Non-correlational media theory?

In chapter 6 of my dissertation, I ask: “what would it mean to think media beyond correlationism?” In the above video, a computer (or code) repeatedly asks another computer (or code): “What would it mean to think media non-correlationally?”

According to the (presumably human-generated) description of the video on YouTube, the famous “Eliza algorithm discusses about object oriented ontology with another code that selects sentences from a corpus of related material. Result is an object oriented (alien) version of Turing test.”

Interestingly, though not surprisingly, Eliza has no answer to the question of what it would mean to think media non-correlationally. She/it responds with other questions: “What comes to mind when you ask that?”, “Why do you ask?”, “Have you asked anyone else?”, or “Does that question interest you?” On the whole, fair questions, I suppose.

[Incidentally, I just googled the question as worded by the computer, i.e. “What would it mean to think media non-correlationally?”, to see what corpus the code is drawing on. Interestingly, it seems that those were in fact my own words, which I posted in a comment on Jussi Parikka’s blog Machinology back in December (his post here: “OOQ — Object-Oriented-Questions”). I’m intrigued now to know who posted the video — who the YouTube user TheTuib is, if in fact it’s a human person…]

Crosseyed and Painless

Above, “Crosseyed and Painless” by the Talking Heads: this is the video which set the stage for Timothy Morton’s energetic and thought-provoking talk at the Nonhuman Turn conference the other day (you can find a video of the complete talk here, and the slides are posted on Morton’s blog here). The music video itself is amazing enough to warrant posting it here separately, though, and I am quite sympathetic to Morton’s rereading of its so-called “postmodernism” in terms of an awareness of the nonhumans that are progressively reshaping our world (in the guises of capital and ecological disaster, for example, but also media changes). Enjoy!

Object-Oriented Gaga #c21nonhuman

Above is a screencast of my talk, “Object-Oriented Gaga: Theorizing the Nonhuman Mediation of Twenty-First Century Celebrity,” which I am giving right now (that is, simultaneous with this posting, at 2:30 pm US Central Time on May 5, 2012) in the panel “Queer/Feminist/Gaga” at the “Nonhuman Turn” conference at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Center for 21st Century Studies.

(For a larger view, click here to go straight to the video on YouTube.)

Nonhuman Turn: Steven Shaviro

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Plenary talk by Steven Shaviro, recorded May 4, 2012, at the “Nonhuman Turn” conference at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Center for 21st Century Studies.

Nonhuman Turn: Richard Grusin

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Conference introduction by Richard Grusin, recorded May 4, 2012, at the “Nonhuman Turn” conference at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Center for 21st Century Studies.