[ecrea] CFP Journal ICONO14 - Technopoïesis: transmedia mythologisation

     CFP Journal ICONO14: Technopoïesis: transmedia mythologisation.
URL: http://www.icono14.net
Editors: Francisco García and Manuel Gertrudix

Lines of research

- The socio-historical contextualization of early myths on innovation 
and technology in various parts of the world
- Modern and postmodern myths: homeworlds-wonderworlds; public-private; 
industrial-postindustrial.
- Machine behavior and cybernetics: myths of flow (time) vs. storage 
(localization); magical code and cryptography.
- Humans, posthumans, transhumans: myths of inscription (intersubjective 
knowledge negotiation) and incorporation (actional mediation). Cyber and 
Android technology and mythology.
- Myths and media combination, integration, re-mediation, transmedia 
rituals and other storyworlds.
- Myths and the configuration of controversy and negotiation in the 
public sphere (private/public, personal/interpersonal, 
medial/intermedial, local/global, cultural/intercultural).
- Send proposals

To send your  paper: Please go to 
http://www.icono14.net/ojs/index.php/icono14/about/submissions - 
onlineSubmissions and follow indications. - Deadline for full proposals: 
15 October 2016 - Publication: January 2017 - Coordination:  A. 
López-Varela Azcárate– Universidad Complutense de Madrid 
<(alopezva /at/ ucm.es)> Bio: https://www.ucm.es/siim/asun-lopez-varela and 
Henry Sussman. Visiting Professor at Dept. of Germanic Languages and 
Literatures, Yale University. Bio:http://openhumanitiespress.org/feedback/

It is difficult to explain why different disciplines are drawn to 
similar problems. Connections are not always explainable by direct 
influence (i.e scientific paradigms upon the humanities). Rather, we 
argue that any common ground derives from the fact that people (artists, 
critics, scientists and so on) share certain kinds of everyday 
experiences. Although some scientists, such as William Whewell 
(1794-1866), or more recently Edward Wilson in his book Consilience 
(1998), have proclaimed the unification of knowledge between the 
different branches of learning, the so-called ‘hard sciences’ have 
remained skeptical about this awkward marriage with the (soft) ‘social 
sciences’ and the humanities. Despite the fact that methods of research 
and reasoning among various fields of knowledge are often different and 
even incompatible, the truth is that all human disciplines have evolved 
based on a unique basic premise: the way in which technology has 
gradually modified the nature of sign production, distribution and 
reception, and thus, the entire system of human thought, representation 
and culture.

Technology can be defined as a practical knowledge, engaged in the 
creation of tools and machines, as well as the development of techniques 
and methods of organization in order to perform specific functions in 
making human life easier. In the Western world, the term techne, derives 
from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (Book VI, Ch. 3), a work where he 
discusses the five faculties of the soul required to attain truth: art 
(techné, skill), science (épistémè demonstrable knowledge), practical 
wisdom (phronesis), theoretical wisdom (sophia), and intelligence 
(nous). In chapter 4, Aristotle goes on to define techné as a trained 
capacity to make or produce through reason (logos); in other words, 
knowledge of specific principles and patterns. Techné (τέχνη) is, thus, 
frequently translated as “craft” or “art” in its meaning of the 
systematic use of knowledge for intelligent human action.  Art is the 
means through which this systemic method is transferred, and the 
products brought via techné differ from things produced by nature 
(physis), and they are also different from things produced by chance 
(tuche).  Although some degree of épistémè seems to be involved in 
techné, in Book VII chapter 3 Aristotle indicates that the goal of 
techné is a productive state which includes conceptualization and 
pragmatism.

In order to frame the “operative fiction” between the various forms of 
knowledge, papers submitted should expand the ideas of the Greek 
mythographer Euhemerus and those of Roland Barthes who believed that 
myths were assumptions and narratives about social issues that had 
become naturalized. Frequently, myths involve initiation journeys, 
sacred rituals, technological weapons and artifacts belonging to 
powerful figures, whether in Greco-Roman mythology (i.e. Hephaestus, 
Prometheus, Zeus, Athena, Heracles/Hercules, Daedalus or Eidyia) as well 
as in other ancient cultures (i.e.  the Egyptian Thoth and Isis, , the 
biblical ark of covenant, the Celtic Green Knight, the Norse Odin and 
Thor, the Brahmastra, the Pashapatrastra, and the tools and powers of 
Indra or Ganesha in Hindu mythology, those of the Japanese 
Koya-no-Myoin, or the Chinese Wenchang Wang and the story of Lieh Tsu by 
Lieh Yü Khow; see work by Kevin La Grandeur at the New York Institute of 
Technology). Sometimes, myths involve processes of metamorphosis and 
change, such as those in alchemy and in the first natural philosophies. 
Myth making also takes place in modernity and postmodernity, in many 
cases associated to inventions, like those by Leonardo da Vinci or Jules 
Verne, as well as those by scientists like Nikola Tesla, and even 
contemporary science-fiction aliens and cyber-mythical figures like 
Robocop, Terminator or George Lucas’s character Darth Vader. In all of 
these narratives, myths refer to technologies as both tools and 
activities that transform social and natural environments, affecting 
human as well as other species, and thus involving issues of power, 
communication, exploitation of environmental resources, sustainability, 
ethics and so on.
     Manuel Gertrudix Barrio
Journal ICONO14
www.icono14.net
(Info /at/ icono14.net)
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