Miscommunications: Errors, Mistakes, Media

What happens when communication breaks down? Is it the condition for mistakes and errors that is characteristic of digital culture? And if mistakes and errors have a certain power, what stands behind it?

To address these questions, this collection assembles a range of cutting-edge philosophical, socio-political, art historical and media theoretical inquiries that address contemporary culture as a terrain of miscommunication. If the period since the industrial revolution can be thought of as marked by the realisation of the possibilities for global communication, in terms of the telephone, telegraph, television, and finally the internet, Miscommunicationsshows that to think about the contemporary historical moment, a new history and theory of these devices needs to be written, one which illustrates the emergence of the current cultures of miscommunication and the powers of the false.

The essays in the book chart the new conditions for discourse in the 21st century and collectively show how studies of communication can be refigured when we focus on the capacity for errors, accidents, mistakes, malfunctions and both intentional and non-intentional miscommunications.

Maria Korolkova is a senior lecturer in media and film studies and academic portfolio lead in media at the University of Greenwich, UK, specialising in visual culture, intermediality, film, architecture, cultural theory, and Russian culture. In her research, Maria explores themes of miscommunication and chaos, global media, visual and sonic cultures, as well as the relationship between film and architecture. Maria has curated public events in internationally renowned institutions such as The Barbican, Courtauld Institute of Arts, Regents Street Cinema, London, Centre Pompidou, Paris, and others.

Timothy Barker is a senior lecturer in digital media and the head of Film and Television Studies at the University of Glasgow, UK. He is the author of two books, Time and the Digital (2012) and Against Transmission (Bloomsbury, 2017), both of which outline a media philosophical approach for addressing questions of time and mediation in the contemporary world. His broad research interests include digital media theory, philosophies of technology, game studies and process philosophy.