Index

Abstract.................................................................................. 7 Kurzfassung.............................................................................. 9
Acknowledgements ...................................................................... 11
Introduction ..............................................................................13

Chapter 1 ............................................................................... 29
1.1 Light and photosensitive matter .................................................... 32
1.1.1 Molecules act ............................................................... 34
1.1.2 Toward more complex technical ensembles: immediate and colourful ......... 38
1.1.3 The knife gets sharper: fragmenting, black-boxing, converging
and operating ............................................................... 43
1.2 Photosensitive materials and related operations .................................... 48
1.2.1 Measuring .................................................................. 50
1.2.2 Automating.................................................................. 55
1.2.3 Controlling .................................................................. 62
1.2.4 Self-regulating and self-organising .......................................... 66
1.3 (Im)materiality of an informational aesthetic ........................................ 69
1.3.1 Vestiges of the material-immaterial dichotomy ................................ 71
1.3.2 (In)visible and (in)tangible: Blurring borders .................................. 79

Chapter 2................................................................................. 91
2.1 Light-sensing as vision ............................................................. 92
2.1.1 Elementary structures, concepts and operations ............................. 96
2.1.2 Parameters of vision ....................................................... 120
2.1.3 Hybrid visions .............................................................. 134
2.2 Photosensitivity beyond human subjectivity ......................................... 141
2.2.1 Skotopoeisis: Plants as agents ............................................... 141
2.2.2 Phototropy: light-sensitive artificial life ..................................... 143
2.2.3 Pulsu(m) Plantae: hacking photosensitivity .................................. 146 2.3 Hybrid matters .................................................................... 149
2.3.1 A brief conceptual-historical contextualization .............................. 150
2.3.2 Hybrid artworks: What is at stake? .......................................... 154

Chapter 3 .............................................................................. 159
3.1 On the search for correspondences ................................................. 161
3.1.1 Bell and Tainter’s Photophone: In-between continuous and
intermittent signals.......................................................... 161
3.1.2 Hausmann’s optophone ..................................................... 166
3.1.3 Derivations: the photo-acoustic principle as creative matter................. 169
3.2 Absence as creative matter........................................................ 187
3.2.1 Selected cases in history of media and media art............................ 187
3.2.2 Self-portrait of an absence ..................................................197
3.3 Translation of materialities ........................................................ 205
3.3.1 Merging conceptual and material approaches to media creativity ............ 206
3.3.2 (Un)translatability .......................................................... 213
3.3.3 Metalanguage ...............................................................216
3.3.4 Transcreation .............................................................. 220
3.3.5 Self-translation............................................................. 224
3.4 Epistemological materialities ...................................................... 228

Final considerations.................................................................... 235
List of figures ...........................................................................241
References ............................................................................. 245