Through Technologies of Communication and New Media Practices: [Un]aesthetics, [Un]mensch

Art Style | Art & Culture International Magazine

Abstract

Through technologies of communication and new media practices, such as speculative media interfaces, our posthuman society combats a globalized “technosphere” causing the planet and its inhabitants to undergo a profound crisis. Such new media practices, in their technique and epistemological aspects, stand as the provocative potential of the dialectics of nature and culture and its role in critically exploring the implications of emerging technologies in the communication processes in urban space. The hypothesis is that speculative media interfaces can be used to explore the co-existence of human and non- human futures in urban space under the environmental crisis today. I ask how interface’s ‘non-human eye’ as a communication device can be related to Bernard Stiegler’s (1952-2020) endeavor to understand technical evolution by provoking a revision of the whole of a non-human agency in history? What ‘otherness’, such as Benjamin’s ‘angel of history’ (Unmensch), may have revolutionary forces that indicate a way out of our Anthropocentric perspectives? These questions not only aim to open new perspectives on media practices, but also to contribute to create space for discussion about alternative ways of understanding the relationship between human beings and technology under these transforming conditions. The studies have shown that the integration of speculative media interfaces into architectural aspects and interactions relied heavily on physical integration of contents into the environment and levels of mobility, and as such presumed the prevalence of anthropocentric perspectives to the detriment of non-human aspects. For this reason, ways of thinking and designing for human-nonhuman interactions at city scale remains largely unexplored. In this article, I will discuss how media interfaces, as communication devices, can be used to investigate more than human futures.