Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2008 16:46:18 -0400
From: Generoso Fierro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>CMS COLLOQUIUM WHEN: THURSDAY 10.02.08 | 5-7 PM | WHERE: 2-105 Submarine Media: Sounding the Sea with Cyborg Anthropology Stefan Helmreich This presentation delivers a first-person anthropological report on a dive to the seafloor in the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution's three-person submersible, Alvin. Meditating on the sounds rather that the sights of the dive, Helmreich explores multiple meanings of immersion: as a descent into liquid, an absorption in activity, and the all-encompassing entry of an anthropologist into a cultural medium. Tuning in to the rhythms of Alvin as a submarine cyborg, he shows how interior and exterior soundscapes create a sense of immersion, and he argues that torquing media theory to include water as a medium can make explicit the technical structures and social practices of sounding, hearing, and listening that support senses - scientific, everyday, and anthropological - of embodied sonic presence. Stefan Helmreich is an anthropologist who studies life scientists, from those who engage in the computer modeling of living things (Silicon Second Nature: Culturing Artificial Life in a Digital World, University of California Press, 1998) to those who work in deep-sea environments (Alien Ocean: Anthropological Voyages in Microbial Seas, University of California Press, 2009). He is particularly interested in the limits of "life" as an analytical category for contemporary biology. Best, Generoso Fierro CMS @ MIT ----- End forwarded message -----
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WHEN: THURSDAY 10.02.08 | 5-7 PM |
WHERE: 2-105
Submarine Media: Sounding the Sea with
Cyborg Anthropology
Stefan Helmreich
This presentation delivers a first-person
anthropological report on a dive to the seafloor in the Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institutions three-person submersible, Alvin. Meditating on the sounds rather
that the sights of the dive, Helmreich explores multiple meanings of immersion:
as a descent into liquid, an absorption in activity, and the all-encompassing
entry of an anthropologist into a cultural medium. Tuning in to the rhythms of
Alvin as a submarine cyborg, he shows how interior and exterior soundscapes
create a sense of immersion, and he argues that torquing media theory to include
water as a medium can make explicit the technical structures and social
practices of sounding, hearing, and listening that support senses scientific,
everyday, and anthropological of embodied sonic presence. Stefan Helmreich is
an anthropologist who studies life scientists, from those who engage in the
computer modeling of living things (Silicon Second Nature: Culturing Artificial
Life in a Digital World, University of California Press, 1998) to those who work
in deep-sea environments (Alien Ocean: Anthropological Voyages in Microbial
Seas, University of California Press, 2009). He is particularly interested in
the limits of life as an analytical category for contemporary
biology. Best,
Generoso Fierro CMS @ MIT
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