Sensing the ‘Contemporary Condition’: The Chronopolitics of Sensor-Media

Abstract

The article discusses the relevance of sensor-technologies as media. Beyond technical affordances sensors act as agents of implementing and activating a more-than-human sensorium within encompassing technoecologies of sensation. Outlining the onto-epistemological implications of being ‘in touch with’ sensor-media, the contribution raises questions of what it means to be included in an infrastructure of sensorial interfaces - not only of tech-assisted human-to-human or human-to-machine communication, but of unmanageable processes of machine-to-machine exchange. Delineating sensors as media necessitates reflections on the temporal relations that define the ‘contemporary condition’ of intensified global computation, technological interconnectedness and the ontogenesis of sensor-media milieus, their respective temporalities and concomitant (an)aesthetics of experienced time.

Keywords

• sensor-media
• technoecologies of sensation
• media environments
• environmental media
• chronopolitics
• more-than-human-sensing