An introduction to #Digital Epistemology in 12 tweets

1. Digital Epistemology (DE) is in fact not DIGITAL per se, but rather a recurrent figure in cultural discourse since the 1950’s.

2. One aspect of DE concerns the relation between information structures and narratives.

3. Of course, stories have always NOT been told, but from the 1950s and onward this could be fruitfully related to digital environments.

4. It’s not about »cause-and-effects», though, but about RELATIONS. »The digital» shapes environments that mirror cultural expressions.

5. Another aspect of DE is about the body OF the text, as well as the body AND the text – the relation man/machine/environment.

6. From a media archaeological point of view these relations have been around all the time, in all art. DE just accentuates them.

7. Electronic texts challenge us to reconsider this, not primarily as an effect of digital media, but as a historical materiality of art.

8. This is not to say »There’s nothing new under the sun» – because there is! But the new highlight the old, and vice versa.

9. DE encourages a posthuman approach to the arts, challenging the gutenbergian notions of understanding and interpretation.

10. Other aspects connected with DE (beside »text» & »body») are the relations between »reading»/»making»; »interpretation/materiality»

11. Let us read electronic texts NOT as electronic texts (which we always do), and printed texts NOT as printed texts, (which we never did)…

12. …but both print and screens, the analogue and the digital, as expressions of the always already posthuman in all art.