Media-as-things: The Intensified Materiality of Degenerated Images

Maryam Muliaee

doi:10.24193/mjcst.2021.11.03

Abstract

This paper adopts an art-based research model to investigate how media objects, as entangled material agencies, can become co-creators with artists and condition the viewers' memory and imagination. My work Recycled Series among other artists’ work are the subjects of this analysis. All these works involve images that are degenerated with a copy machine. The degenerated images lose coherence and become forms of ruins that the copier builds. Drawing from theories of things (Brown; Harman; Shaviro), I examine these works as the examples of “media-as-things” to show when media is misused, the potential of media is revealed. I place these works in the context of “broken-tech art” (Boym) and “haptic visuality” (Marks). I argue that these images determine a different object-subject relationship for their audience and their “thingness,” which is intensified through degeneration effects, becomes a major factor in their aesthetic reception.

Highlights

The Material Turn In previous decades we have witnessed a turn to the material on both theoretical and practical grounds, followed by an upsurging interest in objects and their diverse roles, capacities and dynamics
Calling attention to the METACRITIC JOURNAL FOR COMPARATIVE STUDIES AND THEORY 7.1 matter of things has supported the framing for discourse, social relationships and experience
What is referred to as “the thing” may often be used synonymously with other terms such as “the object, matter, substance, the world, noumena, reality, appearance,” for the philosophical history they all share; still, “through these various permutations, the thing remains identified with immanence,” Elizabeth Grosz argues (124)

Summary

Introduction

The Material Turn In previous decades we have witnessed a turn to the material on both theoretical and practical grounds, followed by an upsurging interest in objects and their diverse roles, capacities and dynamics. Considering the relationship between memory and the technical, I will draw from theories of things to explore the qualities of media objects as they become things in the work of art. Looking into some examples from my own media art practice Recycled Series to other artists’ works, I examine the ways artists have used things and (the process of) thingness as conditions to co-create with nonhuman agencies for critical and aesthetic purposes.

Results

Conclusion