Futility is resistance!
toy-object, Schwarzgerät and dingpolitik as ludic research objectives
pp. 156-160
in: Roy Ascott, Gerald Bast, Wolfgang Fiel, Margarete Jahrmann, Ruth Schnell (eds), New realities, Berlin, Springer, 2009Abstract
Subject object iterations appear to be tied to materiality and the culture of play. Historic investigations of art and wonder chambers analyse artifacts as fictional form. The thesis of this paper describes, how this emphasis on form coagulates in the media age of the 20th century in immaterial objects. Electricity and magnetism, introduced in 17th and 18th centuries find their climax in an individualised immaterial culture. Now, in the 21st century, a new paradigm shift is expressed in an unexpected turn towards the "real", expressed and incorporated in a new consciousness, focusing on materialism. Spheres of electronic networks are made conscious by the means of objects and things, called Spimes, Blobjects, Smartifacts (Sterling, 2006). On the occasion of the on-site Consciousness Reframed discourse, instantaneously allow me to apply the hyphenated neologism "semi-material", as coined in a dispute with Dr. Michael Punt in Vienna's Urania observatory in summer 2008.