We regularly touch and handle media devices. At the same time, media devices such as body scanners, car seat pressure sensors, and smart phones scan and touch us. In Horn, Henning Schmidgen reflects on the bidirectional nature of touch and the ways in which surfaces constitute sites of mediation between interior and exterior. Schmidgen uses the concept of "horn"—whether manifested as a rhinoceros horn or a musical instrument—to stand for both natural substances and artificial objects as spaces of tactility. He enters into creative dialogue with artists, scientists, and philosophers, ranging from Salvador Dalí, William Kentridge, and Rebecca Horn to Sigmund Freud, Walter Benjamin, and Marshall McLuhan, who plumb the complex interplay between tactility and technological and biological surfaces. Whether analyzing how Dalí conceived of images as tactile entities during his “rhinoceros phase” or examining the problem of tactility in Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, Schmidgen reconfigures understandings of the dynamic phenomena of touch in media.
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Henning Schmidgen reflects on the dynamic phenomena of touch in media, analyzing works by artists, scientists, and philosophers ranging from Salvador Dalí to Walter Benjamin, who each explore the interplay between tactility and technological and biological surfaces.
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Preface  vii Introduction  1 1. The Captured Unicorn  13 2. Impressions of Modernity  49 3. Rhinoceros Cybernetics  88 4. A Surface Medium Par Excellence  148 5. Horn and Time  192 Conclusion  240 Notes  251 Bibliography  273 Index  293
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"As a scholar of touch and technology but not, it must be said, of media, I was rarely surprised by the historical content or media examples. I was, however, consistently delighted by the deft argumentation, the rather bricolage- like assembly of themes and motifs, and the unexpected but convincing serendipities that connect them across the different media and their practitioners. . . . For the scholar interested in media and technology, this book serves as an entertaining crash course or manifesto in the history of tactile media."
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“In this prescient and urgent intervention, unicorns, rhinoceroses, and trumpet players guide us through an imagined exhibition of possible technical experiences. Using ‘horn’ as a structuring concept linking the materiality of bodies, the boundary of death and life, sensation, technology, and aesthetic practices, Henning Schmidgen creates a powerfully novel account of media. At a time when our lives have never been more mediated, Horn provides a necessary corrective to our stilted, unimaginative conceptions of the future world as either a society of control or a techno-utopia.”
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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9781478015109
Publisert
2022-01-21
Utgiver
Vendor
Duke University Press
Vekt
658 gr
Høyde
229 mm
Bredde
152 mm
Aldersnivå
P, 06
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Innbundet

Forfatter
Oversetter

Om bidragsyterne

Henning Schmidgen is Professor of Media Studies at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar and author of Bruno Latour in Pieces: An Intellectual Biography and The Helmholtz Curves: Tracing Lost Time.