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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><STRONG>WHEN: THURSDAY </STRONG><A
name=100208><STRONG>10.02.08 | 5-7 PM | </STRONG></A></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><STRONG></STRONG></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><STRONG>WHERE: </STRONG><A
href="http://whereis.mit.edu/map-jpg?mapterms=2-105&mapsearch=go2-105"><STRONG>2-105</STRONG></A><STRONG>
</STRONG></FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><STRONG>Submarine Media: Sounding the Sea with
Cyborg Anthropology</STRONG></DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV class=event_speaker><STRONG>Stefan Helmreich</STRONG></DIV>
<DIV class=event_description>This presentation delivers a first-person
anthropological report on a dive to the seafloor in the Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institution’s three-person submersible, Alvin. Meditating on the sounds rather
that the sights of the dive, Helmreich explores multiple meanings of immersion:
as a descent into liquid, an absorption in activity, and the all-encompassing
entry of an anthropologist into a cultural medium. Tuning in to the rhythms of
Alvin as a submarine cyborg, he shows how interior and exterior soundscapes
create a sense of immersion, and he argues that torquing media theory to include
water as a medium can make explicit the technical structures and social
practices of sounding, hearing, and listening that support senses — scientific,
everyday, and anthropological — of embodied sonic presence. Stefan Helmreich is
an anthropologist who studies life scientists, from those who engage in the
computer modeling of living things (Silicon Second Nature: Culturing Artificial
Life in a Digital World, University of California Press, 1998) to those who work
in deep-sea environments (Alien Ocean: Anthropological Voyages in Microbial
Seas, University of California Press, 2009). He is particularly interested in
the limits of “life” as an analytical category for contemporary
biology.</DIV></FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Best,<BR>Generoso Fierro</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>CMS @ MIT</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>