"Mimesis and Composition"

This is a call for papers for the special theme "Mimesis and Composition".

Mimesis and Composition (Guest editors: Natascha Adamowsky and Fabio Grigenti)

(Deadline September 12, 2022):

Anthropological Perspectives on Technology and Art

The making of a humanly built world involves many ways of weaving and drawing things together, of joining and splitting, molding and fitting. These invite perspectives from archaeology, cultural  and cognitive anthropology, history and philosophy of technology, art theory, media studies, and STS. Mimesis and composition are two, perhaps complementary principles of artful production in technology and the arts. Mimesis seeks patterns for imitation and repetition, creating affective routines somewhat as rituals or games do. Composition refers to a grammar of things. In painting and poetry, music and photography, in mechanical and software engineering composition appears inventive and “natural” at once as one finds the right way of putting things together. This complementarity can be discerned in processes or making and building but also in patterns of use and the linguistic production of representations. And when it is said that we became human by virtue of technology, what are the pertinent modes of production, what kinds of thinking and social practice is implicated in mimetic and compositional tinkering, making and building, speaking, signing and writing?