about

the Internationale is Paul Caplan, former Digital Charabanc, journalist and imager and now Senior Teaching Fellow at Winchester School of Art (#WSA).

my work

My work is about uncreative objects - the words and imag(in)ings that circulate and connect in the databases and that are mined as the 'digital detritus' of techno-capitalism and 'dialectical images' on our mobile remixological apparatuses. Following object-oriented ontology, I approach the words, code, protocols and apparatuses as 'objects' with sensual and real dimensions. Following new materialism, I understand those objects as material, vital and present.

I work with uncreative objects - language and images, language as image and image as language that techno-capitalism mines for value and the user values as social content. The objects I 'make' are not creative although they add to the rags 'n refuse that others value.

I work on Facebook and Twitter, the walled gardens, proprietorial, closed object-spaces where the objects I un-create with circulate. But my platforms are not 'virtual' or 'online', they are material, real, concrete. I 'write' on the Wall and through the Stream. I imag(in)e in Albums. I perform on server farms, display across cables.

my paid work

I run the MA in Communication Design and co-run the MA in Global Media Management at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton, UK.

My courses are designed to get the next generation of designers and public communicators to critically explore the potential of network design and communication objects and relations.

projects

Object-oriented photography (OOPh)

Imaging experiments with JPEG. My PhD.

My thesis used object-oriented philosophy as a practice-research method to explore the JPEG standard as an object. I took a series of digital pinhole photographs and remade them with, through and against JPEG as eBooks and mashups:

Uncreative mobilities

Remixing the objects that stream through my mobile devices.

Ekaw Snagennif

Writing James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake backwards 140 characters at a time. Read the text plaited with other Tweets and posts.

A(d)gorithm Elves

Writing the Facebook ad texts back into the Wall to confuse the Facebook advertising algorithm elves and tell uncreative ad stories.

publications:

contact me