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Tracing the cultural, material, and discursive history of an early manifestation of media culture in the making. Beginning in the late eighteenth century, huge circular panoramas presented their audiences with resplendent representations that ranged from historic battles to exotic locations. Such panoramas were immersive but static. There were other panoramas that moved—hundreds, and probably thousands of them. Their history has been largely forgotten. In Illusions in Motion, Erkki Huhtamo excavates this neglected early manifestation of media culture in the making. The moving panorama was a long painting that unscrolled behind a “window” by means of a mechanical cranking system, accomp...
“Huhtamo and Parikka, from the first and second generations of media archaeology, have brought together the best writings from almost all of the best authors in the field. Whether we speak of cultural materialism, media art history, new historicism or software studies, the essays compiled here provide not only an anthology of innovative historical case studies, but also a methodology for the future of media studies as material and historical analysis. Media Archaeology is destined to be a key handbook for a new generation of media scholars.” —Sean Cubitt, author of The Cinema Effect "Taken together, this excellent collection of essays by a wide range of scholars and practitioners demon...
This cutting-edge text offers an introduction to the emerging field of media archaeology and analyses the innovative theoretical and artistic methodology used to excavate current media through its past. Written with a steampunk attitude, What is Media Archaeology? examines the theoretical challenges of studying digital culture and memory and opens up the sedimented layers of contemporary media culture. The author contextualizes media archaeology in relation to other key media studies debates including software studies, German media theory, imaginary media research, new materialism and digital humanities. What is Media Archaeology? advances an innovative theoretical position while also presenting an engaging and accessible overview for students of media, film and cultural studies. It will be essential reading for anyone interested in the interdisciplinary ties between art, technology and media.
A critical mapping of the multiplicities of Finnish artist and technology pioneer Erkki Kurenniemi—composer of electronic music, experimental filmmaker, inventor, collector, futurologist. Over the past forty years, Finnish artist and technology pioneer Erkki Kurenniemi (b. 1941) has been a composer of electronic music, experimental filmmaker, computer animator, roboticist, inventor, and futurologist. Kurenniemi is a hybrid—a scientist-humanist-artist. Relatively unknown outside Nordic countries until his 2012 Documenta 13 exhibition, ”In 2048,” Kurenniemi may at last be achieving international recognition. This book offers an excavation, a critical mapping, and an elaboration of Kure...
This book offers new critical perspectives on the practice of electronic media art, a field that has sparse critical and theoretical literature. It addresses the relationship between technological change and cultural change and between contemporary theory and contemporary technology.
Have you ever wondered if one day Windows 2028 might just know what you're thinking and type it? In this collection of essays, a selection of today's top media and sci-fi theorists weigh in. The Book of Imaginary Media explores the persistent idea that technology may one day succeed where no human has, not only in space or in nature, but also in interpersonal communication. Building on insights from media archeology, Siegfried Zielinski, Bruce Sterling, Erkki Huhtamo and Timothy Druckrey spin a web of associations between the fantasy machines of Athanasius Kircher, the mania of stereoscopy and "dead" media. Edwin Carels and Zoe Beloff descend into the cinematographic caverns of spiritualism and the iconography of death, and renowned cartoonists including Ben Katchor depict their own visionary media fantasies. On the enclosd DVD, artist Peter Blegvad provides hilarious commentary in a son et lumière version of his On Imaginary Media.
Preliminary Material -- Introduction /Howard Rheingold -- Overview /Martin Rieser -- Pockets of Plenty: An Archaeology of Mobile Media /Erkki Huhtamo -- The Temporal and Spatial Design of Video and Film-based Installation Art in the 60s and 70s: Their Inherent Perception Processes and Effects on the Perceivers' Actions /Susanne Jaschko -- Forgotten Histories of Interactive Space /Martin Rieser -- Art by Telephone: From Static to Mobile Interfaces /Adriana de Souza e Silva -- Mobile/Audience: Thinking the Contradictions /Mary Griffiths and Sean Cubitt -- Towards a Language of Mobile Media /Jon Dovey and Constance Fleuriot -- Snapshots from Curating Mobility: (If you build it, they won't neces...
Slides for the magic or optical lantern were a major tool for knowledge transfer in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Schools, universities, the church and many public and private institutions all over the world relied on the lantern for illustrated lectures and demonstrations. This volume brings together scholarly research on the educational uses of the optical lantern in different disciplines by international specialists, representing the state of the art of magic lantern research today. In addition, it contains a lab section with contributions by archivists and curators and performers reflecting on ways to preserve, present and re-use this immensely rich cultural herit...
The digital revolution fundamentally changed how cultural heritage is created, documented, analyzed, and preserved. The book focuses on this transformation’s impact. How must museums and archives meet the challenges of digitally generated cultures and how does the digital revolution influence traditional object collection, research, and education? How do digital technologies and digital art and culture affect our interaction with images? Leading international experts from various disciplines break new ground. Pioneering interdisciplinary research results collected in this book are relevant to education, curators and archivists in the arts and culture sector and in the digital humanities.
Leading scholars take a wider view of new media, placing it in the context of art history and acknowledging the necessity of an interdisciplinary approach in new media art studies and practice. Digital art has become a major contemporary art form, but it has yet to achieve acceptance from mainstream cultural institutions; it is rarely collected, and seldom included in the study of art history or other academic disciplines. In MediaArtHistories, leading scholars seek to change this. They take a wider view of media art, placing it against the backdrop of art history. Their essays demonstrate that today's media art cannot be understood by technological details alone; it cannot be understood wit...