Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications, and Implications

by Erkki Huhtamo (Editor), Jussi Parikka (Editor)

Overview

This book introduces an archaeological approach to the study of media — one that sifts through the evidence to learn how media were written about, used, designed, preserved, and sometimes discarded. Edited by Erkki Huhtamo and Jussi Parikka, with contributions from internationally prominent scholars from Europe, North America, and Japan, the essays help us understand how the media that predate today’s interactive, digital forms were in their time contested, adopted and embedded in the everyday. Providing a broad overview of the many historical and theoretical facets of Media Archaeology as an emerging field, the book encourages discussion by presenting a full range of different voices. By revisiting ‘old’ or even ‘dead’ media, it provides a richer horizon for understanding ‘new’ media in their complex and often contradictory roles in contemporary society and culture.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520262744
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	06/16/2011
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Erkki Huhtamo is Professor of Design | Media Arts at the University of California, Los Angeles. Jussi Parikka is Reader at Winchester School of Art (University of Southampton, UK) and the author of Digital Contagions: A Media Archaeology of Computer Viruses and Insect Media: An Archaeology of Animals and Technology.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

1. Introduction: An Archaeology of Media Archaeology
Erkki Huhtamo and Jussi Parikka

Part I: Engines of/in the Imaginary
2. Dismantling the Fairy Engine: Media Archaeology as Topos Study
Erkki Huhtamo

3. On the Archaeology of Imaginary Media
Eric Kluitenberg

4. On the Origins of the Origins of the Influencing Machine
Jeffrey Sconce

5. Freud and the Technical Media: The Enduring Magic of the Wunderblock
Thomas Elsaesser

Part II: (Inter)facing Media
6. The “Baby Talkie,” Domestic Media, and the Japanese Modern
Machiko Kusahara

7. The Observer’s Dilemma: To Touch or Not to Touch
Wanda Strauven

8. The Game Player’s Duty: The User as the Gestalt of the Ports
Claus Pias

9. The Enduring Ephemeral, or The Future Is a Memory
Wendy Hui Kyong Chun

Part III: Between Analogue and Digital
10. Erased Dots and Rotten Dashes, or How to Wire Your Head for a Preservation
Paul DeMarinis

11. Media Archaeography: Method and Machine versus History and Narrative of Media
Wolfgang Ernst

12. Mapping Noise: Techniques and Tactics of Irregularities, Interception, and Disturbance
Jussi Parikka

13. Objects of Our Affection: How Object Orientation Made Computers a Medium
Casey Alt

14. Digital Media Archaeology: Interpreting Computational Processes
Noah Wardrip—Fruin

15. Afterword: Media Archaeology and Re—presencing the Past
Vivian Sobchack

Contributors
Selected Bibliography
Index

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"A fascinating addition to work carried out in the social sciences."—
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A fascinating addition to work carried out in the social sciences.

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A fascinating addition to work carried out in the social sciences.

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"A fascinating addition to work carried out in the social sciences."--Information, Communication & Society

From the Publisher