ICS Seminar Series - Grant Bollmer

Date: Thursday 22 September 2016
Time: 11.30am–1pm
Venue: EE.G.02, Western Sydney University, Parramatta South campus

Grant Bollmer

(University of Sydney)

The Genealogy of Connection and the Techniques of the Affect Lab

Abstract

'Affect' is often defined as the material energetics that enable one to affect and be affected, an intensity that unites and blurs the boundaries of subjective and intersubjective experience. With digital media, these claims are expanded to suggest how images of the face serve as an 'affective interface' through which the human body comes into contact with (and is transformed by) the virtualities of the digital, enabling forms of emotional relation that intertwine human physiology with the connective capacities of network technology. Defining affect in this way often defers to the history of neuropsychology, where the lively relationality of affect emerges from the neurobiological materiality of the human brain, questioning the role of language and representation in the production of 'culture' and 'meaning'. This talk intends to complicate this understanding of affect, presenting a genealogy that examines different techniques for inscribing knowledge of the human body and its capacity for relation. Moving from the use of photography and video in the history of psychology, to models of the face in digital animation, videogames, and social media analytics, this talk challenges the belief that 'affect' is intrinsically about haptic qualities of the body, instead arguing that knowledge about affect—in psychology, cultural theory, and contemporary popular culture—relies on technology's capacity to inscribe, represent, and interpret gestures of the human body through visual means. From this genealogy, this talk suggests that both the theorisation of affect and contemporary techniques for inscribing and representing emotion must acknowledge the role of 'the affect laboratory': the material, technical, and discursive apparatuses that produces visual knowledge about the body, the brain, and their relational potentials. The politics of affect are thus expanded by acknowledging how neuropsychology invokes affect as a normative capacity of the brain, categorising different bodies based on their ability to visually perform and interpret 'feelings' on the surface that is the face.

Biography

Grant Bollmer is a Lecturer of Digital Cultures in the Department of Media and Communications at the University of Sydney. His research examines the history and theory of digital and social media. His work has appeared in, among other journals, Cultural Studies, The Information Society, Memory Studies, and Continuum, and his book, Inhuman Networks: Social Media and the Archaeology of Connection, has recently been published by Bloomsbury. He is currently completing two projects, one titled Theorizing Digital Cultures, under contract with Sage, and another on the technologies used in the history of psychological research.