1. How to Build a Technoculture:
Digital Studies as Care, Curation, and Curriculum
Marcel O’Gorman
University of Waterloo
Department of English
http://criticalmedia.uwaterloo.ca

2. Applied media theory

3. Applied media theory
TECHNOLOGICAL PRODUCTION
(driven by a powerful economic imperative)
vs.
CRITICAL ASSESSMENT OF TECH.
(driven by a less powerful, academic imperative)

4. “writers like Barthes, Foucault, Kristeva and Derrida were really late modernist
artists who had taken to philosophy rather than sculpture or the novel. . . . The
boundaries between the conceptual and the creative began to blur.
- Terry Eagleton, After Theory

5. CARE
Is it possible to develop a noopolitics, or a model of
“knowledge work,” that combines digital media technics
with the cognitive modes required for traditional
humanities research?

6. We ask the Internet to keep interrupting us, in ever more
and different ways. We willingly accept the loss of
concentration and focus, the division of our attention and
the fragmentation of our thoughts, in return for the
wealth of compelling or at least diverting information we
receive.
- Nicholas Carr, The Shallows

7. . . . the human is itself a prosthetic being, who from
day one is constituted as human by its coevolution
with and coconstitution by external archival
technologies of various kinds—including language
itself as the first archive and prosthesis.
- Cary Wolfe, What Is Posthumanism?

8. Deep Attention
vs.
Hyper Attention

9. the invention of a new way of life that takes care of
and pays attention to the world by inventing
techniques, technologies, and social structures of
attention formation corresponding to the
organological specificities of our times, and by
developing an industrial system that functions
engodenously as a system of care: making care its
“value chain” -- its economy. ”
- Bernard Stiegler, Taking Care

10. CURATION
As a curator/instructor, I assume the responsibilities
of a keeper of cultural heritage, a content specialist,
and an interpreter.

11. . . .the sustained expansion of images into models.
Thus he gives considerable attention in his texts . . .
to the description of quotidian objects -- an umbrella,
a matchbox, an unlaced shoe, a post card -- whose
functioning he interrogates as modeling the most
complex or abstract levels of thought.
- Gregory Ulmer, Applied Grammatology

12. USE DIGITAL MEDIA
TO CRITIQUE DIGITAL MEDIA

13. A CURATOR (from Latin: curare meaning "take care")
is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, a curator or keeper of
a cultural heritage institution (e.g., gallery,
museum, library or archive) is a content specialist responsible
for an institution's collections and involved with
the interpretation of heritage material. The object of
a traditional curator's concern necessarily involves tangible
objects of some sort, whether it be inter alia artwork,
collectibles, historic items or scientific collections. More
recently, new kinds of curators are emerging: curators of
digital data objects and biocurators.

14. CURRICULUM
Is it possible to develop a noopolitics, or a model of
“knowledge work,” that combines (hyper) digital media
technics with the cognitive modes required for
traditional humanities research?

15. Applied media theory
YES, BUT IS IT ART?
CML projects are:
PHILOSOPHY HYPER AND DEEP
RHETORIC READING
CRITICISM THINKING
LITERATURE MAKING
ART WRITING
COMPUTER SCIENCE
ENGINEERING
WHATEVER HELPS MAKE
OBJECTS-TO-THNK-WITH

17. DREADMILL
Dreadmill Performance, Interactive Media Forum, 2004
http://dreadmill.net
Heidegger, Ellul, Virilio, Baudrillard, etc. . . .

18. Applied media theory
Screening Coffin, 2006

19. Cycle of Dread

20. CYCLE OF DREAD
Dane Watkins, “Call of the Dead,” 2007
Speed + Heart Rate + Distance = Multilinear Narrative

21. Flow and Critical Gaming
FLOW PROVOCATION:
Reading
Writing
Artistic Practice
Exercise
Game play
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, “Mental State in Terms of Challenge and Skill Level.”
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, 1990.
Can “flow” (immersion) involve a state of critical awareness?
Is it possible to achieve “critical immersion” in a computer game?

22. CYCLE OF DREAD & Flow
Can “flow” (immersion) involve a state of critical awareness?
Is it possible to achieve “critical immersion” in a computer game?

23. William Blake’s Infernal Methods
"...the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul is to be expunged; this I shall do, by
printing in the infernal method, by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal,
melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid. If the doors of
perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has
closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narow chinks of his cavern." (Blake, The
Marriage of Heaven and Hell)
Technique + Philosophy // Form + content
Embodying philosophical thought.

24. “The Grave”: Blake vs. Schiavonetti
William Blake, Water Colour Design for Robert Blair's "The Grave" (1805) Louis Schiavonetti, Engraving for Robert Blair's "The Grave" (1808)

25. Blake vs. Schiavonetti
Blake, Detail Schiavonetti, Detail

26. The Bridge
GoodLife/Delta Walkway over King Street, looking East, Night

27. The Cycle

28. Bridge of Infernal Methods

29. Cycle of Dread

30. GEOMOSAIC
research/creation feedback loop.

31. GEOMOSAIC
research/creation feedback loop.

32. Health Science > Gaming > Public Art > Cognitive Science
Research/creation feedback loop.

33. “Testing, testing!” BMW/Guggenheim Research Lab, Manhattan
Research/creation feedback loop.

36. Myth of the Steersman
Tom Thomson, Canadian Artist, 1877-1917 Downtown portage, October, 2010.

37. Myth of the Steersman
Tom Thomson’s paint recipe.

38. Myth of the Steersman
Canoe Lake, Algonquin Park, Ontario.

39. Myth of the Steersman
14 kilometres of fishing line.

40. Myth of the Steersman
http://www.steersman.ca
Telepresence and Tactility, Digital Embodiment, Lag, Interval

41. Cabs of Curiosity
DIGITAL WUNDERKAMMER
Students of “Cyberbodies” class (ENGL).
MA in Experimental Digital Media (XDM)

42. Cabinets of Curiosity, Winter 2011
The students assembled the cabinets, created digital games to be
played through the arcade interface, and programmed the arcade
controllers.

43. Cabinets of Curiosity, Winter 2011
The “critical arcade cabinets” were created as “objects to think with.”
The projects allowed students to engage with critical theory by
applying it to the development of a digital media project.

44. Cabinets of Curiosity, 2011
Students of Professor Marcel O’Gorman’s ENGL 293 Introduction to
Digital Media Studies course (Winter 2011) work on their MAME
cabinets.

45. Cabinets of Curiosity, Spring 2011
A few of the finished cabinets.

46. Cabs of Curiosity

47. Cabs of Curiosity

48. Cytopath

49. Cytopath

50. Roach Lab

51. Roach Lab

52. Necrogenesis
TedX Waterloo, 2012

53. Sample Critical Media Lab projects in collaboration with the
Murray Alzheimer’s Research and Education Program (MAREP):
Project 1: “I’m Still Here” by Adam Cilevitz, Gian Mancuso, Aaron Patkau, and Leif Penzendorfer
-Digital simulation of Alzheimer’s for education and empathy.
Project 2: “Spark” by Judy Ehrentraut, Emma Vossen, and Elise Vist
Digital art therapy for Alzheimer’s patients and their caregivers.

54. MISSION Crimelab mission
The Critical Media Lab supports interdisciplinary research-creation projects
that draw on new media to investigate the impact of technology on society
and the human condition.
This approach, which challenges the boundaries between art and science,
research and artistic practice, results in the invention of new technologies
and media artifacts, dialogue facilitation across disciplines and communities,
and policy formation that directly impacts technological design and
implementation.

55. Critical Media seeks to close the gap between:
MARKETING “GOODS” and PURSUIT OF “THE GOOD”
- Engage tech. at the R & D stage of development.
- Present alternative models for digital production.
- Reclaim “innovation” from the logic of commercialization
- Intervene in the production of “technoculture.”

56. http://criticalmedia.uwaterloo.ca
marcel@uwaterloo.ca