Lorenz Engell - Böcker

Media philosophy can only be found and revealed in media themselves. The essays collected in this volume thus approach television as a medium both of thought and of action in its own right. Through its specific forms and practices, television implements and reflects on aspects of time, such as synchronicity and succession, seriality and event, history and memory. Additionally, television stages new forms of thinking causality and agency, subject-object relations, tactility, choice, and other founding concepts of everyday experience as well as of outstanding philosophical relevance. In the course of media evolution, television organizes the transition from the analogue to the digital. Last not least, by conceiving of itself, television offers a source of finally thinking through television.

Television is the most powerful system of images in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Nonetheless, TV has attained only little philosophical attention so far, especially compared to other (visual) media such as film. This book looks at TV as what happens on the screen and beyond it; which is mainly the operation of switching images. It therefore proposes a new definition of TV as the first picture that can be switched on, off, and over, which stresses that TV is more tactile than visual. Through the operation of switching, TV figures the world from within and as the course of its figuration. This is grasped here by the term of “ontography”. Through the ongoing interlacing and bridging of “TV 1.0” (the image is being switched) and “TV 2.0” (the image is a switch), TV exponentially increases the production and circulation of images. It transforms the world and itself from an analogue state to a digital one and from central perspectivism to pluri-perspective. In terms of time, through switching and the switch, it develops and reworks new temporal orderings, such as instantaneity, synchronicity, flow, and seriality. TV makes its own history. In space, it creates a mediasphere as its habitat and hence new forms of being-in-the-world, of proximity and distance, and scale. Anthropologically, it works on what a subject and an object is, on what makes the human being, and ontographically, how it is possible that there is something at all instead of nothing: through switch-images.

Media and human modes of existence are always already intertwined and interdependent. The notion of the anthropocene has further stimulated a new examination of ideas about human agency and responsibility. Various approaches all emphasize relational concepts and the situatedness and embodiment of human—and also non-human—existences and experiences. Their common interest has shifted from any so-called ‘human nature’ to the multitude of cultural, topographical, technical, historical, social, discursive, and media formats with which human existences are entangled.This volume brings together a range of thinkers from international backgrounds and puts these important reflections and ideas in the spotlight. More specifically, the volume explores the concept of "anthropomedial entanglements." It fosters an understanding of human bodies, experiences, and media as being immanently entangled and mutually constituting, prior to any possible distinction between them. The different contributions thus open up a dialogue between empirical case studies and media-historical research on the one hand and the conceptual work of media and cultural philosophies and aesthetics on the other hand.

Media and human modes of existence are always already intertwined and interdependent. The notion of the anthropocene has further stimulated a new examination of ideas about human agency and responsibility. Various approaches all emphasize relational concepts and the situatedness and embodiment of human—and also non-human—existences and experiences. Their common interest has shifted from any so-called ‘human nature’ to the multitude of cultural, topographical, technical, historical, social, discursive, and media formats with which human existences are entangled.This volume brings together a range of thinkers from international backgrounds and puts these important reflections and ideas in the spotlight. More specifically, the volume explores the concept of "anthropomedial entanglements." It fosters an understanding of human bodies, experiences, and media as being immanently entangled and mutually constituting, prior to any possible distinction between them. The different contributions thus open up a dialogue between empirical case studies and media-historical research on the one hand and the conceptual work of media and cultural philosophies and aesthetics on the other hand.

Television is the most powerful system of images in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Nonetheless, TV has attained only little philosophical attention so far, especially compared to other (visual) media such as film. This book looks at TV as what happens on the screen and beyond it; which is mainly the operation of switching images. It therefore proposes a new definition of TV as the first picture that can be switched on, off, and over, which stresses that TV is more tactile than visual. Through the operation of switching, TV figures the world from within and as the course of its figuration. This is grasped here by the term of “ontography”. Through the ongoing interlacing and bridging of “TV 1.0” (the image is being switched) and “TV 2.0” (the image is a switch), TV exponentially increases the production and circulation of images. It transforms the world and itself from an analogue state to a digital one and from central perspectivism to pluri-perspective. In terms of time, through switching and the switch, it develops and reworks new temporal orderings, such as instantaneity, synchronicity, flow, and seriality. TV makes its own history. In space, it creates a mediasphere as its habitat and hence new forms of being-in-the-world, of proximity and distance, and scale. Anthropologically, it works on what a subject and an object is, on what makes the human being, and ontographically, how it is possible that there is something at all instead of nothing: through switch-images.

Ontographies proposes a radical shift, moving beyond the crisis of representation by embracing a philosophy of immanence, and offering a vital new perspective for understanding our media-saturated world.In light of recent media developments in algorithmic, digital and picture-based mediaspheres, we must accept that received models of representation (in politics, in the realm of signs, in philosophies of consciousness) have long since collapsed. Nothing stands for anything any longer; the world has a massive media ontological problem. This book provides readers with a way to, if not cope with this problem, then at least map it and thereby to think beyond it. The volume sets out the concept of ontographies as a completely different form of access to the world, one that can overtake (and ultimately replace) the media ontological challenge of our time.Through a rich tapestry of examples—from Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited and Oscar Cavandoli’s La Linea to analogue photography and algorithmic computation—Ontographies argues that the world does not operate via hierarchical structures of signification (signifier/signified, beings/Being, subject/object) but by way of immanent, operative processes of inscription that blur the boundaries between recording and reality.Whatever exists comes into being through graphic operations: ontography. Indeed, the world exists solely insofar as it operatively records and describes or is being recorded and described. This compelling, refreshing book presents a bold and provocative intervention in media philosophy, challenging the dominant frameworks of representation, ontology and mediation.