Looking for Marshall McLuhan in Afghanistan
Looking for Marshall McLuhan in Afghanistan (Book)
iProbes and iPhone Photographs
Conflict photographer and critical theorist Rita Leistner applies Marshall McLuhan's semiotic theories of language, media and technology to iPhone photographs taken during a military embed in Afghanistan. In a series of iProbes - a portmanteau of iPhone and probe - Leistner reveals the face of war through the extensions of man.
Edition
In this timely and highly original merging of theory and practice, conflict photographer and critical theorist Rita Leistner applies Marshall McLuhan’s semiotic theories of language, media and technology to iPhone photographs taken during a military embed in Afghanistan. In a series of what Leistner calls iProbes – a portmanteau of iPhone and probe – Leistner reveals the face of war through the extensions of man. As digital photography becomes more ubiquitous, and as the phones we carry with us become more advanced, the process of capturing images becomes more democratic and more spontaneous. Leistner’s photos result from both access and impulse. Looking for Marshall McLuhan in Afghanistan will appeal anyone with an interest in the conflicts in the Middle East, the seminal communications theorist, or iPhone apps and photography.
Rita Leistner is an interdisciplinary practitioner-theorist. She received a master’s degree in comparative literature from the University of Toronto, where she teaches a course on documentary photography at Victoria College.
Foreword
Hipstamatic Blues by Julian Stallabrass
The Process
Smartphones + War in Afghanistan
Marshall McLuhan b.1911 in Alberta, Canada
The embed
Semiotics
Figure + Ground
Reading McLuhan
Musa Qala
The social media
River City
iPhone + the Hipstamatic app
The thingness of things
The iProbes
Prophylactive therapy
The Extensions of Man
Camera obscura
Electric light
Typewriter
Telephone
Phonograph
Smart phone
McLuhan + Fiore + The Printed Book
The iProbes
iProbe 01_ The iPhone Camera + Hipstamatic app
iProbe 02_Phone Texting
iProbe 03_Body Armour
iProbe 04_Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles (MRAPs)
iProbe 05_Figure / Ground
iProbe 06_Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs)
Made of Wood
iProbe 07_Fuel Dispensers
iProbe 08_Loudspeakers and Sermons from the Mosque
iProbe 09_Mobile Telephony:“Can You Hear Me Now?”
iProbe 10_The Written Word: “Proceed At Your Own Risk”
iProbe 11_Unmanned Ariel Vehicles (UAVs)
iProbe 12_Sandbags and HESCO Concertina Barriers
The Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:00–11:10)
The Tetrads: Laws of Media
'This book is astonishing!'
