Understanding Flusser, Understanding Modernism

Aaron Jaffe, Laci Mattison, Paul Ardoin, Rodrigo Martini, Michael F. Miller

"The Czech-Brazilian philosopher Vilém Flusser (1920-1991) has been recognized as a decisive past master in the emergence of contemporary media theory and media archeology. His work engages and also rethinks several mythologies of modernity, devising new methodologies, experimental literary practices, and expanded hermeneutics that trouble traditional practices of literary/literate knowledge, shared experience, reception, and communication. Working within an expanded concept of modernism, Flusser presciently noted the power inherent in algorithmic information apparatuses to reshape our fundamental conceptions of culture and history. In an increasingly technological world, Flusser's form of experimental theory-fiction pits philosophy against cybernetics as it forces the category of ?the human? to confront the inhuman world of animals and machines. The contributors to Understanding...