Hackathons, maker spaces, R&D labs: these terms are common to the world of technology, but have only recently seeped into museums.
Podcast: George Yúdice, “Cultural Studies and The Expediency of Culture, Rethought in Relation to Internet Platforms and Megadata”
Culture understood as the “terrain of struggle for interpretive power” needs to take into consideration its relocation and reconfiguration in new media and technologies.
Cultural Studies and The Expediency of Culture, Rethought in Relation to Internet Platforms and Megadata
The argument that culture empties out as it becomes ever more pivotal in the creative economy has, George Yúdice thinks, been borne out.
Illuminated Bodies: Kat Von D, LA Ink, and the Borderlands of Tattoo Culture
Theresa Rojas examines the prolific, heavily tattooed Kat Von D, who offers an aesthetic that challenges tattoo culture and notions of the “monstrous body”.
Developing Game Worlds: Gaming, Technology, and Innovation in Peru
This relatively unknown industry has been able to introduce complex skills and work around structural gaps and obstacles to create the foundations for a potentially viable technology and creative industry.
Kate Crawford, “Squeaky Dolphin to Normcore: Anxiety and Big Data Culture”
Kate Crawford is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research (Social Media Collective) and a Visiting Professor at the MIT Center for Civic Media. She is currently working on a new book.
Jonathan Sterne, “Who Tunes Whom?: Auto-Tune, the Earth, and the Politics of Frequency”
McGill’s Jonathan Sterne gives a cultural history of auto-tune as a form of signal processing, drawing on patent documents, interviews, operational protocols, tuning standards and competing acoustemologies.
