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"This paper considers the prevalence of screens in day-to-day life - from the televisual and cinematic to the many computer and mobile screens encountered in both domestic and public spaces - and suggests that each of these encounters has its own corporeal and interfacial modality. More specifically, the discussion will explore the relational and frontal ontologies of the face and the screen interface, focusing on the specific body-technology relations to emerge from our corporeal or somatic incorporation of television, computers and mobile screens. In particular, I will suggest that our engagement with media screens at a perceptual and corporeal level can be theorised by way of a phenomenological method that is supplemented by a critical understanding of the various ontological tropes and "body-metaphors" that are deeply embedded in our experience of screen interfaces. This focus on the perceptual and metaphorical aspects of the body-screen - and more specifically, face-screen - relation, can provide some insights into the historical and ontological affinity between faces, windows, frames and screens, and the complex ways we "turn" to them with varying degrees of attention and distraction. Finally, I aim to show how this affinity is challenged at a fundamental ontic and perceptual level by our experience of contemporary new media and mobile screens. "

"Digital Media Revisited written by Liestol et al, ed shared by 'tsek honT 34 minutes ago Theoretical and Conceptual Innovation in Digital Domains "

"VOICE: Vocal Aesthetics in Digital Arts and Media, a new anthology edited by Norie Neumark, Ross Gibson and Theo Van Leeuwen from MIT Press, takes stock of the voice's various transformations in the arts in the wake of the technological innovations of the digital age, and the ways in which artists anticipated these changes. One might expect musings on Barthes, man vs. machine, hauntology, linguistics or body politics, and those are all here; but there is also a refreshing and suitably wide-ranging cross-section of pop cultural examples and namechecks (Wolfman Jack, Portishead, Winnie the Pooh, BioShock, Meshuggah). Beyond its interdisciplinary parameters, the more theory-oriented papers are counterbalanced by an experimental essay (Theresa M. Senft's "Four Rooms", which juxtaposes phone sex, cancer care tapes, a voice recognition program, and Alvin Lucier's "I Am Sitting in a Room"), a poem (Mark Amerika's "Professor VJ's Big Blog Mashup"), and a meditation (Michael Taussig's "Humming"). The multiplicity of forms and inclusion of writerly as well as scholarly voices create an appropriately reflexive resonance."

"Tangible computing has a long history of interest in technology circles; like augmented reality and computer-supported cooperative work, it has long been the focus of research studies in academic institutions, and not ironically, the focus of a large quantity of science fiction movies, too. It is only in the past half-decade, however, that the stars have aligned to support tangible computing in practice The low cost of technical components, a more ubiquitous approach to rapid prototyping, and introductory behavioral memes (such as touch-based computing, made popular by the iPhone) have pushed tangibility to the forefront of actually shipping consumer products and have encouraged the development of product ecologies as related to systems, services, and the blurring of lines between physical and digital computing. Timely, then, is Mark Gross and Mark Baskinger's cover story describing the opportunities-and challenges-of tangible computing in normal life. They introduce the new and old, and emphasize the importance of product form in bringing tangibility to life in an appropriate and reflective manner. Don Norman builds on the premise of "transmedia"- technological media solutions that aren't just functional, but are also pleasurable and satisfying."

"The global trend toward democratization of the last two decades has been accompanied by the resurgence of various politics of "identity/difference." From nationalist and ethnic revivals in the countries of east and central Europe to the former Soviet Union, to the politics of cultural separatism in Canada, and to social movement politics in liberal western-democracies, the negotiation of identity/difference has become a challenge to democracies everywhere. This volume brings together a group of distinguished thinkers who rearticulate and reconsider the foundations of democratic theory and practice in the light of the politics of identity/difference. In Part One Jürgen Habermas, Sheldon S. Wolin, Jane Mansbridge, Seyla Benhabib, Joshua Cohen, and Iris Marion Young write on democratic theory. Part Two--on equality, difference, and public representation--contains essays by Anne Phillips, Will Kymlicka, Carol C. Gould, Jean L. Cohen, and Nancy Fraser; and Part Three--on culture, identity, and democracy--by Chantal Mouffe, Bonnie Honig, Fred Dallmayr, Joan B. Landes, and Carlos A. Forment. In the last section Richard Rorty, Robert A. Dahl, Amy Gutmann, and Benjamin R. Barber write on whether democracy needs philosophical foundations. This is an excellent yext for someone interested in models of the public sphere. While all the authors are proponents of the deliberative model of democracy (as opposed to, for instance, the liberal, interest-based, technocratic, communitarian, or civic-republican) many of them place their arguments in the context of other models. So, the book reads like a symposium of like-minded people, rather than like a rally of true believers. Almost all of the essays are accessible to a generalist, but several really stand out (especially those by Benhabib, Fraser, and Young)."