Through a genealogy of photosensitive elements in media devices and
artworks, this book investigates three dichotomies that impoverish
debates and proposals in media art: material/immaterial,
organic/machinic, and theory/practice. It combines a historical and
analytical approach, through new materialism, media archaeology,
cultural techniques and second-order cybernetics. Known media stories
are reframed from an alternative perspective, elucidating
photosensitivity as a metonymy to provide guiding criteria to art
students, artists, curators and theoreticians - especially those who are
committed to critical views of scientific and technological knowledge in
aesthetic experimentations.