Asko Lehmuskallio
Researcher, HIIT Helsinki Institute for Information Technology
Is the medium still the message? Notes on agency and mediated communication practices in urban settings.
Keywords: Agency, cultural resistance, mediated communication, identity
Due to declining face-to-face-contacts in complex societies mediated information has become pivotal in building identities and thus meaningful lives. (e.g. Appadurai 1996)
The fear of lost individual agency in an urban environment designed to communicate mainly the ideals of large companies, the state or other societal actors not considered to reflect the ´self´ has led many different people to advocate communication practices which question these mediated quasi-interactive communication (Thompson 1995) patterns and the notions behind them. ´Culture jamming´,´communication guerrilla´, ´tactical media´ and ´rebel art´ are a few of the areas, with which these kind of actions are conceptualised. These interventionistic practices are often intended and described as subversive, but especially subsequent mediatizations seem to gain their own hardly controllable lives and are taken and used in other contexts by quite different actors. Mediatized knowledge attracts the interest of people with the relevant skills for deciphering specific mediatizations. Any new media technology carries its own set of ´messages´ changing our perception of agency.
Asko Lehmuskallio is working as a researcher at the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology focusing on similarities and differences in the use of snapshot photography and snapshot videos. At the same time he is trying to finish his PhD-project currently entitled "Slaves of the Image? On the significance of visual strategies in the production of resistance, religiousity, consumption and touristical places". The work has been made possible with the DFG-scholarship at the postgraduate program "Image. Body. Medium. An anthropological perspective." at the New Media School in Karlsruhe, Germany. Asko has studied cultural anthropology, science of religion and peace- and conflict studies at the Philipps-Universität Marburg in Germany, concluding with a Masters degree. In between he has spent time studying photography at the Facultad de Bellas Artes at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid in Spain.
His interests focus on a wide spectrum of contemporary visual culture including advertising and culture jamming. Especially worthwhile seem to be investigating the interrelations people have with and through images. This connects Asko's studies to questions regarding the notions of culture and religiosity in a globalized world.