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Dr

Sungyong Ahn

Email: 
Phone: 
+61 7 334 68292

Overview

Background

I am a media studies scholar studying current smart technologies and consequent ontological conundrums we face as these machines become smarter than us at telling how things are within ourselves and around our worlds. My previous research on the Internet of Things (IoT) was about these hidden arrangements of things in our background that machines constantly remind us of as those we should always be a little paranoid of, and how this normalized paranoia leads us to accept the IoT as a new smarter technique of self-governance. My first book Internet-ontologies-Things: Smart Objects, Hidden Problems, and their Symmetries (2023) argues these popular narratives of smart lives as our strategic and speculative responses to such common feelings: "Something is there, so embedded in our bodies, homes, and neighbourhoods. We feel it but cannot grasp it!"

Digital ontology is the term that best describes the nature of my research but it's less relevant to a pure philosophical inquiry about how things are in the world. Ontology in my practical and critical concern is rather related to the new capitalist ideology (or realism) that runs media industries’ current speculative economy. So, my critical reading of the ontological turn in humanities and social sciences focuses on its strategic dimension. How does this turn draw our attention to the things that our too-human perception always fails to pay the right attention to? How does this in turn mobilize our constant speculation about things beyond our perceptions and control, not only as the inexhaustible source of our anxieties but also as the inexhaustible resource of cultural production?

My current research interests include Digital Ontology, New Materialism, Speculative (Capitalist) Realism, Quantum Physics as Cultural Imagination, Science and Technology Studies, Actor-Network Theory, French Philosophers (e.g. Foucault, Deleuze, and Badiou), Eco- and Geo-philosophy/criticism, new materialist film and videogame studies.

Availability

Dr Sungyong Ahn is:
Available for supervision

Qualifications

  • Bachelor of Philosophy, Yonsei University
  • Masters (Research) of Film and Television, Chung-Ang University
  • Doctor of Philosophy of Media Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Works

Search Professor Sungyong Ahn’s works on UQ eSpace

15 works between 2011 and 2023

1 - 15 of 15 works

2023

Book

Internet-ontologies-things: Smart objects, hidden problems, and their symmetries

Ahn, Sungyong (2023). Internet-ontologies-things: Smart objects, hidden problems, and their symmetries. New York, NY United States: Bloomsbury Publishing. doi: 10.5040/9781501399275

Internet-ontologies-things: Smart objects, hidden problems, and their symmetries

2023

Journal Article

On That Toy-Being of Generative Art Toys

Ahn, Sungyong (2023). On That Toy-Being of Generative Art Toys. M/C Journal, 26 (2). doi: 10.5204/mcj.2947

On That Toy-Being of Generative Art Toys

2022

Journal Article

‘Take Care of Stray Cats’: biopolitical life ethics and its cosmopolitical countermethod

Ahn, Sungyong (2022). ‘Take Care of Stray Cats’: biopolitical life ethics and its cosmopolitical countermethod. Journal of Cultural Economy, 16 (1), 1-16. doi: 10.1080/17530350.2022.2098516

‘Take Care of Stray Cats’: biopolitical life ethics and its cosmopolitical countermethod

2021

Journal Article

Stream your brain! Speculative economy of the IoT and its pan-kinetic dataveillance

Ahn, Sungyong (2021). Stream your brain! Speculative economy of the IoT and its pan-kinetic dataveillance. Big Data and Society, 8 (2), 205395172110519. doi: 10.1177/20539517211051973

Stream your brain! Speculative economy of the IoT and its pan-kinetic dataveillance

2021

Journal Article

Symmetrifying smart home: topological power and the new governmentality of the internet of things

Ahn, Sungyong (2021). Symmetrifying smart home: topological power and the new governmentality of the internet of things. Media Theory, 5 (1), 89-114.

Symmetrifying smart home: topological power and the new governmentality of the internet of things

2019

Journal Article

Found footage and the speculative economy of attention

Ahn, Sungyong (2019). Found footage and the speculative economy of attention. International Journal of Communication, 13, 5967-5985.

Found footage and the speculative economy of attention

2019

Journal Article

Bartleby, the IoT, and flat ontology: how ontology is written in the age of ubiquitous computing

Ahn, Sungyong (2019). Bartleby, the IoT, and flat ontology: how ontology is written in the age of ubiquitous computing. Postmodern Culture, 29 (3). doi: 10.1353/pmc.2019.0013

Bartleby, the IoT, and flat ontology: how ontology is written in the age of ubiquitous computing

2019

Journal Article

From theater to laboratory: two regimes of apparatus in the material assemblages of media culture

Ahn, Sungyong (2019). From theater to laboratory: two regimes of apparatus in the material assemblages of media culture. Journal of Aesthetics and Culture, 11 (1) 1562851, 1-14. doi: 10.1080/20004214.2018.1562851

From theater to laboratory: two regimes of apparatus in the material assemblages of media culture

2018

Journal Article

Shooting a metastable object: targeting as trigger for the actor-network in the open-world videogames

Ahn, Sungyong (2018). Shooting a metastable object: targeting as trigger for the actor-network in the open-world videogames. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 15 (3), 213-231. doi: 10.1080/14791420.2018.1494386

Shooting a metastable object: targeting as trigger for the actor-network in the open-world videogames

2016

Journal Article

Becoming a network beyond boundaries: Brain-Machine Interfaces (BMIs) as the actor-networks after the internet of things

Ahn, Sungyong (2016). Becoming a network beyond boundaries: Brain-Machine Interfaces (BMIs) as the actor-networks after the internet of things. Technology in Society, 47, 49-59. doi: 10.1016/j.techsoc.2016.08.003

Becoming a network beyond boundaries: Brain-Machine Interfaces (BMIs) as the actor-networks after the internet of things

2016

Journal Article

A geological theory of the convergence culture

Ahn, Sungyong (2016). A geological theory of the convergence culture. Empedocles: European Journal for the Philosophy of Communication, 7 (2), 205-224. doi: 10.1386/ejpc.7.2.205_1

A geological theory of the convergence culture

2013

Journal Article

뉴미디어의 정치경제학: 영화의 발명과 감각의 경제 (Political Economy of New Media: the invention of cinema and the economy of senses)

Ahn, Sungyong (2013). 뉴미디어의 정치경제학: 영화의 발명과 감각의 경제 (Political Economy of New Media: the invention of cinema and the economy of senses). 미디어, 젠더 & 문화 (Media, Gender & Culture), 28, 43-70.

뉴미디어의 정치경제학: 영화의 발명과 감각의 경제 (Political Economy of New Media: the invention of cinema and the economy of senses)

2013

Journal Article

Cinematic innervation: the intuitive form of perception in the distracted perceptual field

Ahn, Sungyong (2013). Cinematic innervation: the intuitive form of perception in the distracted perceptual field. Journal of Aesthetics and Culture, 5 (1), 1-20. doi: 10.3402/jac.v5i0.21681

Cinematic innervation: the intuitive form of perception in the distracted perceptual field

2012

Journal Article

영화적 서사와 이미지경제의 역사적 관계에 대하여: 아피찻퐁의 <정오의 낯선 물체>가 제기한 질문들 (On the Historical Relation between Cinematic Narrative and Image Economy: The Questions Raised by Mysterious Objet at Noon)

Ahn, Sungyong (2012). 영화적 서사와 이미지경제의 역사적 관계에 대하여: 아피찻퐁의 <정오의 낯선 물체>가 제기한 질문들 (On the Historical Relation between Cinematic Narrative and Image Economy: The Questions Raised by Mysterious Objet at Noon). 영상예술연구 (Journal of the Association of Image & Film Studies), 20, 63-94.

영화적 서사와 이미지경제의 역사적 관계에 대하여: 아피찻퐁의 <정오의 낯선 물체>가 제기한 질문들 (On the Historical Relation between Cinematic Narrative and Image Economy: The Questions Raised by Mysterious Objet at Noon)

2011

Journal Article

인지기계: 영화이론과 지각의 문제틀 (The Cognition Machine: Film Theories and Problématique of Perception)

Ahn, Sungyong (2011). 인지기계: 영화이론과 지각의 문제틀 (The Cognition Machine: Film Theories and Problématique of Perception). 영상예술연구 (Journal of the Association of Image & Film Studies).

인지기계: 영화이론과 지각의 문제틀 (The Cognition Machine: Film Theories and Problématique of Perception)

Supervision

Availability

Dr Sungyong Ahn is:
Available for supervision

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Supervision history

Current supervision

Media

Enquiries

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