Books by George Themistokleous
Routledge (Critiques. Critical Studies in Architectural Humanities), Nov 2016
In the age of post-digital architecture and digital materiality, This Thing Called Theory explore... more In the age of post-digital architecture and digital materiality, This Thing Called Theory explores current practices of architectural theory, their critical and productive role. The book is organised in sections which explore theory as an open issue in architecture, as it relates to and borrows from other disciplines, thus opening up architecture itself and showing how architecture is inextricably connected to other social and theoretical practices.
The sections move gradually from the specifics of architectural thought – its history, theory, and criticism – and their ongoing relation with philosophy, to the critical positions formulated through architecture’s specific forms of expression, and onto more recent forms of architecture’s engagement and self-definition. The book’s thematic sessions are concluded by and interspersed with a series of shorter critical position texts, which, together, propose a new vision of the contemporary role of theory in architecture. What emerges, overall, is a critical and productive role for theory in architecture today: theory as a proposition, theory as task and as a ‘risk’ of architecture.
Papers by George Themistokleous
Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal, 23(40), 2023
The art installation Osmose (1995) by Char Davies, one of the most widely discussed media art pro... more The art installation Osmose (1995) by Char Davies, one of the most widely discussed media art projects, will be explored in relation to the notion of de-automatization. The de-automatized experience in Osmose will be developed by looking at theories of perception by Arthur Deikman and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, as well as George Stratton's inverse goggle experiment, Bernard Stiegler's account of automation, and Gilles Deleuze's writings on the virtual. The article traces a double act of de-automatization in Davies' Osmose that occurs due to the indeterminate object relations in the multi-media installation on the one hand, and their intertwinement with the organic sensing body on the other. This leads to an ungearing of one's habitual perception, that produces a particular relation with the virtual dimension. By outlining the theoretical framework of the intertwining between technical object and bodily experience in Osmose, it becomes possible to speculate on the trajectory of contemporary VR experiences. Whilst the contemporary VR scene still relies heavily on the privileging of the visual dimension, the project We Live in an Ocean of Air by Marshmallow Laser Feast shows how VR environments can 'leverage on' emerging technologies to reproduce nuanced deautomatized experiences. De-automatization unravels how the reception of the deautomatized VR image reframes relations between actual and virtual.
This paper will consider how a media installation called the diplorasis, aims at rethinking under... more This paper will consider how a media installation called the diplorasis, aims at rethinking understandings of the body in space and time. Through the diplorasis there is an attempt to reconsider the scientific view on the human eyes in relation to art historical accounts of the representational image and to revise these from the perspective of philosophical texts on the image and its relation to an embodied and a disembodied perception (Deleuze, Bergson, Merleau-Ponty). Through this mediated visuality, the prosthetic body becomes re-articulated via a re-framing of the relations between perception and recollection.
Journal of Posthuman Studies
This article reconsiders the videogame practice of speedrunning through a posthumanist lens. In “... more This article reconsiders the videogame practice of speedrunning through a posthumanist lens. In “Fully Optimized: The (Post)human Art of Speedrunning” (Journal of Posthuman Studies 4(1) (2020): 5–24), Jonathan Hay identifies a gap in the literature on speedrunning and provides a timely response to the thinking of the gameplay practice. However, what Hay describes is at risk of being misinterpreted as a transhumanist position, due to its association with Nietzsche’s Apollonian notion of art. This article will expand Hay and Scully-Blaker’s definitions of speedrunning by identifying a third type: the parasitic speedrun. Moving beyond consideration of speedrunning that implicate a “mostly” human agency, the idea of the parasitic speedrun suggests that a videogame glitch, produced through cosmic “noise,” offers a space where technical objects and organic matter intersect in unexpected ways. The cosmic noise triggers a cascading effect that extends from the gaming console to the gamer. T...
Architecture and Culture, May 3, 2022
Visual Research Methods in Architecture, ed. I. Troiani and S. Ewing, 2021
This chapter is part of a wider research that re-considers the changing role of bodily vision in ... more This chapter is part of a wider research that re-considers the changing role of bodily vision in space and time in relation to digital media and visual technologies. As media and technologies become increasingly more complex and are further integrated within the corporeal visual body, they induce a rethinking of the body itself. Digital technologies allow for older visual devices – in this case the stereoscope – to be thought anew. The interaction between digital media and the stereoscope can offer a contemporary understanding of the body’s perception in time and space.
Drawing: Research, Theory, Practice , 2021
In this project the limitations of perspectival drawing are revised and reconsidered through a pa... more In this project the limitations of perspectival drawing are revised and reconsidered through a particular visual (dis)ability: keratoconus. Perspectival representation is based not only on a single and immobile eye, but also on an 'able' eye. The deformation of keratoconic vision offers a new means to consider the perspectival drawing by extending beyond the limitations of its structure. The degenerative keratoconic eye thus calls attention to the intricate mechanism of sight and to the eye's machinic functioning. By referring to Creative Evolution by Henri Bergson and The Large Glass by Marcel Duchamp it becomes possible to articulate the nuanced relations between the complexity of the eye as a complex structure and the simplicity of its unitary function. Through keratoconic vision, one experiences the formations and (de)formations of the visual image due to the eyes' functioning and dysfunctioning. This then leads to the search for an alternative medium that is similar to such a nuanced embodied visual experience.
Open Library of Humanities, 2018
A custom-made media installation, diplorasis, will be used to explore the body in digital media. ... more A custom-made media installation, diplorasis, will be used to explore the body in digital media. This mediated body attempts to re-think how the Deleuzian time-image is translated from its cinematic confinement to the space of new media. In diplorasis the digitized time-image becomes more directly incorporated with-in the bodily schema. Consequently, the thinking of the virtual and actual space of the body in diplorasis enables a questioning of bodily space-time, and particularly the relation between self and digitized self-image. It is thus crucial to re-frame how this digitized mediated body is distinct from a conventional notion of a metric and habitual space—one that is reinforced by, for example, the medium of linear perspective. The articulation of the mediated body will be used to in-form and extend Elizabeth Grosz’s paradoxical reading of embodiment and utopia, by revisiting the notions of utopia as eu-topic/ou-topic. The spatio-temporality of the topos must be re-considered before utopia. Foucault’s analogy of the mirror will then serve to superimpose the dual and slippery relations between utopia and the heterotopic. The digitized mediated body will thus seek to explore emerging ways by which to consider the utopic by conflating embodiment, time and space within an electronic topos. It is argued that as the sensing and cognitive body becomes increasingly pliable in relation to technological mediations, our very understanding of space-time is changing.
Inter- fotografía y arquitectura / inter- photography and architecture, 2016
The shift in visual technologies from the early twentieth century understandings of interior vs. ... more The shift in visual technologies from the early twentieth century understandings of interior vs. exterior and subject vs. object are radically different when compared to contemporary architectural media and the immersive environments that they suggest. The rethinking of the photographic medium as a digital construct can reveal its virtual potentials as an 'architecture' in and of itself. The digital technologies used in the custom-made optical device, the diplorasis, allow for a re-thinking of both architectural and photographic discourses, as they reveal their tendencies to converge with one another. This is important today because vision, and hence the body, is increasingly embedded within media environments. The self is multiplied within virtual domains that in turn affect the actual space of the corporeal body. In this respect, it is crucial to think how time-based media re-present our spatial environments and how this virtuality shifts the locus of the body and its limits to produce new understandings of interior/exterior, subject/object. keywords Digital photography, Virtual environments george themistokleous
Acadia Publishing Company, 2016
The project entitled Diplorasis overlays multiple fields of enquiry. It appropriates and overlaps... more The project entitled Diplorasis overlays multiple fields of enquiry. It appropriates and overlaps readings on embodied and disembodied vision in order to produce a contemporary understanding of duration. In particular, the work attempts to rethink how a stereoscopic vision and a cinematic vision might be re-configured and synthesized through the use of digital technologies.
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Books by George Themistokleous
The sections move gradually from the specifics of architectural thought – its history, theory, and criticism – and their ongoing relation with philosophy, to the critical positions formulated through architecture’s specific forms of expression, and onto more recent forms of architecture’s engagement and self-definition. The book’s thematic sessions are concluded by and interspersed with a series of shorter critical position texts, which, together, propose a new vision of the contemporary role of theory in architecture. What emerges, overall, is a critical and productive role for theory in architecture today: theory as a proposition, theory as task and as a ‘risk’ of architecture.
Papers by George Themistokleous
The sections move gradually from the specifics of architectural thought – its history, theory, and criticism – and their ongoing relation with philosophy, to the critical positions formulated through architecture’s specific forms of expression, and onto more recent forms of architecture’s engagement and self-definition. The book’s thematic sessions are concluded by and interspersed with a series of shorter critical position texts, which, together, propose a new vision of the contemporary role of theory in architecture. What emerges, overall, is a critical and productive role for theory in architecture today: theory as a proposition, theory as task and as a ‘risk’ of architecture.