Technology Now: Jussi Parikka and Martin Howse

Media theorist Jussi Parikka is in conversation with artist Martin Howse, discussing Parikka’s latest writings and their shared interests in media archaeology. The pair draw upon Parikka's recent publications The Anthrobscene, a critique of the environmental destruction caused by media technologies in the anthropocene era, and A Geology of Media (both 2015), in which he argues that to adequately understand contemporary media culture we must set out from material realities that precede media themselves - Earth’s history, geological formations, minerals and energy.

Jussi Parikka's work in media theory has received wide international attention; his various books have addressed a wide range of topics relevant to a critical understanding of network culture, aesthetics and media archaeology of the digital. The artist Martin Howse is occupied with an artistic investigation of the links between the earth, software and the human psyche, proposing a return to animism within a critical misuse of scientific technology. Through the construction of experimental situations, art works and texts, Howse explore the rich links between materials and protocol.

Dr Jussi Parikka is Professor at the Winchester School of Art (University of Southampton) and divides his time between Istanbul and the UK. His books include the media ecology-trilogy Digital Contagions (2007), Insect Media (2010) and most recently, A Geology of Media (2015), which addresses the environmental contexts of technical media culture. In addition, Parikka has published such books as What is Media Archaeology (2012) and edited various books, most recently Writing and Unwriting (Media) Art History (2015, with Joasia Krysa) on the Finnish media art pioneer Erkki Kurenniemi.

Martin Howse was director of ap from 1998-2005, a software performance group working with electronic waste and pioneering an early approach to digital glitch. In 2005 his environmental computational work ap0201 received first prize within the Art & Artificial Life competition VIDA 8.0. From 2007 - 2009 he hosted a regular workshop, micro-residency and salon series in Berlin. Recently, he has worked and collaborated on acclaimed projects The Crystal World, Psychogeophysics, Earthboot and Sketches towards an Earth Computer. Over the last ten years he has initiated numerous open-laboratory style projects and performed, published, lectured and exhibited internationally.