Software tunnels through the rags ‘n refuse

Text of talk given at the Platform Politics conference in Cambridge 13.05.11 It took New York police officer, William Barker two hours to find Homer Collyer dead in his apartment in March 1947. Barker had to crawl  through a window into a second-story bedroom, burrow his way through newspaper bundles, empty cardboard boxes lashed together …

Object-oriented photography

I am a photographer. I photograph things, objects, material nonsubjects as Jane Bennett calls them (2010:ix). I understand these things from an object-oriented point-of-view, as actants in the world, as vibrant quasi-agents or forces (Bennett) that exceed their relations (Harman) – that are somehow more than the field of accidents, qualities and relations with which …

Jpeg: more than accidents, relations and qualities

Having established that jpeg can be treated as an object, it becomes necessary to explore what characterises an object from Harman’s point of view. What characteristics does jpeg as object have that enable us to understand its nature and its workings? For Harman, objects must be seen as beyond accidents, beyond relations and beyond qualities{Harman …

LR – software studies: in which a new child is born

While my concern in this Software section of this Literature Review is with work around protocol, it is important to locate that particular focus on code within a broader account of how ‘software studies’ has positioned itself. The term “software studies” was coined by Lev Manovich in The Language of New Media where he said: …