The reading was Grusin, Richard. “Introduction”. In The nonhuman turn. University of Minnesota Press, 2015 and Chun, Wendy Hui Kyong. “Crisis, crisis, crisis; or, the temporality of networks.” The nonhuman turn (2015): 139-166.

Until now, I had not lifted the covers of any writings until this term and the course on Computational Arts-based research and theory. This week is no easier, we have been given two texts to read and summarise. The introduction by Grusin lays out the central theme of this collection of plenary addresses from the 2012 Nonhuman Turn in 21st Century Studies conference, The Nonhuman Turn. Grusin points to the meaning of the word ‘turn’ and how it is used in the context of non-human situations. The nonhuman is not restricted simply to machines but also to ‘animals, plants, organisms, climatic systems, technologies, or ecosystems’. He goes on to describe speculative realism; the first conference was held at Goldsmiths in 2007, when the group of speakers challenged the post-Kantian correlationism philosophy, as speculative realism, defining itself ‘loosely in its stance of metaphysical realism’ and working to overturn anthropocentrism, privilege of the human over non-human. Speculative realism favouring distinct forms of realism against dominant forms of idealism in so much of contemporary philosophy. He describes how technology has accelerated pace and intensity of academic discourse the ‘turn’ and noting that in 2012 it was estimated that 51% of internet traffic was non-human.

Wendy Hui Kyong Chun in her presentation argues that crisis both exceeds and is structurally necessary to networks. She contrasts the medium of television, citing catastrophe as central to commercial TV programming, whereas new media as a ‘crisis machine’. She examines the many ways how new media has affected us, how, they, as crises, cut across our rules, even creating new norms. Many problems arise from the sheer speed of telecommunications, ‘undermining the need for scholarly contemplation. ‘Crisis structures new media temporality’.