David Levente Palatinus

Link: https://cstonline.net/television-of-the-anthropocene-part-ii-posthuman-sensibilities-and-political-tv-by-david-levente-palatinus/

In this second installment of the Anthropocene Media Project, I continue to negotiate the nexus between the epochal and conceptual implications of the AnthropoScreen, and rethink the role of ‘television-as-medium’, and consequently, the role of media, similarly to that of humans, in a changed ecosystem, with special attention to the ways media themselves have become an ecological factor and a framework through which we negotiate post-Anthropocene existence (Maxwell and Miller, 2012; Parikka, 2015). This short piece offers considerations of television’s role in the circulation of posthuman sensibilities and of cultural imaginaries of a post-singularity world. I argue that recent renditions of sci-fi television highlight a number of urgencies that have become paramount in critical discourses on technology, AI, disembodied and re-embodied intelligence, the technological mediation of cognitive processes and data. What we witness is television’s commentary on the gradual move through the reification of Darwinian evolutionary logic, from par excellence manifestations of the Deleuzean bodies without organs, of disembodied consciousness, to the inexplicable evolution of self-replicating, self-organizing humanoid machines.

Link: http://americanaejournal.hu/vol13no2/palatinus

In post-human narratives (in literary fiction, film and television) the problems of consciousness and sentience emerge as pivotal to the representation of not only the emancipatory politics connecting human and non-human species, but also to the mediation (construction and circulation) of anxieties that surround such politics. I will use Season 1 of HBO's high concept drama, Westworld, to argue that this duality is best understood if situated within the context of the Anthropocene, the epoch we live in and in which humans not only have positioned themselves as the dominant species but also have become an ecological factor exerting their impact on a planetary level. The article will use further filmic and televisual examples (including Ex Machina and Humans) to comment on cultural ideas about artificial intelligence that provide an excellent starting point for the understanding of the intricate relation between the post-human condition and the Anthropocene, especially in relation to the negotiation and symbolization of non-human sentience, agency, and a non-human future as part of human history.

Keywords: Westworld, AI, post-human, Anthropocene, popular television, machine sentience, agency.

ERRATUM:
On page 9 this version incorrectly states the name of the actress portraying the character of Maeve in Westworld. The name of the actress is Thandie Newton. The mistake has been corrected in the published version.

Link: http://cstonline.net/television-of-the-anthropocene-part-i-by-david-levente-palatinus/

The purpose of this short piece is to reassess the place of the television medium in the age of the Anthropocene, one faces a tripartite complexity underlying the ways in which the two interconnect, co-evolve and produce a history proper to an epoch that purposefully suspends the demarcation of reality and simulation. Expanding the commonly accepted critical stance that human presence has become a force shaping both organic and inorganic matter – from species to climate to the transformation of eco-systems – the Anthropocene has become paramount in critical thinking, with implications for ecology, economy, politics, technology, history, and most recently media (cf. Parikka, 2015). Consequently, to reposition television’s role in the Anthropocene, it is essential to analyze how the underlying discourses about self, society, development, habitation, domination and responsibility are produced and mediated through television in our present historic context, and how these mediations challenge and shape our understanding of ecological/social reality.

Link: http://cstonline.net/what-does-television-want-on-affect-and-participation-by-david-levente-palatinus/

Discussions of the various ways in which viewers respond to and engage with televisual content have long been central to both production and audience studies (see for instance Carpentier 2011, Jenkins 2013, Falero 2016). Also, anthropological and sociological approaches to audiences’ consumption practices, including preferences for format and content types as well as viewers’ levels of participation in the production and consumption of televisual paraphernalia, have resulted in a substantial body of literature that shapes our understanding of television’s relation to social media, to fandom, and to forms of (political) and or social activism (Falero 125, Barker 2017). These approaches habitually consider the success and popularity of particular formats and types of content when commenting on viewers’ participatory practices. It is important, however to remind once again of the role affect may play in the understanding of participatory agency (cf. Grusin 6-7). This short paper offers three examples of practice for format and content types that are particularly conducive to, and also dependent on, generating a high level of involvement (both in terms of emotions and action) on the part of their respective audiences. These are medical and veterinary/animal rescue reality programs like Boston Med (Paul O’Grady: For the Love of Dogs (ITV, 2012-) or The Supervet (Channel 4, 2014-), lifestyle programs like HGTV’s House Hunters International (2006-), and finally, from the realm of televisual paraphernalia, the popular ‘Hate the Character-Respect the Actor’ memes.

This paper explores how the (social) aesthetics of film noir envelop the politics of space, violence, and social paranoia in Central European film in the second half of the twentieth century. Does violence always carry an element of spectacularity, or is there a more silent, more indirect violence inherent in systems of repression, mobilizing specific traits of psychological response? By looking at emblematic examples of the Hungarian and Czech (oslovak) film-production of the second half of the twentieth century, I will try to argue that a specific sense of tragedy, the haunting spectacularity of latent violence and the technics of ideology are constitutive elements of modern urban realism not only in the American hard-boiled tradition, but also in a Central European context, especially as regards the entanglement of politics, power, and social paranoia.

<http://cstonline.tv/the-return-of-the-surgeon>
This short piece looks at how cultural ideas about technologization, subversive practices and policy-making in early 20th century medicine are circulated on television. 'The Knick' offers not only a figuration of a specific moment in the history of medicine but also a commentary on the ways this history is construed and emulated (as historiography) - via television.

This short piece discusses the (digital) contexts of forensic science, cyber-crime and surveillance into which the upcoming installment in the CSI franchise, 'CSI: Cyber' (CBS 2015-)  inscribes itself. [http://cstonline.tv/csi-goes-cyber-or-does-it]