NO FAKE FLOWERS: JUST FAKE TEARS FOR MY MULTIPLE DIGITAL DEATHS ABSTRACT I was asked at a conference if I had ever celebrated the death of my hard drive after it suddenly collapsed and years of accumulated memories and work were lost. The celebration – if it could ever be called that – was characterized by unmentionable swearing, pounding on the table, threats issued to
TO ERODE OR NOT TO ERODE: THE OPPOSITE POLES OF ENVIRONMENTAL CULTURAL ENGAGEMENTS ABSTRACT The dynamic relationship between humanity and the pollution and erosion of the North and South Poles is increasingly reshaping, altering and challenging cultural assumptions. As the Poles are eroded, the cultural framework and symbolisms determined by a cultural landscape that is the reflection of a natural environment in distress are also
WHAT LANGUAGE DOES THE CYBORG SPEAK? CULTURE, ETHNICITY AND NATIONALITY AS PART OF THE LANGUAGE OF THE CYBORG? ABSTRACT The essay will explore the concept of post-humanity as a cultural construction that, as Elaine Graham explained, [1] is a condition which affects both human and post-human social frameworks. If the post-human body is a cultural definition, does the cyborg speak English, as it is the
A WEB OF PIXELATED TEXTURES AND INTRICATE BEHAVIORS ABSTRACT In order to define and understand contemporary digital media and the relationship between virtual and real, there have been traditional approaches in the definition of the virtual as equivalent to illusory and of the pixel’s aesthetic of the web as determined by technological imperatives. These approaches to the relationship between real and virtual and to the
THE DISAPPEARANCE OF SIGNS IN A LANDSCAPE OF DECEPTIONS ABSTRACT The artwork A Dream Came Through started as an idea in 2006 and was developed in 2008 before the current capitalistic crisis and temporary rebirth of a social conscience in the Western World. 2006 was a time when a critique of the capitalist models of production of riches and their lack of distribution was neither
THE WAR SHAPED IDENTITIES: DESTRUCTION AS CULTURAL INHERITANCE ABSTRACT The essay will discuss the issues related to a cultural conceptualization defined by the author as ‘sedimented memory construction’ made of visible and invisible loci. The memories of buildings, land, sculptures, war destruction and social collapses are layered through processes of personal recall; thereby creating a culture of remembrance that shapes people’s identities beyond space and
ETERNALLY PRESENT & ETERNALLY ABSENT: THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF A THANATOPHOBIC INTERNET AND ITS VISUAL REPRESENTATIONS OF ARTIFICIAL EXISTENCES ABSTRACT Perhaps nothing is more representative of a thanatophobic society than the process of accumulating and storing virtual data in online environments. This process of accumulation and storage of data has become a behavioral and daily activity for many – manifested through a series of different
DEATH, WAR, CENSORSHIP, FETISHISM AND HEROIC AFTERLIVES THROUGH DIGITAL NARRATIVES: THE MEDIATED REPRESENTATIONS OF ETHICS, DEATH, VICTORY AND SURVIVAL ABSTRACT It is no longer possible to shy away from the trans-mediated presence of death that symbolizes, in the context of contemporary cultural conflicts and upheavals, not only change within the wider local communities but also changes within the Western world and its relationships with ‘other’
TEXT AND DIGITAL MEDIA: THE VISUALIZATION OF CODE, CODEX AND CONTEXT ABSTRACT The changes in the definition of text and image caused by contemporary digital media have altered the traditional concepts of political and social hierarchies as well as blurred the boundaries between text based and image based disciplines. The concepts of interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity as well as those of transnationalism and multiculturalism offer insight
