I am pleased to announce that I have signed a contract with University of Minnesota Press for a new book tentatively called A Geology of Media.
Planned for 2015, A Geology of Media forms the third, final part of the media ecology-trilogy. It started with Digital Contagions: A Media Archaeology of Computer Viruses (2007) and continued with Insect Media (2010). This book on the geophysics and the non-organic ground of media complements the earlier takes by offering a media materialism from the point of view of geological resources, electronic waste and media arts. Through engaging with several contemporary art and technology projects it provides a media theoretical argument: to think of materiality of media beyond the focus on machines and technologies by focusing on what they consist of: the chemistry and geological materials of media, from metals to dust.
In short, I am interested to see if what pejoratively sometimes is called “hardware fetishism” is not hard enough, and even media and cultural theorists need to focus on the rocks and crust that make technical media possible. Earth history of deep times mixes with media history, which becomes a matter of not only thousands, but millions of years of non-linear history (to modify Manuel Delanda’s original idea). This way media materialism becomes a way to entangle media technologies, environmental issues and themes of global labour. Perhaps instead of the Anthropocene, we should just refer to the Anthropobscene.
I’ve been in recent talks and short posts been addressing the geological in media, and my piece in The Atlantic offered a short preview of what’s to come. In addition, below a very tentative table of contents. This project (and the Erkki Kurenniemi book I am working on with Joasia Krysa) will keep me busy for a while.
A Geology of Media
Preface
1) Introduction: Grounds of Media/Culture
2) An Alternative Deep Time of the Media
3) Psychogeophysics of Technology
4) Dust and the Exhausted Planet
5) Media Fossils
Afterwords: Half-Life
Appendix:
“Zombie Media”, by Garnet Hertz and Jussi Parikka
From the Crystal World-project (Howse, Jordan, Kemp)
