Explorations of the many ways of being material in the digital age. In his oracular 1995 book Being Digital, Nicholas Negroponte predicted that social relations, media, and commerce would move from the realm of “atoms to bits”―that human affairs would be increasingly untethered from the material world. And yet in 2019, an age dominated by the digital, we have not quite left the material world behind. In Being Material, artists and technologists explore the relationship of the digital to the material, demonstrating that processes that seem wholly immaterial function within material constraints. Digital technologies themselves, they remind us, are material things―constituted by atoms of gold, silver, silicon, copper, tin, tungsten, and more. The contributors explore five modes of being material: programmable, wearable, livable, invisible, and audible. Their contributions take the form of reports, manifestos, philosophical essays, and artist portfolios, among other configurations. The book's cover merges the possibilities of paper with those of the digital, featuring a bookmark-like card that, when “seen” by a smartphone, generates graphic arrangements that unlock films, music, and other dynamic content on the book's website. At once artist's book, digitally activated object, and collection of scholarship, this book both demonstrates and chronicles the many ways of being material.
Author(s): Marie-Pier Boucher, Stefan Helmreich, Leila W Kinney, Skylar Tibbits, Rebecca Uchill, Evan Ziporyn
Publisher: The MIT Press
Year: 2019
Language: English
Pages: 209
Tags: Commercial Products: Computer-Aided Design: Congresses, Art Objects: Computer Aided Design: Congresses, Digital Media: Psychological Aspects: Congresses, Senses And Sensation: Philosophy: Congresses, Materialism: Congresses, Material Culture: Congresses
Contents......Page 5
Preface and Acknowledgments......Page 8
Being Material, an Introduction......Page 12
PROGRAMMABLE......Page 14
Introduction......Page 15
Ferrite Cores, Whirlwind Computer Project: “The Materials of Memory”......Page 17
Code as Material......Page 21
Frugal Science in the Age of Curiosity......Page 27
Machine Agency......Page 31
Another Matter: Notes on Worldeating......Page 35
Interdigitation......Page 44
WEARABLE......Page 46
Introduction......Page 47
The Materials of Immateriality: Hussein Chalayan’s Fashion......Page 51
Yarn-dez-vous, 2014......Page 63
Crafting Material, Being Material......Page 67
HAPIfork and the Haptic Turn in Wearable Technology......Page 71
The Algorithms Have Eyes Hyphen-Labs......Page 77
Beyond Wearables: The Future Is Fleshy......Page 81
Interweaving......Page 96
LIVABLE......Page 98
Introduction......Page 99
Microuniverse......Page 103
Being Material Beings......Page 109
That Touch of Money......Page 113
Standing Rock: Selma Moment for the Environmental Justice Movement......Page 121
Interleaving......Page 128
INVISIBLE......Page 130
Introduction......Page 131
Ways of Absence: or, The Unbearable Heft of Being Materialized......Page 135
Invisible Images......Page 141
Mediating Animal-Infrastructure Relations......Page 145
Persistent Ephemeral Pollutants......Page 155
To See or Not to See? Dilemmas in Imaging and Intelligence......Page 163
Interstitial......Page 170
AUDIBLE......Page 172
Introduction......Page 173
On “Land”......Page 175
Air......Page 177
Magnetic Resonances......Page 179
Born-Digital Musical Instruments......Page 181
Hey Exit: Every Recording of Gymnopédie 1......Page 185
Vessels: Being as Material......Page 187
Musical Trojan Horse:Uncontrollable Sounds......Page 189
Gymnopédie Z (Erik Satie, arr. Ziporyn)......Page 191
Outroduction......Page 194
Biographies......Page 198
Index......Page 201
