25.9 to 28 September 2019
University of Cologne
Panel (co-)organised by members of the chair:
Materiality of invention. Media and design patents
Panel S4.08
co-organised by Prof. Dr Bernhard Dotzler, Prof. Dr Christiane Heibach and Dr Solveig Ottmann at the GfM Annual Conference 2019
Description
With the mechanisation of production in the mid-18th century, the requirements for the creation of man-made objects changed. Whereas designed objects previously resulted from the activity of the craftsman, who guaranteed the Platonic similarity relationship between idea and object, it is now the individual who designs the object or invents the technical object by virtue of his ingenuity. Moreover, the objects are produced by the machine. In the course of the 19th century, an epistemic break becomes manifest: the "order of designed things" is reversed insofar as the material now becomes the starting point of the production process instead of the Platonic idea. Wood, stone and metal are mechanically processed, physically alienated and chemically transformed. New objects emerge from these procedures, constituting the broad field of design and technical media. Initially, these were mechanical devices (e.g. the loom), power-generating machines (e.g. the steam engine) and synthetically produced substances (e.g. paints). By the fin de siècle at the latest, these inventions were increasingly joined by electrical devices (e.g. battery, telegraphy, light bulb) and new means of transport (e.g. railway, airship, submersible), which fundamentally changed the technical and media infrastructures and the world of objects as a whole in the 20th century.
It was the patent introduced in the 18th century that was used to counter these changes: The privilege previously granted by the king or sovereign was fundamentally modified with the introduction of the specification. With this description, the patent became an instrument of legal regulation, which henceforth controlled the economy on the one hand, but also opened up the sphere of action of the inventing subject on the other. The invention becomes identifiable and reproducible by means of a description, drawing and model. At the same time, it provides the requirements for the emergence of modifications and new inventions. The patent reveals itself as an actor in its own right.
The thesis of the workshop is that patents represent a recording system that makes the epistemological and economics criteria in the otherwise hidden invention process visible. The workshop is therefore dedicated to selected patents, which are to be examined for their significance as actors, e.g. with regard to the use of certain materials and constructions, the specific economy of the objects and media manifested in them and/or the presentation of a certain course of invention. Materials (e.g. tubular steel, plastics, wall colours) as well as design objects (e.g. furniture, lamps) and technical media (e.g. telephone, radio, typewriter) are under discussion. At the same time, the patents are interrelated in many ways: the individual patent - and thus the invention - only becomes understandable when these relationships are visualised. The workshop will also discuss the consequences of such interconnections.
That was/is the DVD. Materialisations of DVD culture
Panel S4.05
co-organised by Dr Michael Fleig and Dr Herbert Schwaab at the GfM Annual Conference 2019
Panel description
Having arrived at its apparent end, a special look at the material constitution of DVD culture opens up - at the technological requirements of the medium and its influence on the availability of film and television culture, at its function of training viewers in digital practices of perceiving products of audiovisual culture (Diestelmeyer 2012) and handing them over to platforms such as Netflix and YouTube, at its ability to catch up with the fleetingness of film and television, to materialise media and lend them history. The DVD completes what was begun with the introduction of video, but could not yet be realised by this medium, the making available and collecting of television series (cf. Kompare 2009), an individual reception that breaks down the audiovisual text into small units, the framing of the content through paratexts such as commentaries, booklets or bonus material. These are all reasons to explore the materialisation of DVD culture in this panel and to question its residual nature, even if the displays at retailers such as Müller or Saturn are getting smaller and smaller and the last Blockbuster shop in the USA is fighting for survival. Rather, the DVD is being transformed into new aggregate states, the medium is constituting the blurred dividing line between the digital and the analogue (e.g. the tangibility of a film vs. its virtual presence on online providers) is reconstituted in a tangible way in the medium, the audiovisual culture sorts itself into visible orders (cf. McKenna 2017) as well as productive 'disorder', which is created by the random dispositions of individual practices of collecting or compiling films on DVD providers and thus represents an alternative to a Netflix culture over-regulated by algorithms.
Materialisation of the immaterial? Media art and ecology
Panel
Speaker: Christiane Heibach (University of Regensburg)