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1 2 y separately published work icon Empathy Hoa Pham , Cambridge : MIT Press , 2023 25428269 2023 single work novel science fiction

'A science-fiction novel involving clones, a psychic, and empathy as a recreational drug.

'We have always been we. Then they forced us to become you and I...

'Empathy consists of two stories told in parallel.

'Vuong is one of five Vietnamese clones that have come of age at 25. The Department in Hanoi is allowing them to meet after being separated for twenty years. Lian has murdered her foster father after being forced to eat meat. Geraldine is dying of cancer in Australia. Giang and Khanh were brought up together as twins in New Zealand and are telepathic. They have been used for research over their lifetimes. Vuong discovers that the data kept on all of them has been used to develop empathy, the latest party drug.

'My meets Truong in Berlin who introduces her to empathy which makes the user supersensitive to other people's feelings. My's mother is a cleaner at CHESS, a multinational chemical company, and My comes to believe her mother is ex-Stasi and an industrial spy for Vietnamese government. My comes down from the drug after hearing about the saturation point when the penetration of empathy would be such that the world's population would be pacified. She discovers that Truong is actually the one who is in the pay of the Vietnamese government and her mother is just a cleaner. She tries to out the conspiracy in the media but no one believes her...' (Publication summary)

1 1 y separately published work icon Tomorrow's Parties : Life in the Anthropocene Jonathan Strahan (editor), Cambridge : MIT Press , 2022 24967607 2022 anthology short story

'We are living in the Anthropocene—an era of dramatic and violent climate change featuring warming oceans, melting icecaps, extreme weather events, habitat loss, species extinction, and more. What will life be like in a climate-changed world? In Tomorrow’s Parties, science fiction authors speculate how we might be able to live and even thrive through the advancing Anthropocene. In ten original stories by writers from around the world, an interview with celebrated writer Kim Stanley Robinson, and a series of intricate and elegant artworks by Sean Bodley, Tomorrow’s Parties takes rational optimism as a moral imperative, or at least a pragmatic alternative to despair.
 
'In these stories—by writers from the United Kingdom, the United States, Nigeria, China, Bangladesh, and Australia—a young man steals from delivery drones; a political community lives on an island made of ocean-borne plastic waste; and a climate change denier tries to unmask “crisis actors.” Climate-changed life also has its pleasures and epiphanies, as when a father in Africa works to make his son’s dreams of “Viking adventure” a reality, and an IT professional dispatched to a distant village encounters a marvelous predigital fungal network. Contributors include Pascall Prize for Criticism winner James Bradley, Hugo Award winners Greg Egan and Sarah Gailey, Philip K Dick Award winner Meg Elison, and New York Times bestselling author Daryl Gregory.'  (Publication summary) 

1 y separately published work icon Routes & Worlds Elizabeth A. Povinelli , Cambridge : MIT Press , 2021 21858470 2021 selected work essay

'An anthropology of the otherwise considers forms of life that run counter to dominant modes of being under late settler liberalism.

'Elizabeth Povinelli's anthropology of the otherwise locates itself within forms of life that run counter to dominant modes of being under late settler liberalism. In Routes & Worlds, she considers the emergence of new worlds and the extinguishing of old ones, seeking to develop a social imaginary that can sustain radical potentiality without turning a blind eye to our deep interdependence.

'In these essays, Povinelli moves from a discussion of the anthropology of the gift to a look at the contemporary debates between Bruno Latour and Peter Sloterdijk about the relative values of network and sphere theory, and offers reflections on two recent projects--a graphic memoir and augmented reality venture--that elaborate what she terms embagination a visual and spatial metaphor of anthropology as a woven bag in which things circulate.' (Publication summary)

1 1 y separately published work icon I'm Very into You : Correspondence 1995–1996 Kathy Acker , McKenzie Wark , Matias Viegener (editor), Cambridge : MIT Press , 2015 8421222 2015 single work correspondence

“Why am I telling you all this? Partly ‘cause the whole queerness/identity thing for me stretches through everything, absolutely everything. Slipping between straight/gay is child’s play compared to slipping between writer/teacher/influence-peddler whatever. I forget who I am. You reminded me of who I prefer to be.” [M.W.]

'“It’s two in the morning. . . I know what you mean about slipping roles: I love it, going high low, power helpless even captive, male female, all over the place, space totally together and brain-sharp, if it wasn’t for play I’d be bored stiff and I think boredom is the emotion I find most unbearable. . . ” [KA]

—from I’m Very into You

'After Kathy Acker met McKenzie Wark on a trip to Australia in 1995, they had a brief fling and immediately began a heated two-week email correspondence. Their emails shimmer with insight, gossip, sex, and cultural commentary. They write in a frenzy, several times a day; their emails cross somewhere over the International Date Line, and themselves become a site of analysis. What results is an index of how two brilliant and idiosyncratic writers might go about a courtship across 7,500 miles of airspace—by pulling in Alfred Hitchcock, stuffed animals, Georges Bataille, Elvis Presley, phenomenology, Marxism, The X-files, psychoanalysis, and the I Ching.

'Their corresepondence is a Plato’s Symposium for the twenty-first century, but written for queers, transsexuals, nerds, and book geeks. I’m Very Into You is a text of incipience, a text of beginnings, and a set of notes on the short, shared passage of two iconic individuals of our time.'

1 y separately published work icon Voice : Vocal Aesthetics in Digital Arts and Media Norie Neumark (editor), Ross Gibson (editor), Theo van Leeuwen (editor), Cambridge : MIT Press , 2010 Z1889049 2010 anthology poetry 'Voice has returned to both theoretical and artistic agendas. In the digital era, techniques and technologies of voice have provoked insistent questioning of the distinction between the human voice and the voice of the machine, between genuine and synthetic affect, between the uniqueness of an individual voice and the social and cultural forces that shape it. This volume offers interdisciplinary perspectives on these topics from history, philosophy, cultural theory, film, dance, poetry, media arts, and computer games. Many chapters demonstrate Lewis Mumford's idea of the "cultural preparation" that precedes technological innovation—that socially important new technologies are foreshadowed in philosophy, the arts, and everyday pastimes.

Chapters cover such technologies as voice mail, podcasting, and digital approximations of the human voice. A number of authors explore the performance, performativity, and authenticity (or 'authenticity effect') of voice in dance, poetry, film, and media arts; while others examine more immaterial concerns—the voice's often-invoked magical powers, the ghostliness of disembodied voices, and posthuman vocalization. The chapters evoke an often paradoxical reassertion of the human in the use of voice in mainstream media including recorded music, films, and computer games.' (Publisher's blurb)
1 y separately published work icon Leonardo Music Journal 1991 Cambridge : MIT Press , 1991- Z1360108 1991 periodical (1 issues) "Leonardo Music Journal features peer-reviewed articles written by artists and scientists about the interaction of science and music. Subject areas investigate how new technologies interact with the composition and presentation of music, how science is affecting the understanding of music, and how sound is combined with other media to form new art forms. The journal's audience includes musicians, composers, sound artists, scientists, theoreticians, and instrument makers. Each annual issue contains approximately ten articles and comes with a CD that contains musical examples related to that issue's topic. The journal's web site contains selected articles, contents and abstracts of current and previous issues, and contents of previous CDs. Recommended for academic libraries." (Montilio, Ralph in Magazines for Libraries, Mar 22, 2007 )
1 y separately published work icon TDR : The Drama Review: A Journal of Performance Studies TDR; Drama Review : A Journal of Performance Studies; TDR : The Drama Review Cambridge : MIT Press , 1988- 7792241 1988 periodical (1 issues)

'TDR traces the broad spectrum of performances—studying performances in their aesthetic, social, economic, and political contexts. With an emphasis on experimental, avant-garde, intercultural, and interdisciplinary performance, TDR covers performance art, theatre, dance, music, visual art, popular entertainments, media, sports, rituals, and the performance in and of politics and everyday life. Long known as the basic resource for current scholarship in performance studies, TDR continues to be the liveliest forum for debate on important performances in every medium, setting, and culture.' (Publication summary : MIT Press website)

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