[-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 111, Issue 5

[Michael Dieter]

>
> By the way, it's rather unfortunate that the papers of the "research group" are linked and cited here as if they were anything canonical. As a matter of fact, these are preliminary, unedited papers/drafts written by a highly diverse workshop gathering of artists, media studies people and arts/media Ph.D. candidates at Aarhus Kunsthal. The definition of "post-digital" that Michael cited is partly tongue-in-cheek - it was based on a voluntary data mining of our drafts where we determined the most commonly used words and built a definition from them. We ultimately rewrote the drafts for transmediale.14's newspaper based on the same principles, with a high score for those texts that managed to squeeze in as much of that vocabulary as possible. That playful context becomes a bit clearer in the newspaper. It's unfortunate that these texts are online without referencing the context. Which ultimately says a lot about embodied and disembodied writing, no matter whether it's digital or not.
>
> -F

Sure, it was noted in my link that the papers were drafts, but surely
they're worth reading anyway for people who don't have the final
version? Again I hope that the PDF is up soon, I managed to get hold
of the newspaper version and it's really a great publication. But
thanks for adding some much needed context, the tongue-in-cheek aspect
is certainly worth noting, especially since you also appear to have
'won' the publication by clocking in the highest score Florian!

And indeed, despite this ironic approach, why think in terms of
canonicity? Post-digital seems to be more like a topic. That was
immediately apparent from the diversity of perspectives at TM; it was
unfortunate people didn't have more time on that panel in that
respect. Nevertheless, as something that relates to how Alessandro's
research into publishing has developed, but that precisely allows for
diverse points of engagement, I thought it might be worth drawing some
attention to, if only to allow for further discussion and points of
view. Ultimately, I think one obvious strength of the term is that it
appears strongly led by an exploratory/experimental sensibility,
rather than ideal concepts or theories of best practice.

-- 
Michael Dieter
Lecturer
Media Studies
The University of Amsterdam
Turfdraagsterpad 9
1012 XT Amsterdam
http://home.medewerker.uva.nl/m.j.dieter/