Insect Media: An Archaeology of Animals and Technology (Volume 11)

by Jussi Parikka

Since the early nineteenth century, when entomologists first popularized the unique biological and behavioral characteristics of insects, technological innovators and theorists have proposed insects as templates for a wide range of technologies. In Insect Media , Jussi Parikka analyzes how insect forms of social organization-swarms, hives, webs, and distributed intelligence-have been used to structure modern media technologies and the network society, providing a radical new perspective on the interconnection of biology and technology.


Through close engagement with the pioneering work of insect ethologists, including Jakob von Uexküll and Karl von Frisch, posthumanist philosophers, media theorists, and contemporary filmmakers and artists, Parikka develops an insect theory of media, one that conceptualizes modern media as more than the products of individual human actors, social interests, or technological determinants. They are, rather, profoundly nonhuman phenomena that both draw on and mimic the alien lifeworlds of insects.
 

Deftly moving from the life sciences to digital technology, from popular culture to avant-garde art and architecture, and from philosophy to cybernetics and game theory, Parikka provides innovative conceptual tools for exploring the phenomena of network society and culture. Challenging anthropocentric approaches to contemporary science and culture, Insect Media reveals the possibilities that insects and other nonhuman animals offer for rethinking media, the conflation of biology and technology, and our understanding of, and interaction with, contemporary digital culture.

Genres: Theory, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Cultural Studies, Science, Technology, Animals

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Jussi Parikka is a Finnish new media theorist and Professor in Digital Aesthetics and Culture at Aarhus University, Denmark. He is also Professor in Technological Culture & Aesthetics at Winchester School of Art as well as Visiting Professor at FAMU at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague.

Reviews

[Mjhancock · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jussi Parikka wants readers to consider what it would be like to consider things from an insect perspective. First and foremost, that means reconsidering the environment not as something you're separate from, but something your very being is situated to respond to, and vice versa. The book is divided into two halves, which can be broadly construed as a section on the history of insect thinking in the 19th and early 20th century, and insect thinking in light of technology. Chapters further break things down into more refined subjects, such as insect technics, architecture, rethinking time, metamorphosis, individuation, swawrming, and sexual selection. The book has a wide ranging stable of philosophers that Parikka frequently makes reference to; Deleuze and Guatarri get a lot of attention, as does Simondon, as you may have guessed from the appearance of "individuation." Uexküll is the most present of the early insect studiers, and Darwin also comes up a lot. Grosz and Parisi and a few other offer a more feminist perspective, among other things. But for my interest, it's the reinterpretation of Roger Caillois that is particularly attention-grabbing. In game studies, Caillois is known for classification of game traits, that games offer combinations of randomness, competition, vertigo, and mimicry. Mimicry is usually interpreted as representation, but Parikka argues that, given how Caillois uses the term in early texts, it can be better thought of as transformation or metamorphosis, the way a creature changes radically its relationship to the environment. Is this a good way to think of the transformation of person into player character? At any rate, it's a good example of Insect Media argues for: considering the value of an insect perspective.

[rodri442 · Rating 2 out of 5]

What the hell? what the helly? what the helly-ANT-ey?


This book was yet another chapter in my "picking out a random book from Dawn Trader book shop and seeing what happens". I approached this book expecting to learn more about bugs and how they impacted technology though I was met with a pretty dense meta-analysis of insect portrayal in media throughout history and what that consequently tells us about culture and society. If you are not already pretty familiar with the ideas of Deluze and Guttari or Lacan, you are in for a rough ride (as was I). Although hard to parse through at times, the content of the book was quite interesting. For example it detailed how during industrialization, insects were seen as tiny, mechanized bodies designed to carry out the repetitive work that consumed their daily lives and how in the more recent age of the algorithm, insects are seen as swarms. Tiny pieces of a large intelligent and complex sentience that operates both individually and as a conglomerate. All the while this is done, the author ties back these observations to reveal truths about western society and industrial capitalism and later on patriarchy. This is a book I'd have to read again in order to fully take in everything it was trying to say– I'm just not sure if I have the bandwidth to do that again lol.