Mechane

Tecnica e guerra

2023-12-21T11:14:45+00:00

Politicizzare le immagini per vedere la guerra. L’estetica forense di Eyal Weizman e di Forensic Architecture

2023-12-21T11:18:35+00:00

The essay focuses on the relationship between images and war in the research activities of Eyal Weizman and the Forensic Architecture group. Today, wars and images are inextricably intertwined in multiple ways. The work of Forensic Architecture consists of reconstructing through all the technologies at our disposal – especially related to images and architectural structures – events that would otherwise not exist either for us or for those reconstructing their history. These facts end up not existing, not because there are no images to testify to their existence, but because these images are systematically removed from the shared gaze of the community by the power of states. With Weizman, on the one hand we can retrace the analysis of the processes that prevent us from seeing what is happening in vast areas of the planet involved in declared or concealed wars; on the other, Forensic Architecture, through its research work in the service of international tribunals, attempts to virtually reconstruct those ‘crime scenes’ in which states with their armies or secret services are the actors. These reconstruction activities of the Forensic Architecture group can be conceived as forms of “image politicisation

Il fantasma di Elena Spettri nella No Man’s Land

2023-12-21T11:17:36+00:00

The essay, beginning with a brief reading of Euripides’ tragedy, Helen (412 B.C.), considers war a spectral event in human existence. No less so when, with World War I, the physiognomy of the conflict takes on the terrible features of a technological carnage where man becomes nothing more than a material among others.

L’immaginario perverso delle guerre

2023-12-21T11:19:55+00:00

In his essay Il gesto di Caino, Massimo Recalcati highlights the ubiquitous link between narcissism, fascination and violence. The fratricidal murder of Abel arises from the perception that the ideal image of the Other cannot be captured by the Ego. Hallucinatory violence, as shown by Franco Fornari in his crucial Psicoanalisi della guerra, aims to saturate the hole opened in the plot of the Real by the unavoidable presence of otherness, which forces us to cope with the limits of our claim to govern our lives. Furthermore, what we intend to explore in this work are the disturbing chances offered by technological development, not only to amplify the acephalous nature of the death drive through brutal technologies such as the atomic weapon – where the paranoid effort to subjugate the Other coincides with the loss of any form of control over one’s own destructive power –, but also to create a perverse union between the subjugation of the enemy through technological devices and the imaginary “capture” of the victim through images intended to convey the “scene” of war. Taking up some concepts expressed within L’immagine carnefice, a collective volume dedicated to the relationship between violence and the imaginary (photographic, serial, cinematographic), here we try to follow the perverse trait of the aesthetic dimension at work in contemporary declinations of war violence. It is in this short-circuit between hyper-visibility and invisibility that war reveals the perverse vocation of the death drive.

Tecnica e guerra. Conversazione con Andrea Le Moli, Fabio Grigenti e Vincenzo Cuomo

2023-12-21T11:23:05+00:00

L’immersione simulante. Sloterdijk pensatore nelle sembianze del presente

2023-12-21T11:24:26+00:00

Il cinema come macchina da guerra. Loin du Vietnam (1967)

2023-12-21T11:26:01+00:00

The paper aims to analyse Loin du Vietnam (1967) as a “war machine”, investigating Godard’s Caméra-œil episode and the montage of the collective film, which combines fictional and documentary frames, to combat against the television war, images not allowing to think about Vietnam war.

La guerra nell’epoca delle macchine intelligenti (e la paura)

2023-12-21T11:27:21+00:00

The main objective of the essay is to reflect on the aporia of war, which manifests itself in the disagreement between its technical rationality and its irrational and ‘drive’ character. The realisation of intelligent machines today seems to realise a goal that has been nagging military commanders for centuries: to reduce or eliminate the contribution of the human element from the battlefield. However, behind the widespread concern that ’intelligent’ machines will behave like ‘predatory machines’, there is always the fear that they will behave like human beings, autonomously conducting war. Indeed, the problem continues to be that of war, before that of (intelligent) weapons of war. However, the paradox on which, in conclusion, this essay reflects – through a deconstructive commentary on some of Heidegger’s theses – is that what could act as a brake on the irrationality of war is still something to do with that irrationality: fear.

Interrompere l’umano. Bias, responsabilità e autonomia nell’utilizzo bellico dell’IA

2023-12-21T11:29:44+00:00

This paper explores ethical implications of AI use in warfare, focusing on two key issues: responsibility and potential limits to human autonomy. The design of autonomous weapons should prioritize transparency and autonomy in decision-making, especially in morally challenging situations. The automation bias highlights the risks of relying on AI as infallible due to its mathematical programming. This bias undermines human deliberation and violates ethical theories at both the metaethical and normative levels. Starting from the hci model, an ethics by design for AI is necessary, providing support while allowing users to maintain responsibility. Trusting autonomous weapons requires ensuring that autonomy does not compromise human decision-making, preserving the value of ethical choices’ complexity and avoiding the reduction of ethics to mathematical generalizations. Users should have the freedom to disregard AI advice and act according to the situation, thereby assuming responsibility.

Guerra e tecnica nell’epoca weimariana: il contributo di Oswald Spengler ed Ernst Jünger

2023-12-21T11:30:59+00:00

This article analyses the influence of the First World War on the philosophical analysis of technology. To this end, the Conservative Revolution, a phenomenon that originated in Germany during the Weimar era, will be used as a case study, particularly regarding its most important thinkers, namely Oswald Spengler and Ernst Jünger. In the comparison and analysis of these two authors, some new characteristics of technique emerge that will become the starting point of many later authors.