Edited by Hank Gerba and Zachary McDowell

In our age of ubiquitous computation, “sense and the senses turn to eyewash.” Or so proclaimed Friedrich Kittler, fearing that the operationalization of boolean logic, materialized and ever-miniaturized in the transistor, would sever the connection between media and the human senses. Digital communication between machines would pass seamlessly below the threshold of perception, which would only ever be rendered in the strictest computational sense. Must theories of media and communication abdicate the body as a locus of theoretical inquiry?

Despite the micro-temporality of computational media, this collection aims to reintroduce media of all kinds to the sensory by asking after the relationship between media and aesthetics. We understand aesthetics broadly, following M. Beatrice Fazi, who writes that “aesthetics is [here] understood in a manner that is more in keeping with its etymological roots––which lie in the term aisthesis––and it is thus conceptualized as a theory of sensory knowledge.” With this definition, the collection hopes to provide a space in which the sensory can refocus critical and political questions of embodiment, mediation, and subjectivation.

This collection seeks engagement with and between the many existing species of media studies and communications. By focusing on the aesthetic, we also hope to expand the study of media and communication beyond their traditional institutional and methodological boundaries. 

Articles

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