Old Email Archive

digest 1996-06-27 #001



11:25 PM 6/27/96 -0700
From: "Society for Literature & Science" 

Daily SLS Email Digest
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Date: 27 Jun 1996 18:55:14 -0700
From: 6500benb@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu (Benjamin Bratton)
Subject: SPEED: Airports and Malls
SPEED: AN ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF TECHNOLOGY, MEDIA AND SOCIETY
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http://www.arts.ucsb.edu/~speed
***
_speed_@alishaw.ucsb.edu
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Bulletin: June, 1996: Please Forward
***
1. SPEED 1.3: AIRPORTS AND MALLS HAS ARRIVED
2. CALL FOR PAPERS: SPECIAL ISSUE ON PAUL VIRILIO
3. CALL FOR PAPERS: FETISHISM: HOW CYBORGS FUCK?
4. ABOUT SPEED/ WHAT, WHO, HOW?
- -----------------------------------
"Postmodern cyber criticism collides with cyber cool in this
smart,
savvy, and, dare I say, hot looking journal of technology, media,
and society. The intention of _SPEED_ "is to contribute toward a
democratic discourse of technology and media, one that is always
focused upon the material conditions of life that technologies and
media constitute and demand, and yet does not lose sight of the
power of ideas to change those conditions." That is, wired culture
gets self-reflexive, and it's about time."
- --from GNN, on-line Whole Internet Catalog
1. SPEED 1.3: AIRPORTS AND MALLS HAS ARRIVED
"The globe shrinks for those who own it; for the displaced or
dispossessed, the migrant or refugee, no distance is more awesome
than the few feet across borders or frontiers." -- Homi K. Bhabha.
"This version of the SPEED periodical/software concerns the
transformation of social space by information technologies, and the
value of dystopian mapping practices in accounting for the re-
locations of personalized politics that those transformations
demand....
"A sheer centralization of aesthetics signals an empowered domain
of inhabited information. Perhaps no social space serves to
exemplify this development more so than the airport. It stands for
the globalization of participant space under the sign of hegemonic
capital circulation, and of the standardization of capital and
circulation under the sign of information. The mechanical and
totemic work that it does in such service wishes to succeed at, and
complete, a utopian theater. But something is still messy. For Us,
the story that it, as a place, tells about itself and asks us to
play a part in, suffers a vanity of false resolution and improper
closure. Its utopian infantilization of our bodies which it
mediates does not finally succeed in convincing us that the global
system of temporized space it links is quite truly so seamless
and resolved. For most, this was never even a question. For all,
this is part of the rude claim made by the infomatic revolution
in the built environment....."
- -- from "SUR-Urbia: An Introduction to Airports and Malls."
VERSION 1.3 "AIRPORTS AND MALLS" INCLUDES:
BENJAMIN BRATTON (U.C. SANTA BARBARA)
"SUR-Urbia: AN INTRODUCTION TO AIRPORTS AND MALLS"
JOHN THACKARA (NETHERLANDS DESIGN INSTITUTE)
"LOST IN SPACE - A TRAVELER'S TALE"
BOBBY RABYD (BROWN UNIVERSITY)
"AIRPORT NOVEL"
JUSTIN STINCHCOMBE (U.C. SANTA BARBARA)
"FLY AWAY LITTLE BIRDIE"
JEFF GATES (EYE to I)
"IN OUR PATH: ESSAYS"
JASON BROWN (U.C. SANTA BARBARA) AND GABRIEL WATSON (ECHO
IMAGES)"PROSTHESIS"
MARK BURCH (UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII)
"PLATEAUS OF CONSUMPTION: THE BIOSEMIOTICS OF CONSUMER
FASCISM"
CARINA YERVASI (UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN)
"PRE/SUB/URBAN SPRAWL: NINETEENTH-CENTURY PARISIAN PASSAGE AS
URBAN MALL"
JENNIFER SMITH (McMASTER UNIVERSITY)
"THE MALL IN MOTION: A NARRATIVE STROLL THROUGH THE OBSTACLE
COURSE"
"THE FLESH MADE IMAGE, LONG LIVE THE NEW IMAGE"
A CONVERSATION WITH JEFF HARRINGTON OF iDEAL oRDER/PSYCHIC TV
"BIOSPHERE 3: AUDIENCE WITH/OF THE MALL OF AMERICA"
A CONVERSATION WITH HERB SIMON OF SIMON AND ASSOCIATES
WITH ARTWORKS BY:
JEFF GATES (EYE to I)
"IN OUR PATH"
ROBERT NIDEFFER (U.C. SANTA BARBARA)
"TERMINAL CIRCLES"
JASON BROWN (U.C. SANTA BARBARA)
"MOVING PICTURES"
MICHELLE WAKIN (U.C. SANTA BARBARA)
"FOR YOUR SAFETY"
- -----------------------------------
2. SPEED 1.4: SPECIAL ISSUE: ON PAUL VIRILIO
We are currently reviewing abstracts and proposals for articles for a
future transmission of _SPEED_ (WWW-specific projects encouraged)  on
the critical significance of the work of Paul Virilio. In extremely
diverse arenas Virilio's cybernetic systems theory of the social has
arranged the horizons of wildly unlikely moments of questioning.  As
his
vision of interpretation/accusation crosses the spectrum of
disciplinary knowledges (while being at "home" in none), we
now  hear
literary critics speaking of the military origins of the city-state,
newscasters phrasing a "Nintendo War," historians of science 
commenting
on the phenomenology of electronic banking,  architectural theorists
conceiving "the velocity" of airport space, and computer
industry
professionals discussing the political history  of the film projector.
Certainly these peculiar arrangements are not to  be entirely credited
to (blamed on?) Virilio, but they do suggest that  his vocabulary is
significant beyond the relatively narrow concerns  of a "Virilio
Studies." We hope, therefore, to both interrogate and  expand what
it is
possible to make "Virilio" say.
- -----------------------------------
3. SPEED 1.5: FETISHISM: HOW CYBORGS FUCK?
"Object Relations" becomes a difficult strategy for love in a
virtualizing world. Difficult, but still preferred. "Fetishism:
How
Cyborgs Fuck?" will cut between the technologies of fetishism and
the
fetishisms of technology -- from the techno-eroticism of B/D and S/M to
the B/D and S/M of postmodern advertising. Future Sex? Yes, thank you.
As
long as we can keep our black patent-leather Newton PDA's! "That's
a big
hard drive you've got there, General!" The issue is desire, or
rather
desire transformed into technology's modes of enframing and poesis. The
moments that these actions are made for "devices" ("ooh,
it's so smooth")
and not "technologies" ("we've got 98% efficiency,
sir") become even more
to the point. This issue will include projects relating to, but not
exclusive to, Cyborg Studies, techno-psychoanalysis, transfeminism,
S&M
Studies, CyberSex, the cinematics of just-in-time alienation, and all
other general economies of dissemination. WWW-based proposals are
particularly encouraged.
- -----------------------------------
4. ABOUT SPEED
SPEED provides a forum for the critical investigation of
technology, media and society. Our intention is to contribute toward
a democratic discourse of technology and media, one that is always
focused upon the material conditions of life that technologies and
media constitute and demand, and yet does not lose sight of the
power of ideas to change those conditions. We feel that as media of
various kinds become more ubiquitous, what it means to live with
and talk about a "medium" changes and expands, and so do the
critical vocabularies of interpreting what those transformations
indicate. Our primary goal in that effort is to foster a cross-
fertilization of ideas between communities of people in the
"academy" and "industry" too often separated, not by
interest or
common concern, but by artificially imposed disciplinary and
organizational boundaries. We think that _SPEED_ is a promising
step toward making these institutional boundaries more permeable,
and a critical politics of "mediated sociality" more
powerful.
- -----------------------------------
EDITORIAL BOARD FOR SPEED 1.3
Benjamin Bratton
Laura Grindstaff
Robert Nideffer
TECHNICAL IMPLEMENTATION
Interface Design:
Jason Brown
Robert Nideffer
Links and Links Text:
Benjamin Bratton
..GIF and .JPEG:
Jason Brown
Robert Nideffer
Adam Zaretsky
MIDI:
Ken Fields
..AIFF and .AU:
Ken Fields
Nathan Freitas
Robert Nideffer
JAVA and VRML Scripting:
Nathan Freitas
Terminal Modeling:
Rand Eppich
- -----------------------------------
** TO SUBSCRIBE TO _SPEED_, send e-mail to _SPEED_@alishaw.ucsb.edu
with
"subscribe" in the subject header. In addition to receiving
all future
issues, you will be kept up to date on developments regarding the
journal.
- ----------===============----------
HOW TO CONTACT _SPEED_
e-mail:
Please send all submissions, criticisms, praise, suggestions, or
anything else you have on your mind to: _SPEED_@alishaw.ucsb.edu.
snail-mail:
If for whatever reason you need to communicate with us via the U.S.
Postal Service, please send your correspondence to:
_SPEED_
c/o Robert Nideffer
Department of Art Studio
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA. 93106
- ----------===============----------
ISSN 1078-196X
- ----------------------
Benjamin Bratton
Department of Sociology
University of California, Santa Barbara
6500benb@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu
SPEED: An Electronic Journal of Technology, Media and Society
http://www.arts.ucsb.edu/~speed
speed@sscf.ucsb.edu
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Date: 27 Jun 1996 19:10:52 -0700
From: Stephen J Weininger 
Subject: Re: SPEED: Airports and Malls
Ho, ho, ho--an Alan Sokal wannabe with far less wit.
Stephen J. Weininger            Internet: stevejw@wpi.edu
Professor of Chemistry          Phone: (508) 831-5396
WPI                             Fax:   (508) 831-5933
Worcester, MA 01609-2280