Description

Dictionary of Operations
Deep Politics & Cultural Intelligence
Konrad Becker
Dictionary of Operations is the third in a series of new lexica. After
defining the field of “Tactical Reality” (2002) and “Strategic Reality”
(2009), this concise manual to the contemporary cognitive environment
analyzes 72 terms to access the operative logics of social and anti-
social media.

Dictionary of Operations highlights the subtext of the politics of
information and the underlying framework of media reality in digital
networks. Global conflicts over resources accelerate the social crises
of mediated representation. Cognitive algorithms question the autonomy
of the individual and its freedom of action. Looking into the intimate
relation between knowledge and control it identifies the financial
crisis as a crisis of rationality and claims “Economy as fate is the
swindle of the century”.

Dictionary of Operations focuses on the subjective dimension of
information technology related to potential political action. The text
follows ancient connections between conjuring and the dark art of truth
projection and asks: If every communication is an oracle, who owns
meaning which authorizes legitimate knowledge?

Dictionary of Operations reflects illusory mirror worlds and excavates
media-archaeological ghost stories that continue to haunt the world.
Tracing the omnipresent trails of monsters, zombies and ghosts in the
infosphere it declares “To be human is to be haunted, bound in chains to
a past dominating the present.”

Dictionary of Operations defines transversal practices between theory
and activism, digital media and street culture. It covers terms ranging
from A-T, from “Absolute Mammon” to “Truth Production”. Drawing on
anomalies as allies against enforced normalization it builds on an
insight from an ancient Babylonian text: “one cannot escape misery
without revolting against the established powers.”

158 pages, 4.5 x 9 inches, color cover

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Konrad Becker is an interdisciplinary communication researcher, director of the Institute for New Culture Technologies/ t0, and World-Information Institute (World-Information.Org), a cultural intelligence provider. Co-founder and chairman of Public Netbase (1994 – 2006), he has been active in electronic media as an artist, author, composer as well as curator, producer and organizer. Since 1979, numerous electronic intermedia productions, exhibitions, conferences and event designs for international festivals and cultural institutions as well as a range of interventions in public space. Publication of media works, electronic audiovisuals, theoretical texts and books, lectures at various universities and participation in numerous conferences and symposia. in September 2009 he participated in a roundtable conference at the Austrian Cultural Forum New York.

His work has been acknowledged with several awards and has been characterized by extensive cooperation with many protagonists of a new artistic practice. The field of work and artistic production includes all areas of electronic art and culture, from audio, video, TV and radio, multimedia productions and installations, software and VR to social interventions. The author and writer of texts on the politics of the infosphere investigates the cultural and social implications of technology in information societies. A particular emphasis is placed on the investigation of interrelations of the symbolic and the real, immaterial information regimes and tangible reality. Publications include more than thirty film and video productions from experimental art videos to documentaries screened in galleries, museums, festivals and media installations as well as TV broadcast. An actor in various TV and cinema productions, he has lectured and performed in more than 25 countries. His work has been featured in several hundred publications including major international newspapers and magazines, and he has published more than 3500 print articles, reviews and interviews. A founding member of “European Cultural Backbone” (ECB) and various cultural networks, he contributed to local and international cooperation of artists and cultural workers in the field of information and communication technologies. He has been a member of various boards on information technologies and culture and a consultant for public administration.

Konrad Becker also created Monoton in 1979, the crucial Austrian electronic music act, providers of distinguished electronic soundscapes and psycho-acoustics. The Wire magazine ranked Monoton’s 1982 record Monotonprodukt07 among the 100 most important records of the 20th century.