Habits of Living: Global Networks, Local Affects

As the work of Dr. Matthew Fuller (a foundational new media theorist / artist and co-organizer from Goldsmiths) reveals, the cross-over between the technical and the experiential is what produces value and novelty in contemporary computing. The point is also to think throughhabits of living as possible points of transformation and intervention: as the term habitat makes clear, they also imply a certain sheltering and practice of care, something which the SARAI collective in New Delhi has addressed in their work in new media.  This notion of habitat and change has also been further addressed, specifically in terms of “the archive in motion,” by Eivind Rossaak—an international expert in film and media—and his research group at the National Library of Norway, Oslo.  Their creative rethinking of the archive and the role of media technologies is crucial to understanding the radical mobilization, perpetuation and preservation of habitual media and memory practices.  The work of Nishant Shah—the director of the Bangalore Center for Internet and Society and co-editor of the groundbreaking Digital AlterNatives with a Cause —highlights that, to understand how new media affects habits of living, we need to rethink assumptions about “digital natives” and imaginings of“netizens.”  He has also started a far-reaching research program investigating the relationship between affect and participation.  Dr. Kelly Dobson’s—chair of Digital + Media at RISD and an innovative and much lauded new media artist—work focuses on the intimate “caring” relationship between machines and humans, which emerges from mainly non-intentional interactions, such as noise and vibrations.  Lastly, Habits of Living: Networked Affects, Glocal Effects seeks to change the focus of network analyses away from catastrophic events or their possibility towards generative habitual actions that negotiate and transform the constant stream of information to which we are exposed. (This is the focus of my current book project).