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 M3//EN
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METHOD:PUBLISH
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20161101T154257Z
DTSTART:20161111T140000Z
DTEND:20161111T160000Z
SUMMARY:Seminar: The Social Life of Digital and Non-digital Surfaces?
UID:{http://www.columbasystems.com/customers/uom/gpp/eventid/}qgd-iuzi57c
 p-7539cv
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Eduardo de La Fuente (James Cook University)\n\nMy p
 aper takes as its starting point a throwaway comment made by Friedrich N
 ietzsche in The Gay Science: namely\, that when we are thinking about th
 e world we should ‘stop bravely at the surface\, the fold\, the skin’ an
 d have the courage to ‘worship appearance\, to believe in shapes\, tones
 \, words’. \n\nMy own proposition is that apparently superficial things 
 like surfaces and textures matter a great deal in the context of non-sup
 erficial things like the associations embedded in consumer goods\, how l
 andscape shapes perceptions of places and whether an organisation or ins
 titution feels good about itself. Everyday aesthetic dualities like ‘glo
 ssy and patinated’\, ‘lush and arid’\, and ‘cluttered and uncluttered’\,
  can be mobilized in the service of economic\, organizational and infras
 tructural projects. While such aesthetic constructs may piggyback on oth
 er socio-cultural resources such as glamour and charisma\, my contention
  is that surfaces are also very capable of doing their very own socio-te
 chnical and cultural-economic work.\n\nI conclude by reflecting on why\,
   as we see advent of ‘intelligent things’ and the production of artifac
 ts comes to rely more heavily on technologies such as 3-D printing\, we 
 may be moving towards a situation where – as geographer Nigel thrift pro
 poses – ‘a new set of surfaces [are] gradually covering the world\, a ki
 nd of second skin of new forms of attention’. An interesting paradox: as
  the world starts to feel light and immaterial (or\, in Zygmunt Bauman’s
  terms\, more ‘liquid’)\, material surfaces – as well as their crafting 
 and curating – seem all the more important.\n \nThis is a Critical Inves
 tigations of Digital Culture Seminar\, organised by the Digital Work and
  Living Research Group.\n\n\n
STATUS:TENTATIVE
TRANSP:TRANSPARENT
CLASS:PUBLIC
LOCATION:Room 4.214\, University Place\, Manchester
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