Anne Popiel
Washington University, St. Louis - USA
Anne Popiel received her PhD in Germanic Languages and Literatures from Washington University in St. Louis (USA). She writes, edits, teaches and translates between disciplines for a number of academic institutions in Berlin, Germany.
Articles of Anne Popiel
Sand
The following is an excerpt from Anne Popiel’s book Of Pixels and Particles. The digital connection between nature and art in Vilém Flusser’s philosophy . Published in 2012, it explores metaphorical connections between sand grains, droplets, bits, pixels and particles, linking the ocean of the Vampyroteuthis to moving sand dunes and the screen of the computer. “Flusser’s response to groundlessness is to create one’s own ground out of thin air, modeled by oceans, squids, spider webs and sand” (Popiel 2012: 14). His “metaphors translating sand grains into pixels and wind turbulence into algorithms highlight the digital structures present in both nature and computer technology that create an environment conducive to the spontaneous emergence of new order” (ibid.:54).
The Art of the Vampyroteuthis - Vilém Flusser, Vampyroteuthis infernalis: His Art
In this excerpt from his hybrid text of philosophical fiction, Vilém Flusser examines the history and future of human art and communication from the perspective of a giant deep-sea squid, the Vampyroteuthis infernalis. Fictionalizing some of the accepted biological details about the extant species of squid, Flusser oscillates between an encyclopedic description of the animal’s anatomical and behavioral characteristics and a cultural history of human art making. He proposes the world of the Vampyroteuthis as a model for human communication in the age of television, film and digital images. With his skill for de-familiarizing everyday aspects of human life, Flusser holds the molluscan creature up to his reader as a mirror in which human behavior can be considered from an opposing, almost inhuman perspective.