Alexander R. Galloway (born 1974) is an author and professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. He has a bachelor's degree in Modern Culture and Media from Brown University and earned a Ph.D. in literature from Duke University in 2001. Galloway is known for his writings on philosophy, media theory, contemporary art, film, and video games.
Work
Galloway's first book, Protocol: How Control Exists After Decentralization, is a study of information networks and their political and computational effects. It identifies protocols like TCP/IP and HTTP as means of control that govern people's interactions with the Internet. His other published writings examine film noir, video games, software art, hacktivism, and digital aesthetics. Galloway has conducted several seminars through The Public School NYC, including "French Theory Today",[1] and translated the work of philosopher François Laruelle and the Tiqqun collective.[2]
Galloway is also a programmer and artist. He is a founding member of the Radical Software Group (RSG), and his art projects include Carnivore (awarded a Golden Nica prize at Ars Electronica 2002), and Kriegspiel (based on a war game originally designed by Guy Debord). Galloway was an Eyebeam Honorary Resident and later became a member of their Advisory Council.[3][4]
In 2013 Galloway, along with Eugene Thacker and McKenzie Wark, published the book Excommunication: Three Inquiries in Media and Mediation. In the opening of this media studies book the authors ask, "Does everything that exists, exist to be presented and represented, to be mediated and remediated, to be communicated and translated? There are mediative situations in which heresy, exile, or banishment carry the day, not repetition, communion, or integration. There are certain kinds of messages that state 'there will be no more messages'. Hence for every communication there is a correlative excommunication."[5] This approach has been referred to as the "New York School of Media Theory".[6]
Bibliography
Protocol: How Control Exists After Decentralization, MIT Press, 2004. ISBN0-262-07247-5
^Excommunication: Three Inquiries in Media and Mediation, Alexander R. Galloway, Eugene Thacker, and McKenzie Wark (University of Chicago Press, 2013), p. 10.
