New Media and Bodies

1. New Media and Bodies The biology of Digital media

2. Review • New Media texts highlight the materiality of the document • The “stuffiness” of the stuff comes to matter- it adds meaning, it affects how we interpret, use, and value the media • A technology is never “neutral.” It comes with values that affect how we use it, think about it, and react to its presence around us.

3. Cartesian dualism/the mind-body split • An ancient concept deeply rooted in Greek thought that posits the mind and body are completely separate. • There are two kinds of substances: mental and physical • Humans have physical properties: weight, shape, color, motion, etc. • Humans have mental properties: perception, emotion, beliefs desires, etc. • Mental properties are private to the subject unlike physical properties which are public and viewable to anyone

4. The Mind/body problem Dualism suggests that the body is merely a vehicle that is separate and virtually irrelevant to our experiences, thoughts, and emotions which occur in our immaterial mind/soul. The problem for new media theorists is that dualism enjoyed popularity for so long, that the body has been widely ignored in much philosophical theory.

5. The body matters! • New Media documents (and technology) are highly interactive and involve bodily motion. • The mind and body are not split but work in unison because a document is always asking something of, or manipulating our body in some way. • Bodily states affect mental states (and vice versa) and New Media documents often seek to accommodate or use this fact to their advantage.

6. Media as Bodily Extensions • “All media work us over completely. They leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. All media are extensions of some human faculty- psychic or physical.” • Marshall McLuhan (1967)

7. The wheel is an extension of the foot

8. The Book is an Extension of the eye

9. Clothing is an extensionof the skin

10. Wait. WhAT? • For McLuhan, media is any technology that creates extensions of the body and/or senses and is thusly considered to be part of us (and others). • Media is not just something we consume but media is something we are. Extension implies a connection to media beyond use, like, or relation– they are part of our very selves.

11. Wait. What?

12. The medium is the message • Media form > Media content • What a piece of media is communicating is not as important, or at least is inseparable, from the form in which the message is delivered/received • And if all media are essentially extensions of human bodies and senses, then to be human is not to make and receive messages but to extend our very selves beyond the confines of the body into different mediums of meaning

13. Two love letters

14. Two quotes

15. Two Assignments

16. Digital Media is the hyperbolic extreme of all I’ve said so far “The digital circuit is an extension of the human central nervous system.”

17. Digital “Check-ins”

18. The First thing almost any social media profile asks you to do

19. Tech moves/interacted with the body

20. avatars

21. Step one • In groups no smaller than 4, pull up one of your digital literacy autobiographies on a single computer screen. • Read the document together as a group at the same time. • DO NOT read the document outloud.

22. Step two (discussion) • What was it like to read this document together as a group? • Were there any challenges involved in everyone reading it together? • In what ways were you aware of your body as you read the document together?

23. Step 3 • Redesign the document in a manner that would make it easier for a group of people to read it together. • Feel free to interpret that request in whatever way you want and use any programs, technologies, or skill-sets found amongst your group members. • “Finishing” is not as important as starting and having a game plan of how it could be done. Be prepared to discuss what redesign techniques you would use and why before we leave class.