Thinking Through Digital Media: Transnational Environments and Locative Places

Thinking through Digital Media: Transnational Environments and Locative Places charts media practices in animation, documentary, experimental, narrative, and interactive media as they migrate to digital technologies and networks. The book offers a means of thinking about digital media by looking at projects that think through digital media. Hudson and Zimmermann analyze projects at the intersections of imbedded technologies, micropublics, human-machine performances, migratory histories, affective geographies, and critical cartographies to forward a set of speculations about how things work together rather than what they represent. It focuses on digital media from different cultures to frame ongoing debates on topics such as participation/surveillance, global warming, virtual migrations, flexible labor, structural inequality, and perpetual war by artists, coders, activists, students, and intellectuals in some of the most dynamic, innovative sites for digital media, including Brazil, Canada, China, India, Indonesia, Israel/Palestine, Italy, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, United Arab Emirates, and United States.

Thinking through Digital Media offers a means of conceptualizing digital media by looking at projects that think through digital media, migrating between documentary, experimental, narrative, animation, video game, and live performance. Hudson and Zimmermann analyze projects at the intersections of imbedded technologies, transitory micropublics, human-machine interface, and critical cartographies to forward a set of speculations about how things work together rather than what they represent. The book frames debates on participation/surveillance, outsourcing, global warming, migrations, GMOs, and war across some of the most dynamic, innovative sites for digital media, including Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Kenya, Nigeria, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and the United States.

Thinking through Digital Media: Transnational Environments and Locative Places speculates on animation, documentary, experimental, interactive, and narrative media that probe human-machine performances, virtual migrations, global warming, structural inequality, and critical cartographies across Brazil, Canada, China, India, USA, and elsewhere.

Patricia R. Zimmermann is Professor in the Department of Cinema, Photography, and Media Arts in the Roy H. Park School of Communications and Co-director of the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival at Ithaca College, USA. She was Shaw Foundation Endowed Chair in the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and has taught at the Nigerian Film Institute and the University of Iowa. She is the author of Mining the Home Movie: Excavations into Historical and Cultural Memories (2007) and States of Emergency: Documentaries, Wars, Democracies (2000).

 

Dale Hudson is Associate Teaching Professor and Curator of Film and New Media at New York University Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Formerly, he taught at Texas State University, Amherst College, and Ithaca College, USA.

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Taking Things Apart: Taking things Apart to Convene Micropublics
2. Mapping Open Space to Visualize Other Knowledges
3. Documenting Databases and Mobilizing Cameras
4. Tactical Gaming and Narrowcasting for more Equitable Knowledge Distribution
5. Collaborative Remix Zones: Towards a Critical Cinephilia