Digitalität als Taktilität. McLuhan, der Computer und die Taste

Heilmann, Till A.

doi:10.1524/zfmw.2010.0024

Cited by 57 publications

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“…Whereas McLuhan’s understanding of electric media as genuinely tactile media has remained evocative and attractive (see e.g. Heilmann, 2010, as well as Sprenger, 2012), it has also become evident that it does not facilitate addressing the social and economic contexts in which such media are used (for a similar point, see Theall, 1971: 204). The reason for this, my article argues, lies in the fact that McLuhan’s theory of tactility was crucially inspired by artistic practices cut off from their cultural and societal situatedness.…”

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Surface Media: McLuhan, the Bauhaus and the Tactile Values of TV

Schmidgen

2021

Body & Society

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Marshall McLuhan understood television (TV) as a tactile medium. This understanding implied what Bruno Latour might call a ‘symmetrical’ conception of tactility. According to McLuhan, not only human actors are endowed with the sense of touch. In addition, TV, digital computers and other ‘electric media’ use light beams and similar scanning techniques for ceaselessly ‘caressing the contours’ of their surroundings. This notion of tactility was crucially shaped by the holistic aesthetics of the early Bauhaus. To get at the specific features of the TV image, McLuhan relied on the writings of László Moholy-Nagy and Sigfried Giedion, in particular their use of photography for capturing and highlighting the ‘texture’ of surfaces. However, he hardly reflected the social and political factors that, in the age of electric media, contribute to the ‘symmetricization’ of touch.

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confidence: 99%