5/7 Biophilosophy, Biopolitics, & the Viral

Discussion Leader: Zach Blas
Time: 1 - 2:30 PM
Location: BCNM Commons at Moffitt Library

At our final meeting on May 7 we'll take a gander at Eugene Thacker's essay "Biophilosophy for the 21st Century," in which he discusses how the interfacing of biology with computers has transformed the concept of life itself. To accompany this, we will also look at Thierry Bardini's "Hypervirus: A Clinical Report" to consider how the virus, as a central being/trope in our digital future, operates beyond the biological and computational into realms of the social, cultural, and political. Seems all too appropriate right now.

Reading selections and directions to the BCNM Commons are at
http://nmwg.notlong.com

4/23 Knowledge Work and the Information Economy

Our next meeting will give us the opportunity to discuss Alan Liu's The Laws of Cool: Knowledge Work and the Culture of Information (2004), a surprising amalgam of academic and business savvy as applied to technology's influence on knowledge practices and the ever ineffable quality of "coolness."

Discussion Leader: Ryan Shaw

4/9 Virtualities of Movement

Our next meeting will take place on Thursday, April 9, from 2:30-3:30 pm in the Berkeley Center for New Media Commons (340 Moffit). Note the change in our usual time (a meeting with Electronic Arts is taking place beforehand)... Kris was kind enough to let us overlap the New Media Tea.

We'll be discussing Brian Massumi’s latest book, Parables for the Virtual, where he considers virtuality as it relates to movement. Pay particular attention to “The Bleed: Where Body Meets Image” and Massumi’s description of virtual affect in relation to Ronald Reagan’s account of watching himself move on television.

Discussion leader: Ashley Ferro-Murray, Theater, Dance & Performance Studies

Reading at http://nmwg.notlong.com/

3/12 Full of Sound and Theory

When: Thursday, March 12, 1-2:30PM
Where: 340 Moffitt (Center for New Media Commons)

Our next meeting will center on radio and digital recording. We will discuss one essay about the very early days of radio (Denis Hollier, “The Death of Paper: A Radio Play”), and one essay about the cultural impact of mp3 technology (Jonathan Sterne, “The mp3 as Cultural Artifact”). Among other issues, we might want to consider the different temporal and ontological modes that distinguish radio and mp3 podcasting, the changing structure of address available to each medium, the shifting terrain of copyright concerns in the move from radio broadcasting to file sharing, and how an emphasis on sound might reconfigure some of the basic assumptions in the often visually dominated field of new media studies.

Readings: http://nmwg.notlong.com/
Discussion Leader: Tom McEnaney, Comparative Literature

Reading Change

We have the opportunity to read a chapter from Rita Raley's forthcoming book Tactical Media, entitled "Border Hacks: Electronic Civil Disobedience and the Politics of Immigration" (reading available at http://nmwg.notlong.com/).

As time permits, we suggest reading/skimming at least one of the other already suggested pieces as a knowledge of them would add dimension to our discussion.

2/26 Meeting on Rita Raley

Please join the New Media Working Group for its next meeting on Thursday, February 26th, from 1-2:30PM in the Berkeley Center for New Media Commons (340 Moffitt). We will discuss a sampling of work by Rita Raley, Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara, concerning new media art, "Global English," and the practices and politics of "reading" code. Raley's book Tactical Media is forthcoming in April.

Readings available at http://nmwg.notlong.com/ and via the following links:

1) "Code.surface || Code.depth"
http://www.dichtung-digital.org/2006/1-Raley.htm

2) "Machine Translation and Global English"

3) "Reveal Codes: Hypertext & Performance"
http://www.iath.virginia.edu/pmc/text-only/issue.901/12.1raley.txt

Given time constraints, we recommend selecting one essay for perusal (whichever strikes you as the most interesting or relevant to your work) and skimming the remainder for discussion.

Contacts:
Alenda Chang (alenda@berkeley.edu)
Ryan Shaw (ryanshaw@ischool.berkeley.edu)

2/12 Meeting on Archive Fever

What: New Media Working Group
When: 1-2PM, Thursday 2/12
Where: BCNM Commons next to the Free Speech Cafe
Discussion Leader: Kris Trujillo

Readings:
http://nmwg.notlong.com/

Announcements:
http://ucbnewmedia.blogspot.com/

Please join the New Media Working Group to discuss Jacques Derrida's Archive Fever, a lecture delivered on June 5, 1994, at the Freud Museum in London. We will look closely at the unnamed introduction, "Exergue," and "Preamble" (pages 1-31), paying special attention to Derrida's meditations on the psychical archive's relation to memory and the death drive, on the future of psychoanalytic inscription and historiography in light of electronic media, and on the filiation of digital archives.

Stick around after the meeting for another Berkeley Center for New Media Tea... good food and conversation!

Questions? Comments?
Contact Alenda Chang, Rhetoric (alenda@berkeley.edu) or Ryan Shaw, School of Information (ryanshaw@ischool.berkeley.edu).