PRAGMATIC ASPECTS OF VILEM FLUSSER'S "APPARATUS-OPERATOR COMPLEX": THE METAMORPHOSIS OF HUMAN AND NON-HUMAN

• Grant number: 13/18047-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: November 01, 2013
• End date: October 31, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Communications - Theory of Communication
• Principal Investigator: Norval Baitello Junior
• Grantee: Mikhail Aleksandrovich Stepanov
• Host Institution: Pró-Reitoria de Pós-Graduação (PRPG). Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo (PUC-SP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The main objective of the project is to investigate the concept "apparatus-operator complex" and practices corresponding to it. Through research of these practices, which offer a new view on media, we can comprehend an actual condition of mutual relations between human and technological (nonhuman) in the context of the theory and philosophy of media, cultural and visual studies and technological art. Research of daily and highly specialized practices also should show that/how, following the logic of Vilem Flusser's "new imagination", the imaginations of "human" and of "machine" co-operate. This is a project which investigates the architectonics of cultures. The philosophical concept of "apparatus-operator complex" in a pragmatic conversion to a technological milieu of contemporary culture, which, according to Flusser, presents two alternatives: on the one hand, a mass society programmed from apparatus (The apparatus is based on technical and political programmers, or in other words, is highly ideological, and has economic, psychological, social and aesthetic parameters); on the other hand, an open telematic society ("telematisch" in Flusser's terms), a society of dialogue. Flusser's view is directed to the future, but his position is not only optimistic, but also pragmatic. He searches for conceptual tools, with the help of which it would be possible to resolve probable problems, with the necessity arising at the point of passage to "new imagination" and "techno-images". Flusser develops a new installation of relationships of the human to itself and to its environment. This installation is based on projection (design), a new form of multidimensional, visual thinking embodied by digital culture. The human can "ascend" ("Aufrichten" in Flusser's terms) by means of projecting and of a creative treatment of machines. In my project I assume that the machine is more than a technique, a thing, a tool; that it offers the potential for processing virtual and actual facts, and for the exploration of new areas of knowledge in the humanities, arts and technology. It is for this reason that the phenomenon of the "machine" is presently discussed in various research fields - from engineering, computer science and philosophy to art, film and literature.