Becoming-media: Galileo's Telescope

Material encounters and media events: what kind of mathematics can a body do?

“…Media make things readable, audible, visible, perceptible, but in doing so they also have a tendency to erase themselves and their constitutive sensory function, making themselves imperceptible and 'anesthetic'. (Vogl, 2007, p. 16) Media events play a significant role in redefining what sensory perception entailsindeed perception is a media event whereby the senses are created anew (Vogl, 2007). Building on my previous work on the mathematical event (de Freitas, 2012(de Freitas, , 2013 and my work with Nathalie Sinclair on inclusive materialism and dis/ability (2014, in press), this paper delves further into some of the pertinent philosophical literature informing this work.…”

“…The term media event refers to the often overlooked material media involved at such moments, including paper, dot-matrix printers, blackboards, and multi-touch ipads. I follow Vogl (2007) and others in materialist media studies in using the term media event to emphasize the event-nature of these material encounters:…”

Targeted killing and pattern-of-life analysis: weaponised media

“…It has often been pointed out that, notwithstanding their ostensible ‘precision’, the high-tech applications related to targeted killings come with a considerable scope for error (see, for instance, Cavallaro et al, 2012; Chamayou, 2015: 49–51; Mazzetti and Schmitt, 2015; Serle, 2015), oftentimes drawing the wrong conclusions from the inferences based on algorithmic calculations and, for that matter, from the judgments of human beings, which is inextricably inscribed in these highly complex assemblages of humans and machines (see Suchman and Weber, 2016). These technologies constitute a specific field of visibility that, in becoming recognisable as an emerging media function, reveals the very conditions of observation that it implies (Vogl, 2008). According to Joseph Vogl, media cannot be reduced to singular objects or technologies, but comprise a complex formation of material, discursive, practical and theoretical elements.…”

“…According to Joseph Vogl, media cannot be reduced to singular objects or technologies, but comprise a complex formation of material, discursive, practical and theoretical elements. It is one of the defining characteristics of such ‘becoming-media’ that generates what he calls an ‘anaesthetic field’: Within the event of an emerging media function ‘the relation of the visible to the invisible’ is made explicit (Vogl, 2008: 21). The point of media analysis, in this view, is not to focus on what a medium makes perceptible, on the ‘aesthetic of the data and information provided by a medium, but rather in the anaesthetic side of a media process’ (Vogl, 2008: 20).…”

“…The US-led drone war in Afghanistan, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA)-region of Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and, most recently, in Libya, presents an entirely new set of questions concerning the legality and ethics of state-sanctioned killing, state sovereignty and global military action. These questions cannot be treated separately from the emerging status of militarised media of perception that reveals ‘a change in how the meaning of seeing and visibility is determined’ (Vogl, 2008: 16). The following article is concerned with the role of this media function in producing a specific perception of the mass that connects with older notions of masses and populations, as well as with a discourse on the changing nature of warfare.…”