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
Fields of research
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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.
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).
Supervision
Availability
- Dr Sungyong Ahn is:
- Available for supervision
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Supervision history
Current supervision
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Doctor Philosophy
Research on the effects of the digital media visual context on artistic representation and art creation of professional artists across the Asia-Pacific region.
Associate Advisor
Other advisors: Associate Professor Nicholas Carah, Dr Caroline Wilson-Barnao
Media
Enquiries
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