Description

Book Synopsis

How are human actions shaped by the materiality of media?

Contemporary media leads us more than ever to an ‘acting at a distance,’ an acting entangled with the materiality of communication and the mediality of transmission. This book explores this crucial phenomenon thereby introducing urgent questions of human interaction, the binding and breaking of time and space, and the entanglement of the material and the immaterial.

Three vivid inquiries deal with histories and theories of mediality and materiality: John Durham Peters looks at episodes of simultaneity and synchronization. Christina Vagt discusses the agency of computer models against the backdrop of aesthetic theories by Henri Bergson and Hans Blumenberg, and Florian Sprenger discusses early electrical transmissions through copper wire and the temporality of instantaneity.



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"An astute diagnosis and indispensable analysis."—International Journal of Communication

Action at a Distance

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    A Paperback / softback by John Durham Peters, Florian Sprenger, Christina Vagt

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      Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
      Publication Date: Publication Date: 23/06/2020
      ISBN13: 9781517910099, 978-1517910099
      ISBN10: 1517910099
      Also in:
      Media studies

      Description

      Book Synopsis

      How are human actions shaped by the materiality of media?

      Contemporary media leads us more than ever to an ‘acting at a distance,’ an acting entangled with the materiality of communication and the mediality of transmission. This book explores this crucial phenomenon thereby introducing urgent questions of human interaction, the binding and breaking of time and space, and the entanglement of the material and the immaterial.

      Three vivid inquiries deal with histories and theories of mediality and materiality: John Durham Peters looks at episodes of simultaneity and synchronization. Christina Vagt discusses the agency of computer models against the backdrop of aesthetic theories by Henri Bergson and Hans Blumenberg, and Florian Sprenger discusses early electrical transmissions through copper wire and the temporality of instantaneity.



      Trade Review

      "An astute diagnosis and indispensable analysis."—International Journal of Communication

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