Tristan Thielmann

This chapter examines radar-based media practices at the beginning of the 1940s using the case study of two data infrastructures. The co-operative production and presentation of centralised Air Situation Pictures in British and German ‘operations rooms’ and their material conditions are praxeologically investigated, based on Harold Garfinkel’s Sociological Theory of Information. The case study shows how the infrastructuring of data flows developed in media practice before computerized methods. For that reason, the chapter analytically changes the axiom of the Actor-network theory of ‘follow the actor’ to ‘follow the data’, based on a historical tracing of ‘chains of co-operation’. The contribution thus provides an utilisation of the perspectives of Science and Technology Studies to media historiography. With this praxeological perspective on information processing, it becomes clear how the systematic, material, but also architectural infrastructure of signal and data paths was a necessary condition for the problem of producing the Air Situation Picture, which had to be solved co-operatively. The analysis of chains of co-operations shows that sequentiality, which is associated with the decomposition of the complex task of producing and visualising Air Situation Pictures, was bound to different actors: While the British system involves more human decision making (especially filtering), the German command post strongly deals with the specific material operations of the map (including combining, marking, scaling and disseminating).

Geomedia reflect the infrastructural, environmental, and practical conditions under
which they come into being. By reading traces of and as geomedia in different natural
elements, the “thick mappings” of lines presented in this article render the properties
of the crossed environments visible. From a historical-anthropological perspective,
geomedia have taken on a double perspective in this process since the late 18th century,
with the first aerial images. With regard to the movement in the air, on land, and on
water, this double mediality concerns the paradox of representing an in situ perspective
and simultaneously a line of becoming. Geomedia always exhibit a documentary and a
procedural form. These two characteristics are chiasmically linked with each since the
Industrial Revolution. Geomedia are practices that reflexively demonstrate how the
paradox can be visualized, namely, that a mediated human body on the move is in a
stable position, while the surroundings are fluid.

Harold Garfinkels 1967 erschienene »Studies in Ethnomethodology« gelten als Gründungsdokument der Ethnomethodologie und haben längst den Status eines soziologischen Klassikers. Doch so bekannt dieses Buch ist, so wenig wurde es tatsächlich gelesen. Angesichts radikaler Veränderungen der Lebenswelt unterziehen die Beiträger*innen des Bandes die »Studies« gut 50 Jahre nach ihrer Ersterscheinung einer Relektüre. Sie decken bisher verborgene Bezüge auf, rekapitulieren methodologische und empirische Anschlüsse an Garfinkel, diskutieren Parallelen und Differenzen zu anderen soziologischen und kulturwissenschaftlichen Forschungsprogrammen und demonstrieren das kritische Potenzial der Ethnomethodologie.

Da gegenwärtig immer mehr Sensoren in Medien, Gebrauchsgegenständen und Infrastrukturen verbaut und diese so zu mobilen „Smart Devices“ transformiert werden, entstehen neue sozio-technische Bedingungen der Datenerfassung und -verarbeitung, denen nicht mit etablierten Konzepten zur Informations- und Wissensgesellschaft begegnet werden kann. Sie zeichnen sich durch eine entgrenzte Datenerfassung aus, da wir mit Hilfe von Sensoren eine unaufhörliche Verbindung zur Umwelt eingehen. Das Konzept der Sensormedien erlaubt es daher, den Fokus darauf zu richten, was das Beständige medialer Environments ist und was unsere „digitale Gesellschaft“ zusammenhält. Die Grundidee des vorliegenden Working Papers ist, dass Sensormedien einen epistemischen Shift von der Informations- zur Sensorgesellschaft einleiten und nur in der wechselseitigen Verrechnung und Re-Sensibilisierung von Daten, Umwelten und Körpern zu verstehen sind. Sensormedien sind zudem prädestiniert für eine praxistheoretische Auseinandersetzung, da die mediale Erfassung und Darstellung der Körper-Umwelt-Beziehung durch neue Sensortechnologien ein Diversitätsniveau erreicht, welches der Komplexität praxeologischer Beschreibung besser gerecht wird. Umgekehrt lassen sich die kulturellen und gesellschaftlichen Auswirkungen der Sensormedien nur auf Grundlage methodologischer Innovationen wirklich adäquat beschreiben.

Simultaneous localization and mapping technology is commonly used within mobile devices and household appliances—it allows our vacuum robot to navigate the living room and enables us to view augmented reality content on our smartphones. By examining simultaneous localization and mapping–based devices and contrasting them against more traditional forms of cartographic practices, we argue that simultaneous localization and mapping technology not only opens up interior spaces for geographic examination but also calls into question the categorical difference between inside and outside itself. As with simultaneous localization and mapping, the mathematical construction of the surrounding space happens in the moment of its detection, simultaneous localization and mapping exhibits a moment of radical situativeness that is freed from the constraints of a stabilized, external database. We propose that this moment of situativeness, which is also inscribed into the resulting highly mobile and fluid visualizations, is the defining feature of a new kind of geomedia that simultaneously establish a vertical and a horizontal geography.

At the end of the 19th century, the bicycle was a medium of land development, connection, sensing and routing. This article explores these features of the bicycle based on the League of American Wheelmen bulletins that were published between 1880 and 1902. The enquiry shows that the bicycle constitutes a rural geomedium since the first cyclists regarded themselves as land surveyors. Furthermore, the bicycle, as a vehicle that is connected to an individual, links the starting and end points of a route – without stops on the way and without changing vehicles. This continuity of movement is a highly essential property of the medium ‘bicycle’. Being awheel and making the countryside accessible cartographically are therefore closely linked to each other; they take place in one and the same procedure as part of the joint practice of land surveys. During this process, the bicycle proves to be an ideal instrument for the sensing of road surface conditions and therefore functions as a mediator between the road and the cyclist. It also serves as a mediator between urban and rural areas and as a connected device: The bicycle is the condition for cooperation for Bicycle Clubs, which enjoyed enormous popularity at the end of the 19th century. It facilitated the cooperative experiencing and exploring of the land that had yet not been documented cartographically and, in turn, yielded its own new form of representation: navigable maps in the form of route guides.

Screen-based media, such as touch-screens, navigation systems and virtual reality applications merge images and operations. They turn viewing first and foremost into using and reflect the turn towards an active role of the image in guiding a user’s action and perception. From professional environments to everyday life multiple configurations of screens organise working routines, structure interaction, and situate users in space both within and beyond the boundaries of the screen. This volume examines the linking of screen, space, and operation in fields such as remote navigation, architecture, medicine, interface design, and film production asking how the interaction with and through screens structures their users’ action and perception.

Harold Garfinkels Werk »Studies in Ethnomethodology« hat einst die Sozialwissenschaften revolutioniert, indem es die herkömmlichen Theorien über Bord warf und das menschliche Alltagshandeln zum Gegenstand der Forschung machte. Soziale Wirklichkeit wird, so seine These, durch alltagspraktische Handlungen hergestellt. Diese uns selbstverständlich erscheinenden Praxen nahm Garfinkel ins Visier. Das Buch, 1967 in den USA erschienen, gehört schon lange zu den großen Klassikern der Sozialwissenschaften. Mit diesem Band liegt die bahnbrechende Studie endlich auch in deutscher Übersetzung vor.

This volume makes available for the first time an unpublished report of wartime research, titled „The History of Gulfport Field 1942“, written by Harold Garfinkel, for the US Army Air Forces (AAF) in 1943. The report has both historical and sociological significance. It has value as a historical document that presents in great detail how AAF personnel involved in training aircraft mechanics at one site (Gulfport Field, Mississippi) managed to contend with the rapid construction and deployment of training necessitated by World War II, with its accompanying shortages of material and experienced trainers, and surpluses of persons to be trained. In the face of shortages, AAF commanders adopted a set of practical aims for the school that downplayed the importance of conventional instruction and relied more on „hands on“ practice and „the will to win“. This strategy emphasized a priority of practice over theory that is particularly relevant to the development of Garfinkel’s program of ethnomethodology, his later hybrid studies of work and science, and their relationship to debates in sociology. The book contains a 48-page afterword by Michael Lynch and Anne Rawls.