Michael Darroch
University of Windsor, Canada
Michael Darroch is Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Windsor and is a Co-Investigator on the Visual City Project and Archive (York University). As a postdoctoral fellow at York University, he explored convergences in Canadian and German media and art theory, especially the influence of architectural theory and town planning on Marshall McLuhan. He completed his PhD in the Department of Art History & Communication Studies at McGill University and has also studied media theory, theatre, literature, and linguistics at the Université de Montréal, Universität Konstanz and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. His research interests include: German and Canadian theories of media and materialities; media art theory; urban studies and architecture; intermediality in theatre and performance; circulation, translation and multilingualism. He has published on aspects of technology, theatre, language and sound in city life, and is co-editing, with Janine Marchessault, the volume Urban Mediations: Art, Ethnography, and Material Culture. Recent publications include “Bridging Urban and Media Studies: Jaqueline Tyrwhitt and the Explorations Group 1951-1957,” in: Canadian Journal of Communication (forthcoming 2008) and (with Jean-François Morissette) “The Dragonfly of Chicoutimi: Staging Polyphony in Montréal and Toronto,” in: Urban Enigmas: Montréal, Toronto and the Problem of Comparing Cities (2007).
Articles of Michael Darroch
Language, Translation and the Telematic City
Drawing inspiration from Vilém Flusser’s writings on translation and on city space, this paper locates language and translation as material elements of city life. I begin by outlining the ways in which language is implicated in the form and operations of cities. I extend this discussion to the
metaphorics of translation employed by Marshall McLuhan in building his theory of media and the global village, and Jacques Derrida’s approach to translation and linguistic variability. These positions allow us to consider the implications of computer technology for universal language and machine translation, each of which have been wrapped up in discourses about the city. I finally connect this discussion to Flusser’s writings on the city and his concept of the telematic society, which will have profound implications for the future of the city.