In Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964), Marshall McLuhan proposed that media affect society not because of the content they carry but because of the characteristics of the medium itself. A key manifestation of this state of affairs is provided in his discussion of the relationship between media and senses: each media, argues McLuhan, “adds itself on to what we already are,” acting as “amputation” and “extension” of our senses and bodies, reshaping them into new technical forms and reshaping the ways in which individuals perceive the world.* Although McLuhan has been criticized for his lack of attention to questions of power, practice, uses and social context, his understanding of media as extensions of the senses remains crucial. It introduces the contemporary comprehension of media in their relationship to the senses.
Media, Senses and Sensibilities addresses different debates about the impact of media practices and materialities on the changing nature and definition of the senses, as well as on the sensorial experiences of media and the organization of the senses. It addresses the political, cultural and artistic media interventions that explore the changing nature and definition of the senses. How do specific practices of media engage and affect our senses? What are the sensorial and polysensorial experiences solicited but never simply determined by media? What is the relationship between media, sense experiences, culture and society? How do new practices of mobile, locative and location-aware media organize our perception of time and space?
Media, Senses and Sensibilities is equally invested in the exploration of the emotional and affective dimensions of media experiences. It examines not only the role of emotions in the representational, connective and collocational practices of media and the embeddedness of emotionality in the materiality of media, but also the more recent development of affective computing. The emotionality and affectivity of media and mass-media interventions require that we address the following questions: how can an interdisciplinary approach to the study of the relationship between (mass)media and emotions help us address media information, media entertainment, media psychology, media participation and connection, political communication, and persuasion? How can it address emotion-related issues such as: the evolutionary functions of mediated emotions, media violence, media sexuality, media pleasure, fear-evoking media? How are new media (such as movement-based games) designed to promote specific affective experience (engagement, pleasure and meaning construction) in the user?
FALL 2014
Media@McGill hosted Sound Vision Action, an International Colloquium, which was held in Montreal at the McCord Museum on November 14 and 15, 2014. Click here for videos of the presentations, and here for some photos.
2014 Beaverbrook Annual Lecturer
Glenn Greenwald spoke about Canada as a state of surveillance and his new vision of journalism (which he calls adverserial journalism) to a full house of 700 students, professors and the general public at Pollack Hall, McGill University on Thursday, October 23, 2014. Others followed his talk on Livestream, Twitter – @Media_McGill – and tweeted questions using #GreenwaldMtl. Read our Twitter feed for some highlights of last night.
Media@McGill Beaverbrook Visiting Scholar
Walter Benn Michaels, Professor of American Literature and Literature Theory, (University of Illinois at Chicago) was the 2014-2015 Media@McGill Beaverbrook Visiting Scholar. During his two-week residency, he gave a talk, "Diversité, egalité ou théâtralité? From Mallarmé and Meillassoux to Arthur Ou and Mabou," co-sponsored by the AHCS Speaker Series. To learn more, click here.
WINTER 2015
“Three-minute thesis” research exchange with Art History and Communication Studies (AHCS) students and faculty, February 4, 2015.
Tracking Images Online: Tools and Tricks, 2-hour workshop conducted by Prof. Nathalie Casemajor, on February 6, 2015.
Kyle Stine, 2014-2015 Media@McGill Postdoctoral Fellow, gave a tallk, "Circuits of Reproduction: Toward an Archeology of Machine Perception," co-sponsored by the AHCS Speaker Series, on February 12, 2015.
Radical Affordances: Emerging Scholarship, Art, and Activism at the Intersection of Media and Disability Studies: free public panel and virtual gallery during McGill’s 2015 Disabilities Awareness Week, March 23, 2015.
The Yes Men Are Revolting! - workshop and lecture at McGill University, April 8, 2015.
Media@McGill Delegation to the 2015 World Social Forum, Tunis, Tunisia, March 23-27, 2015. Pre-event and post-event discussions.
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4@6 Invitation from the Media@McGill delegation to the World Social Forum (WSF) in Tunis, 2015
Thursday, April 23, 2015 - 16:00
The Yes Men Are Revolting! - lecture, film screening and Q&A
Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - 19:00
Theater HORA - "Disabled Theater"
Monday, March 30, 2015 - 20:00
Radical Affordances: Media and Disability Studies
Monday, March 23, 2015 - 16:00
2015 Disabilities Awareness Week
Monday, March 23, 2015 - 12:00
Invitation to an Open Meeting to discuss a draft of the World Charter of Free Media (French/English)
Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - 16:35
Steven Salaita: “Uncivil Rites: Academic Freedom and the Corporate University”
Friday, March 13, 2015 - 10:00
World of Matter: Resource Ecologies and Contested Territories - 2-day symposium
Friday, February 20, 2015 - 09:00
Discourses of Race: The United States, Canada and Transnational Blackness
Monday, February 16, 2015 - 18:00
Circuits of Reproduction: Toward an Archaeology of Machine Perception
Thursday, February 12, 2015 - 17:30
Tracking Images Online: Tools and Tricks
Friday, February 6, 2015 - 10:30
#SVA2014: Video Online!
Thursday, December 4, 2014 - 16:53
#SVA2014 - Sound, Vision, Action
Friday, November 14, 2014 - 09:00
Glenn Greenwald prononcera la Conférence annuelle Beaverbrook 2014
Thursday, October 23, 2014 - 18:00
Glenn Greenwald: The 2014 Beaverbrook Annual Lecturer
Thursday, October 23, 2014 - 18:00
Jamel Shabazz: " 'Pieces of a Man': The Life and Work of a New York Street Photographer"
Thursday, October 9, 2014 - 18:00
Walter Benn Michaels, 2014-2015 Media@McGill Beaverbrook Visiting Scholar
Tuesday, October 7, 2014 - 17:35
How to Internet for Academics is back
Thursday, September 25, 2014 - 03:35
When I Walk - A film by Jason DaSilva
Monday, September 22, 2014 - 07:00
Like, Total Audio Definition, Man!: Does Quality Music Recording Matter? By Jonathan Sterne and George Massenburg
Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - 14:34