Mediocene

The editorial of ZMK's current issue 9/1 (2018).

Optical media were instrumental in transforming the conception of facts, objectivity, and the »real.« This paper considers their role in structuring understandings of counterfactuals and states that could not be real. By returning to Ernst Mach’s photographic ballistics experiments, writing on thought experiments (a term he coined), and his dispute with Max Planck about the nature of the Weltbild, the article shows that, despite his legacy as a positivist, Mach’s epistemology of mechanical images opened a legitimate space of indeterminacy, contingency, and counterfactuality

This article looks at the way Matthew Weiner deploys double vision in his historical re-imagination of the 1960s in Mad Men. At issue is both the way the past haunts the present on the diegetic level in the form of fl ashback sequences, as well as the way Weiner performs simultaneity by virtue of parallel editing, especially in the closing sequences of individual episodes. At issue also is the way stock footage of key historical events such as the moon landing is deployed so as to off er a further juxtaposition of present and past.

Recently, the eff ort to counter Fake News faced a counter attack: academic »postmodernism « and »social constructivism« it was said—because they say that facts are soaked in prior interpretations—are either purveyors of Fake News or set the cultural context in which it fl ourishes. They do so by undermining confi dence in inquiry governed by simple facts. That is erroneous, argues William E. Connolly, because postmodernism never said that facts or objectivity are ghostly, subjective or »fake«. However, that what was objective at one time may become less so at a later date through the combination of a paradigm shift in theory, new powers of perception, new tests with refi ned instruments, and changes in natural processes such as species evolution. But the emergence of new theories and tests does not reduce objectivity to subjective opinion. Facts are real. Objectivity is important. But as you move up the scale of complexity with respect to facts and objectivity, it becomes clear that what was objective at one time may become subjective at another. Not because of Fake News or postmodernism. But because the complex relationships between theory, evidence and conduct periodically open up new thresholds.

Colin Lang in turn rhetorically asks if »fake news« or »alternative facts« are a new carnival and Trump its dog and pony show? The idea of »fake news« and »alternative facts« as a carnival could not only help to see the constructedness of the media spectacle, but also provides a new perspective on Trump as an actor who is playing a particular role in this carnival, and that role is not one that any of us would describe as presidential. Many in the popular press have assumed it is just what it looks like, an infantilized narcissist, a parody of some Regan-era New York real estate tycoon straight out of a Bret Easton Ellis novel. The problem is that this description is all too obvious, and misses something fundamental about alternative facts, and the part that Trump is playing. A central assumption is, then, that the creation of alternative facts is one symptom of a more structural, paradigmatic shift in the persona of a president, one which has few correlates in the annals of political history. The closest analogy for his kind of performance is actually hinted at in the title of Trump’s greatest literary achievement: The Art of the Deal. Trump is playing the part of an artist, pilfering from the tactics of the avant-garde and putting them to very different ends.

"Sir—There are few things of which the present generation is more justly proud than of the wonderful improvements which are daily taking place in all sorts of mechanical appliances. And indeed it is matter for great congratulation on many grounds. It is unnecessary to mention these here, for they are suffi ciently obvious; our present business lies with considerations which may somewhat tend to humble our pride and to make us think seriously of the future prospects of the human race.…"

The ›mediocene‹ is different from geological epochs insofar as it is not a story about physical deposits but about relational entanglement. The major change taking place in the mediocene is that the environment has become part of a singular managed global system. This innovation refers to a radical shift in the relationship between life and its environment: Media have coupled everything together to the point where there is no environment left, where the system is everywhere.

News about environmental damages and catastrophes has become so commonplace that it often elicits only a short and fl eeting expression of shock, anger, and resignation before life goes on as before. In societies increasingly insensitive to such news, it is often single images rather than elaborate news articles fed by complex scientifi c fi ndings that trigger global attention. Such was the case in November 2017 when images of garbage patches flowing in the Caribbean, shot by underwater photographer Caroline Powers, travelled around the globe and created a concert of outcry from scientists, politicians, activists and the general public.1 Powers’ striking images were picked up by traditional media such as daily newspapers, weekly magazines and TV shows, but were also spread widely via online (social) media channels. …

The article outlines the concept of medianatures. The term is a neologism and in debt to Donna Haraway’s rather eloquent and important coinage that already functioned to mark the constant co-becomings of supposedly separated spheres of nature and culture. Medianatures is a further elaboration that elaborates the tie between the earth materialities that are mobilized for technological infrastructures, visual technologies, applications and devices, and the onto- epistemological stance that then feeds back into understanding those planetary scale earth materialities in the fi rst place: the techniques of vision, observation, calculation, and circulation that are part of the governance of the earth and its various localities.

The article discusses how current mediated conditions change nature perception from a media study perspective. The article is based on diff erent case studies such as the current sensation of atmospheric change through sensible media attached to trees which get published via Twitter, the meteorologist Amazonian Tall Tower Observatory and the use of gutta percha derived from tropical trees for the production of cables in the history of telegraphy. For analysing the examples, the perspective of »media as environments« is fl ipped to »environments as media«, because this focus doesn’t approach media from a networked and technological perspective primarily but makes productive the elemental character of basic »media« like air, earth and water.

In the discussion of the Anthropocene, infrastructures play an eminent role as expression of man’s deep interference with nature. They mediate the planet by fundamentally shaping the relation between man and environments with long-lasting eff ects. While infrastructures are understood as stable formations, they need constant care to function properly. Against this background, the paper analyses abandoned infrastructures with respect to their precarious state between nature and culture, between life and death, fragility and stability.

We are witnessing a return of cosmology in 20th and 21st century thinking. It is cosmology in the ancient greek sense of the word which addressed the entirety of what surrounds and carries us. Another term for this ongoing transformation is the ›planetary‹ which isn’t simply a synonym for the ›global‹. The planetary means a kind of boundless pervasion based on science and technology and transposing planet earth and human life from a culture-historical to a cosmic scale.

The article discusses the dynamics of currencies, of media of exchange in a perspective of longue durée. It explores the concept of ›toxic media‹ and of an ›ecology of practices‹ by tracing discussions on cacao as money and as consumable since the 15^th century. Furthermore, historically specifi c versions of general purpose money, such as the Spanish Silver-Peso and the U.S. dollar are compared with to self-restricting currencies: currencies that are more tightly knit into the »web of life« ( Jason Moore), into local economies and ecologies and into cultural systems. The article determines toxic eff ects of generalized media of exchange in the Capitalocene and discusses the interplay of situated money-regimes with generalized, globalized media of exchange.