Posthumanities Berlin

blog on associations that matter

[posthumanities]

“Intra-actions” (Interview of Karen Barad by Adam Kleinmann)

 Adam Kleinmann speaks with Karen Barad

[posthumanities]

"Es war immer Ziel der Feminist Studies, Objektivität nicht loszuwerden, aber sie zu überdenken. Objektivität bedeutet nicht, Werte, Politik und soziale und rechtliche Aspekte wegzuschieben - das gilt auch für Emotionen. Es ist also sehr wichtig für Wissenschafter, sich über ihre politischen Überzeugungen und Gefühle klar zu sein. Für die feministische Wissenschaftsforschung geht es bei Objektivität um Verantwortungsbewusstsein."

http://derstandard.at/1336435306647/Wissenschaft-und-Philosophie-Die-Schroedingergleichung-erklaert-letztlich-die-Welt

[anneboyer]

I asked some people for recommendations on what to read about “nature” for someone who is a marxist-feminist anti-romantic non-primitivist & these were some of the recommendations. I’m sharing in case this might also help someone else with their studies:

Traces on the Rhodian Shore, Clarence...

[artandsciencejournal]

A Form of Happiness: Dopamine

We have all felt the rush and experienced the feeling of happiness, and Speculative Design artist Jessica Charlesworth, along with her husband, Product Designer Tim Parsons, has made it tangible. The couples’ A Form of Happiness project has masterfully resulted in their creation of a wood and magnetic representation of the neurotransmitter responsible for releasing the chemical that fuels our desire for happiness. The effects of the organic chemical, dopamine, are likened to the euphoric feeling and pleasurable physical reaction to things such as searching through sale racks while shopping, enjoying a delicious meal, or the pleasure received from engaging in sexual activity.

A Form of Happiness, displayed as the physical model of dopamine, is part of a kit that allows user to assemble the wooden pieces into the chemical compound strand. Each part is held together by embedded neodymium magnets. The kit includes examples of the various roles that the physical piece could take on and provides a more vivid display of what occurs during moments when dopamine is released. Charlesworth and Parsons pose the question, ‘What makes you happy?’ and while the answers will vary by person, as their model and kit prove, the feeling is the same for everyone. Happiness is a simple chemical reaction we seek it throughout life; a chemical bit of magic. 

Visit Jessica Charlesworth’s Portfolio. 

- Lee Jones

[posthumanities]

[posthumanities]

"Against Sundials" (media critique before christ)

The gods confound the man who first found out How to distinguish hours! Confound him, too, Who in this place set up a sundial, To cut and hack my days so wretchedly Into small portions! When I was a boy, My belly was my sundial - one surer, Truer, and more exact than any of them. This dial told me when 'twas proper time To go to dinner, when I had aught to eat; But nowadays, why even when I have, I can't fall to unless the sun gives leave. The town's so full of these confounded dials The greatest part of the inhabitants, Shrunk up with hunger, crawl along the street.

Fragment of a poem by Plautus (c.254-184 BC)

[posthumanities]

Nicholas Thompson speaks with Tim Wu and Alan Burdick about 'technological evolution' —the idea that technological forces, far more than biological ones, are shaping what it means to be human today.

The New Yorker podcast "Out Loud" on the implications of the prosthetically enhanced existence. 

[posthumanities]

The 'photo-taking-impairment effect': If you take a photo of an object as a whole, you'll remember fewer objects and remember fewer details about the objects and the objects’ locations in a museum for example than if you instead only observ the objects and did not photograph them…

Linda A. Henkel: Point-and-Shoot Memories. The Influence of Taking Photos on Memory for a Museum Tour 

[posthumanities]

Yuji Kamozawa, illustration for magazine cover, late 70s

Via: 50watts.com

[posthumanities]

Why do things have outlines?

"Daughter: Daddy, why do things have outlines?

Father: Do they? I don't know. What sort of things do you mean?

Daughter: I mean when I draw things, why do they have outlines?"

(Gregory Bateson, Ecology of Mind, 1972, p. 32)

Pictures: Anne Lindberg, taut green (2014) at Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Atlanta, GA. 

[posthumanities]

Are there only semiochemicals moving when we kiss?

muchbetterthanthis.com by Rafaël Rozendaal. 

[posthumanities]

Is it nature that is cultivated or culturalized nature what we mean by saying 'alps'? No answer but some reflections on this in Armin Linke's documentary "Alpi" (2012)

[posthumanities]

Not really surprisingly the military–industrial complex is developing our clothes. When we push the limits of human ability on the next hike we should bear in mind that we wear products intentensely tested by soldiers how this ad of the Arc'teryx LEAF collection shows.

[posthumanities]

Devin Fore. 2009.

[posthumanities]

The reflective antlers would gleam phantasmagorically only when a car approached — the added eye eeriness is the naturally occurring reflectiveness of the animal’s retinas.

Designing Safer Antlers for Finlands Reindeer

[posthumanities]

On the "dramaturgical stagecraft of Switzerland: winter becomes a precisely choreographed thermal event that just happens to take on spatial characteristics amenable to downhill skiing"

[posthumanities]

Artistic Research as Discipline and Conflict. Hito Steyerl, 2010.