Alexander R. Galloway – medieninitiative

RESCHEDULED: Alexander R. Galloway at Critical Making Collaborative (via Zoom), April 25, 2023

Please join the Critical Making Collaborative at Stanford for a presentation titled “Crystals, Genes, and Wool: Three Case Studies in Algorithmic Re-enactment” by Alexander R. Galloway, Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. This free event will take on Zoom on Tuesday, April 25th, from 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm PDT.

An algebraic textile pattern from 1947, a cellular automata simulation from 1953, a tabletop game from 1977 – in this online workshop, we will explore three lost or otherwise overlooked pieces of code from the deep history of computational culture. Using an experimental method dubbed “algorithmic re-enactment,” we will study these artifacts in their own historical context, while also bringing them to life again using current tools.

Alexander R. Galloway is a writer and computer programmer. He is the author of several books on digital media and critical theory, including most recently Uncomputable: Play and Politics in the Long Digital Age (Verso, 2021). Since 2001 he has worked with the Radical Software Group on Carnivore, Kriegspiel, and other software projects.

This event is co-sponsored by the Department of Art and Art History at Stanford. Please RSVP here to receive a Zoom link by email.

“Crystals, Genes, and Wool: Three Case Studies in Algorithmic Re-enactment” — Alexander R. Galloway at Critical Making Collaborative, March 8, 2023

Please join the Critical Making Collaborative at Stanford for a presentation titled “Crystals, Genes, and Wool: Three Case Studies in Algorithmic Re-enactment” by Alexander R. Galloway, Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. This free event will take place in Room 115 at the McMurtry Building (355 Roth Way, Stanford, CA 94305) on Wednesday, March 8th, from 3:00 pm to 5:00 pm.

An algebraic textile pattern from 1947, a cellular automata simulation from 1953, a tabletop game from 1977 – in this workshop, we will explore three lost or otherwise overlooked pieces of code from the deep history of computational culture. Using an experimental method dubbed “algorithmic re-enactment,” we will study these artifacts in their own historical context, while also bringing them to life again using current tools.

Alexander R. Galloway is a writer and computer programmer. He is author of several books on digital media and critical theory, including most recently Uncomputable: Play and Politics in the Long Digital Age (Verso, 2021). Since 2001 he has worked with the Radical Software Group on Carnivore, Kriegspiel, and other software projects.

This event is co-sponsored by the Department of Art and Art History at Stanford.

“No Deconstruction without Computers” — Alexander R. Galloway at Digital Aesthetics Workshop, March 7, 2023

Please join us at the Digital Aesthetics Workshop on Tuesday March 7th, 5-7PM, for “‘No Deconstruction without Computers’: Learning to Code with Derrida and Kittler” with Alexander Galloway. We will meet in the Stanford Humanities Center Board Room, as usual. This event is graciously co-sponsored by the Critical Making Collaborative, Art & Art History Department, and Communication Department.

Please register here if attending in person: https://tinyurl.com/mt5n58rf
Zoom, if unavailable in person: https://tinyurl.com/2jyr5f2d

Find a description of the talk below, and a poster for lightweight distribution. We look forward to seeing you there (and at M. Beatrice Fazi’s event next Tuesday the 28th) !

“‘No Deconstruction without Computers’: Learning to Code with Derrida and Kittler”
Alexander R. Galloway

What are the machines that determine thinking? We may approach the question in a number of ways. The typical approach is to consider (or perhaps even craft) a philosophy of media. This comes under the name of media studies or media theory, where media artifacts are taken as the objects of thinking. Yet there is also an alternate approach, the media of philosophy, where the a priori conditions of philosophy themselves take center stage, engulfing thought as a kind of object. For if “media determine our situation,” as Friedrich Kittler once notoriously put it, is it not also true that philosophies shift according to the changing conditions of media technology? In this lecture we will explore the history of philosopher’s devices drawn from the domain of machines and computers, while focusing attention on two of them: Jacques Derrida’s Macintosh Plus and Friedrich Kittler’s MS-DOS machine (he migrated later to Gentoo Linux). This will serve as a backdrop for a different kind of inquiry, not simply that our writing instruments contribute to our thoughts, but also that our thoughts themselves are instruments.