ZKF-Arbeitsgespräche im Sommersemester 22
Microprocessors as Media
Referent:
Kyle Stine PhD, Johns Hopkins University
Moderation:
Prof. Dr. Isabell Otto
Datum: 2022-04-27
Inhalt
Integrated circuits are limit figures of media theory and cultural analysis. With components invisible to the human eye, layouts incapable of human design, and physical features ungraspable by human hands, they fit uneasily within frameworks for understanding social meaning, aesthetic value, human craft, and technological effects. This talk asks how media studies might conceive of microchips as objects of study by considering them as centering points of media infrastructures. It explores how microprocessors might be seen as interfaces between the large and the small, figures of circulation and logistics, and circuits, quite real as well as metaphorical, between culture and technology.
Kyle Stine teaches film and media studies at Johns Hopkins University. His writings on cinema and technology have appeared in Critical Inquiry, Discourse, Grey Room, October, and the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies. He is coeditor with Axel Volmar of Media Infrastructures and the Politics of Digital Time: Essays on Hardwired Temporalities (Amsterdam University Press, 2021).