Reading Laura Marks (The Secret Ingredient – 13/05/15)

The Secret Ingredient

In the age of the selfie, where we make private moments public through an image or video, what does it mean to think through video’s own body in relation to the bodies that it presents? Using Laura U. Marks’s text Touch: Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media, we talk about the material nature of analog vs. digital video and consider the specific sort of physical mediation offered by each. Might analog formats contain a more direct relationship between content and form? Has digital video given up its body in the sequence of 1s and 0s? Think about how early video artists interfered with tape in order to accentuate its body, digital rot and disappearance, the definition of affect, FHITP, ASMR videos, and protecting ourselves from the digital body by tuning off our screens an hour before bedtime. Marks, Laura U. Touch: Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. (May 14, 2015)