‘Re-touching McLuhan – The Medium is the Massage’ Conference, Berlin, May 27-29

28Aug11

How does this media and telecommunications visionary shape our political perception of media? During the Re-touching McLuhan conference, experts from various fields explored how to apply McLuhan’s concepts to a strengthened sense of human rights and freedom of expression based on the today’s fundamental precepts of digital mobility, open technologies and collaborative networks.

An overflow audience of 280 people attended the opening keynote by Prof. Richard Cavell, author of ‘McLuhan in Space: A Cultural Geography’ who explored the relationship between tactility and the digital.

Taking a tour from what relevance does McLuhan have in describing and understanding computing today by looking at contemporary art dealing with media, the examination of his most important insights into the interplay between media and the senses, including the notion of acoustic space, and his famous assumption that technology extends our central nervous system directly into the various social systems, the Canadian and German conference speakers reflected on McLuhan’s founding concept of tactility in the context of its time and relevance to our media society today. Both, participants on site and online, vividly discussed the current subject.

Select lectures on video:-

Re-Touching McLuhan: Dr. Richard Cavell Keynote Lecture