Son[i]a #245
Matthew Fuller
Matthew Fuller is an author and Professor of Digital Media at the Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, London. He works in the fields of media theory, software studies, critical theory, and contemporary fiction.
In this podcast, Fuller begins with a detailed analysis of the notion of scale, not only in an abstract sense, but as a doorway into pressing issues regarding ethics, ecology, technology and post-human practices. Following Fuller’s reasoning, the very idea of scale becomes a fundamentally political question in a context characterized by profound environmental damage. As such, it is a crucial tool to measure and understand the world around us, and to rethink it and our impact on the medium we inhabit.
This subtle shift of the collective point of view is in a sense the backbone of Fuller’s case, and this also applies to his recent work around sleep: “People are conscious in different kinds of ways, at different levels, when they are asleep; but they are also not the classical human subject. So for a third of our life we are not the classical human subject. And this maybe provides a possibility for rethinking the human”.
SON[I]A talks to Matthew Fuller about sleep, procedural imperialism, big data, post-humanity, and what he calls “denial of service attacks on people’s brains”.
Joana Moll
Through a combination of artistic research, detective work, and an almost forensic approach to our own data trail, Joana Moll’s work exposes some of the most pressing issues of our data-driven, data-centric existence. Her research projects, talks, workshops and art pieces slip through the cracks of corporate behemoths to make sense of their polymorphic nature and reveal some of the hidden layers that shape and sustain the hypercapitalist fractal. In this podcast, we talk to Joana Moll about interfaces and their social implications, about technocolonialism, agency, surveillance, exploitation, speculation and, why not, about laughter.
Olga Goriunova
In this podcast, scholar and curator Olga Goriunova talks about the shelf life of marketing data, about legal persons and digital subjects, reading statistics as poetry, and the many mysteries of personalised targeting. Olga’s concept of Digital Subjects looks at how machine learning crunches data from search engine queries, e-commerce, social network activity and more into categories... to further enhance marketing tactics, political communication and similar practices.
Ramon Amaro
The researcher and lecturer Ramon Amaro introduces the basics of machine learning, its criteria for assigning value, the collision between blackness and the artificial, its flaws, and the problem of impunity that all too often accompanies them. He also calls for a techno-resistance that would require us to sacrifice our current view of the world and of ourselves.
The seminal Pirate Radio scene in London
Media studies expert Matthew Fuller talks about the origins and legacy of pirate radio culture in London, focusing on this fertile period of DIY resurgence, when radio resumed a prominent role in a scene hungry for alternative channels before the arrival of the internet.
Deleted scenes
We dig up some unreleased fragments of the interview with Matthew Fuller that we were unable to include the first time around.