Art & Philosophy Forum at the DJCAD: Ontology of Photography

View from the Window at Le Gras. Heliographic image by Nicéphore Niépce, 1826

I will be presenting a paper at the Art & Philosophy Forum in DJCAD lecture theatre 5017 at 16:00 on 14 March. As always, these seminars are open to all interested students from across Philosophy as well as Contemporary Art Practice.

The paper is titled "Ontology of Photography and the Crisis of Representation: In Search of the Real". We will look into how our understanding of the 'photographic real' changed throughout history and discuss the challenges and possibilities that the notion of reality presents us with in photography. This interdisciplinary presentation will address the following questions:

• What is real in photography?
• Is realness something that needs to be explained?
• Should we strive for the kind of explanation that refuses to reduce reality to manipulable ingredients?
• What is 'crisis of representation' in photography and how can philosophy address it?
• Can information be a sufficient ground for the new ontology of photography that contemporary philosophy poses?
• What role does manipulation play in our understanding of realness?

Digital Subject UK: A Workshop at the University of Dundee (1 April 2015)

• How enabling or disabling are concepts such as ‘the network’, ‘feedback’ and ‘information’ for contemporary forms of life?
• Is the Internet one or many things?
• Is the advent of the ‘Information Age’ something to be welcomed or feared?
• What role can philosophy play in thinking about information and communication technologies and forms of subjectivity emerging in relation to them?

These questions and other related ones were tackled in this intensive one-day workshop at the University of Dundee. The workshop took place Wednesday April 1st 2015, 10 am – 6 pm, Room 2S15 in the Dalhousie Building, University of Dundee. More info >

Dominic Smith (University of Dundee): ‘Does the Digital Subject Sleep?’  [MP3]

Ashley Woodward (University of Dundee): ‘Is the Digital Subject the Übermensch?’ [MP3]

Alan Bell (University of Dundee): ‘Paranoia, fictions and realities; technological change and the record’ [MP3]

Joris Vlieghe (University of Edinburgh): ‘How learning to read and write shapes humanity: A technosomatic perspective on digitization’ [MP3]

Erika Fulop (University of Hamburg): ‘Weave Your Own Web: Authorial Self-representation on the Internet’ [MP3]

Arnauld Regnauld (University of Paris VIII): ‘Aura is Interface: Translation and Subjectivity in the Digital Era’ [MP3]

Claire Larsonneur (University of Paris VIII): ‘Interface me? Living 3.0’ [MP3]

Pierre Cassou Noguès (University of Paris VIII): ‘Body as Money’ [MP3]

Galit Wellner (Ben Gurion University): ‘Codes of Subjectivity’ [MP3]

Tim Barker (University of Glasgow): ‘On Being Con-Temporary: What Technical Media Studies Might Offer to Theories of Contemporaneity’ [MP3]