Scott Wark

I work as a post-doctoral Research Fellow on the Wellcome-funded 'People Like You: Contemporary Figures of Personalisation' project with Professor Celia Lury. Before starting this role, I was a PhD researcher here at CIM.

Research profile

Internet Memes; Social Media; Personalisation; Online Cultural Production; Media Theory; Cultural Studies; Philosophies of Technology; Contemporary Art; Aesthetics; Modern and Contemporary Literature.

Academic profile

I am interested in how cultural production is informed by technology and by media. I use art, literature and media–both high- and low-brow–to think through theory. I also use theory to try to get a handle on contemporary culture.

I'm currently working on techniques of personalisation as part of the 'People Like You' project, using media theory to try to understand how these techniques change our conceptions of personhood and population and how they inform online cultural production. As part of this project, I'm also developing research on how machine learning informs cultural production.

The main focus of my PhD research was internet memes. My thesis was interested in how we might think internet memes as media and in circulation in a contemporary media situation that's all-encompassing. This research used the concept of 'postdigitality' and methods derived from historical epistemology to inform an investigation into how we think circulating media when media's circulations condition theory.

I have written about art for non-academic publications in the past and I maintain an interest in thinking theory through art and vice versa.

Peer-reviewed publications

Scott Wark, “The Subject of Circulation: On the Digital Subject’s Technical Individuations”. Subjectivity12 (2019): 65-81.

-- “Literature after Language’s Algorithmic Normalisation: Spam, Code, and the Digitality of Print in Blood Rites of the Bourgeoisie”. Scan: Journal of Media Arts Culture Vol. 10, No. 2, (2013).

Scott Wark and McKenzie Wark, “Circulation and its Discontents”, Post Memes: Seizing the Memes of Production, eds. Daniel Bristow and Alfie Brown, punctum books. Forthcoming (2019).

Other academic texts

Scott Wark, “0-9 Reasons Excess Will Change the Way You Think About Everything!”, Excessive Research: A Peer Reviewed Newspaper Vol. 5 No. 1 (2016): 13-14. Part of Transmediale: Conversation Piece, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (5 Feb., 2016)

Scott Wark and Thomas Sutherland, “Gilbert Simondon: Platforms for the New”, Introduction to Platform JMC Vol. 6, “Gilbert Simondon, Media and Technics” (2015) [eds. Wark and Sutherland].

Selected scholarships and prizes

Chancellor’s International Scholarship, the University of Warwick, 2014-2018. Fee waiver and stipend.

Amy Gaye Tennant Memorial Scholarship, the University of Melbourne, 2013. Travelling research scholarship.

Australian Postgraduate Award, the University of Melbourne. 2012-14. Fee waiver and stipend.

University Medal, The University of Sydney, 2010. Awarded for Honours thesis.

Recent conference papers

Scott Wark, “Truth is in its Circulation: On Fact and Virtue Online”, London Conference in Critical Thought, London South Bank University (30 June-1st July 2017).

-- “Lithated Media, Or, The Subject at Scales”, Speeding and Braking: Navigating Acceleration, Goldsmiths College, University of London (15 May, 2016).

Selected other writing

Scott Wark, “Does this Meme Prove Donald Trump is a White Supremacist?”, Public Seminar (6 Oct. 2016). Online.

Scott Wark and Masato Takasaka, “Enough About Me, What Do You Think About Me? Masato Takasaka in his Own Words”, Runway No. 23, Prototype, February 2014.

Contact

Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies
University of Warwick
Coventry
CV4 7AL

Email: S dot Wark at warwick dot ac dot uk