Stephen Monteiro – författare

What makes our portable, networked personal media devices – smartphones, tablets, smartwatches – so irresistible? Reacting to our touch, voice, or gaze, seizing and keeping our attention with sounds, vibrations, and screen prompts, these objects construct an animated intimacy that builds trust and emotional dependence.Needy Media explores how features such as face recognition, awareness sensors, and touchscreens have developed and intersected, tying them to key concepts of psychology, language, and the body. Surveying products and practices across a half century, Stephen Monteiro argues that the appeal is as much about how media devices behave as it is about the information they convey. Monteiro traces a symbiotic overreliance – a neediness – between users and devices, fostered by personalized aspects of digital materiality. The physical and emotional bonds that emerge, he argues, not only cast our devices as loyal companions adaptable to our needs and idiosyncrasies; they also facilitate the corporate harvesting of massive amounts of personal data in the name of making technology more friendly, intuitive, and individualized.Raising important questions about privacy and power, Needy Media seeks answers in the complex and sensitive relationship between interface and body, a coupling that makes the networked object both an essential psychological presence and a lingering concern for our sense of self.

Cinema plays a major role in contemporary art, yet the deeper influence of its diverse historical forms on artistic practice has received little attention. Screen Presence explores the intersections of film, popular media, and art since the 1950s through the examples of four pivotal figures – Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Mona Hatoum and Douglas Gordon. While their film-related works may appear primarily as challenges to conventional cinema, these artists draw on overlooked forms of popular film culture that have been commonplace, and even dominant, in specific social contexts. Through a range of new sources, including advertisements, specialty magazines, postcards, technical guides and souvenir programs, Stephen Monteiro demonstrates the dependence of contemporary artists on cinema’s shifting applications and interpretations, offering a fresh understanding of the enduring impact of everyday media on how we make and view art.

Screen Presence explores the intersections of film, popular media and contemporary art through the examples of four internationally celebrated artists: Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Mona Hatoum and Douglas Gordon.

As mobile communication, social media, wireless networks, and flexible user interfaces become prominent topics in the study of media and culture, the screen emerges as a critical research area. This reader brings together insightful and influential texts from a variety of sources—theorists, researchers, critics, inventors, and artists—that explore the screen as a fundamental element not only in popular culture but also in our very understanding of society and the world. The Screen Media Reader is a foundational resource for studying the screen and its cultural impact. Through key contemporary and historical texts addressing the screen’s development and role in communications and the social sphere, it considers how the screen functions as an idea, an object, and an everyday experience. Reflecting a number of descriptive and analytical approaches, these essays illustrate the astonishing range and depth of the screen’s introduction and application in multiple media configurations and contexts. Together they demonstrate the long-standing influence of the screen as a cultural concept and communication tool that extends well beyond contemporary debates over screen saturation and addiction.