In Friedrich Kittler’s book, Grammophon, Film, Typewriter (1986), he demonstrates how, during the 19th century, the imaginary of analogical (new) media (from literature to advertisements extolling the powers of machines) coalesced around the idea of communication with the afterlife and the netherworld. At the same time, the century also saw the birth of a number of sciences and practices, such as psychoanalysis, telepathy or parapsychology, which sought to attain the outer limits of human communication. Did the transformations of inscriptive technologies directly affect the way in which Western thought conceptualized the afterlife and immortality? Today, how are digital machines and their respective imaginaries reconfiguring these notions, and what transformations have they brought on the idea of the work of art and the the artist's signature?

Emmanuel Guez is an artist and philosopher. He directs the research laboratory PAMAL (Preservation – Archaeology – Media Art Lab) at l'Ecole Supérieure d'Art d'Avignon.