The aim of the research is to identify pathological relations between consumer culture and consumers. I explore the relation between people and objects, and the impact that images have as producers and disseminators of sign-value. Taking the term ‘advertisement’ loosely I refer to Dutch still-life paintings as advertisements for the craft-objects they depict and the lifestyles they suggest. The body is also considered to be an advertisement because of the commodities with which it is adorned and the socially prescribed ideals that it reinforces. I consider social networking sites as commercial spaces where body ideals are disseminated. Different forms of self-presentation, including selfies, thinspiration, and fat fetishism are examined as indications of the recuperation of aberrant signs in the system of sign-value exchange. The analytical methodology for this enquiry is framed by theories of commodity fetishism and sexual fetishism through which I consider both the socio-economic and the psychosexual dimensions of the relation between consumer society and individual consumers. I examine sexual fetishism and kleptomania by reference to psychoanalytic case studies in order to chart how objects are inscribed with value. Fetishists and kleptomaniacs endow seemingly trivial objects with a value that is incomprehensible to other people. These unusual relations to objects offer an alternative model for evaluating the value of commodities in a manner that might liberate the body of the consumer. The practical aspect of the research centres on the still-life. Taking my cue from Dutch still-life paintings from the seventeenth century that reflected a conflicting relation with material wealth, I produce still-life objects that reflect a contradictory relationship to consumerism. I produce still-life photographs in order to develop an alternative visual language for the commodified and objectified contemporary consumer body.

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Man könnte geneigt sein, Wissenschaftssendungen1 im Fernsehen als Paradoxon aufzufassen. Wissenschaft, gleich ob es sich um geistes- oder naturwissenschaftliche Forschung handelt, untersucht komplexe Sachverhalte und ist für ein Nicht-Fachpublikum meist schwer zugänglich. Und tatsächlich: Entsprechende Fachliteratur, seien es renommierte naturwissenschaftliche Zeitschriften wie etwa Nature oder Science, richten sich nicht an ein Laienpublikum; auch eine Publikation wie diese ist primär an ein fachspezifisches Publikum adressiert. Dem entgegengesetzt ist das Medium Fernsehen zweifelsohne ein Massenmedium, wenn nicht das Massenmedium des ausgehenden 20. und beginnenden 21. Jahrhunderts. Fernsehen per se richtet sich eben nicht an ein spezifisches, sondern vielmehr an ein diffuses Publikum, bei dem man von ganz unterschiedlichen Bildungsständen und damit Vorwissen ausgehen muss. Unterstellt man dem Medium Fernsehen nun noch im Sinne Neil Postmans, dass es vornehmlich der Unterhaltung diene – „problematisch [am Fernsehen] ist, dass es jedes Thema als Unterhaltung präsentiert“ –, dann stellt sich die Frage, ob ein derart unübersichtliches Feld wie die Wissenschaft überhaupt adäquat im Medium Fernsehen abgebildet werden kann. „In dem Maße, wie der Einfluss des Buchdrucks schwindet, müssen sich die Inhalte der Politik, der Religion, der Bildung und anderer öffentlicher Bereiche verändern und in eine Form gebracht werden, die dem Fernsehen angemessen ist.“ Umso erstaunlicher mag es erscheinen, welche Vielzahl an Wissenschaftssendungen es in der Geschichte des deutschen Fernsehens bereits gegeben hat und noch bis heute gibt. Auch der Mitteldeutsche Rundfunk (MDR) strahlt seit 2002 sein eigenes Wissenschaftsmagazin LexiTV aus. In diesem Beitrag soll am Beispiel von LexiTV der Frage nachgegangen werden, inwieweit es dem Medium Fernsehen überhaupt möglich ist, Wissen(schaft) einer breiten Zuschauerschaft zu vermitteln. Geht die Popularisierung von Wissenschaft nicht auch zwangsläufig mit einer Verflachung der zu vermittelnden Inhalte einher? Welche dramaturgischen und narrativen Konzepte werden verfolgt, um wissenschaftliche Sachverhalte dem Zuschauer zu vermitteln?

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This PhD thesis addresses an artistic research practice based on the ontology and phenomenology of the photographic image. Part I presents a series of photographs entitled Midnight in Mumbai, and Part II considers the act of photographing by examining the phenomenological aspect of photography arising directly from my artistic practice. By looking into the prehistory of photography, foregrounding the early developments of the nascent medium, I first consider notions of photography before the medium’s actual materialisation in the 1830s; these emerged alongside the latent desire to see the world as a picture ‘true to nature’ which predominated in literary fiction and experimental scientific texts. It informs us about how the medium was initially understood, discussed and defined, and offers a valuable insight into the ontology of the illuminated image (‘Photography before Photography’). Expanding upon André Bazin’s essay ‘The Ontology of the Photographic Image’, I consider the discourse of the early history of the medium to be vital in informing the ontological questions developed in the thesis. Taking photography’s early history as a point of departure, my research looks into the possible manifestations of thinking photographically, and asks whether we can only photograph what we know already. This relationship of the photographic image to the world frames my enquiry into the domain of photography. I talk about my photographic work by answering the questions: Can I only see what I name? (‘Naming’) How do I learn how to look? (‘Echo’) and Where can I find the photographic picture? (‘Doubt’). The title of the thesis refers to the speculative history of the medium and to my own photographic work. Like the nineteenth-century photographers who tried to photograph the spirit of a human being, my photographs aim to allude to what might not be apparent by evoking a vision of seeing things that are invisible. The expression ‘via fotografia’ is used as a method of making phenomena visible photographically. As a medium based on reality that can reflect the world, however visible or invisible that might be, photography continuously questions our perception of such reality (‘Picturing Thoughts’). Do we photograph what we see, or what we think and imagine? This is not to suggest that the acts of photographing and thinking are the same, but rather to propose that they are not separate from each other. Photographs, in that sense, are not experienced in terms of their appearance, but in terms of their continuous appearing.

The goal of this paper is to examine innovation activities in the Vienna software industry and to get a better understanding of the nature and geography of knowledge linkages in this sector. In the literature there seems to be a growing consensus that innovation rests on both informal local knowledge linkages and formal global networks, i.e. a combination of "local buzz" and "global pipelines". Recent studies on the software sector, however, show that the importance of different types of knowledge sources, the spatial dimension of knowledge transfer and the relevance of different channels of knowledge exchange in the software industry remain poorly understood. Drawing on a firm survey and qualitative face-to-face interviews with companies we will show that in the Vienna software industry the transfer and exchange of knowledge is highly localised and strongly informal in nature, pointing to a high significance of "local buzz" and a lack of "global pipelines". This specific pattern raises the question whether the Vienna software sector is exposed to a danger of lock in. (author´s abstract) / Series: SRE - Discussion Papers

Stuart E. Madnick. / Bibliography: leaves 20-22.

This dissertation addresses the largely unexplained phenomenon of the multitude of representations of Christian themes and symbolism in photography. It also considers the absence of photography in the extensive debates, conducted throughout art history, concerning relationships between art and religion.