technology: Through the Virtual, Towards the Real (2015). He is a member of the international Digital Studies Network initiated by the Institute of Research and Innovation, at the Pompidou Centre, and he is an associate researcher of the Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media.
Michael O’Hara is an artist and a Lecturer in Sculpture at Technological University Dublin, Ireland. He has been an active researcher with both the Aesthetics Seminar Group and Digital Studies Group for the past six years. His main research interests include developing a phenomenology of digital technologies that critically analyses the materiality of such technologies. Specifically, he is interested in how digital technologies foreground computation as a governing principal that both mediate and cultivate new types of object relations.
Review :
I warmly recommend this volume. Stiegler’s perspective is one of the deepest critique of digital capitalism and, at the same time, one of the strongest proposal for a new kind of technological development, especially in the social and academic fields. The book is not only able to fully represent such a perspective, but it is also a way to improve both Stiegler’s perspective and the ongoing research in digital arts.
Aesthetics, Digital Studies and Bernard Stiegler offers an interesting focus on Stieglerian philosophy, passing through epistemology, politics and the arts. This strong theoretical approach keeps together voices from different authors and perspectives, all of which cover an important lack in the several publications concerning Stiegler’s philosophy, that is, aesthetics and the arts. Being this one of the main concerns of the French philosopher, the book offers an important introduction to this field.
