Essay Instructions: Theme:
Our relationship with media technology is a complex one between perception, mental imagery, and the apparatus that enables it. Our experience of watching a film, for example, is a very different experience from that of an audience member who experienced cinema firsthand (as can be illustrated by “mythic” stories like the one about how people ran away from the train while attending the screening of The Moving Train by the Lumière). Therefore, as the apparatus is always part of the experience of understanding media (whether people are aware of it or not), it is not enough just to work with historical imagery or archival footage to understand the past of a medium. One must think also about apparatuses of an earlier era. This is a starting point for media archeology.
Media archaeology is an emerging set of interdisciplinary theories and methodologies that address media history in new, often unconventional ways - both looking for elements of repetition as well as variation in the past. Media archaeology wants to understand new and emerging media cultures through the past. Authors such as Erkki Huhtamo, Siegfried Zielinski, Wolfgang Ernst, Nick Montfort, Ian Bogost, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Carolyn Marvin, Katherine Hayles, Tom Gunning, Anne Friedberg, Lev Manovich, Steve F. Anderson, William Uricchio, Friedrich Kittler and Jonathan Crary, from the fields of visual culture, media theory, platform studies, software studies (etc.), have been essential to the birth of this disciplinary ??" and artistic ??" field (that has a basis on seminal works of authors such as Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault, Marshall McLuhan). In addition to theories, media archaeology is executed through concrete art works ??" such as Zoe Beloff's, Aura Satz’s or Rosa Menkman’s.
This essay means to address recent media archaeological waves, in european and US media studies, namely in its hardware materiality and time-critical focus, as well as software and platform studies, in their relationship to videogames. It is important to provide examples from videogames to illustrate some of the points made.
Suggested Bibliography:
Always Already New: Media, History, and the Data of Culture. Lisa Gitelman. MIT Press. Sep 2008. ISBN: 2477.
Archaeology of Knowledge. Michel Foucault. Routledge; 2 edition. May 2002. ISBN: 7531.
Cartographies of Media Archaeology. Jussi Parikka’s Blog. http://mediacartographies.blogspot.pt/
Deep Time of the Media: Toward an Archaeology of Hearing and Seeing by Technical Means (Electronic Culture: History, Theory and Practice). Siegfried Zielinski. MIT Press. Feb 2008. ISBN: 0326.
Digital Memory and the Archive (Electronic Mediations). Wolfgang Ernst (Author), Jussi Parikka (Editor). University of Minnesota Press. Dec 2012. ISBN: 7672.
Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (Writing Science). Friedrich Kittler. Stanford University Press. July 1999. ISBN: 2338.
How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis. N. Katherine Hayles.
Media Archaeology. Approaches, Applications, and Implications. Erkki Huhtamo (Editor), Jussi Parikka (Editor). June 2011. ISBN: 2744.
New Media, Old Media: A History and Theory Reader: Interrogating the Digital Revolution. Wendy Hui Kyong Chun (Editor), Thomas Keenan (Editor). Routledge. Dec 2005. ISBN: 2249.
Technologies of History: Visual Media and the Eccentricity of the Past (Interfaces: Studies in Visual Culture). Steve F. Anderson. University Press of New England. May 2011. ISBN: 0034.
The Language of New Media. Lev Manovich.
The Virtual Window: From Alberti to Microsoft. Anne Friedberg. MIT Press. Jan 2009. ISBN: 2503.
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Walter Benjamin.
Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction. Nick Montfort. MIT Press. Mar 2005. ISBN: 3185.
Understanding Media. The extensions of Man. Marshall Macluhan.
What is Media Archaeology? Jussi Parikka. May 2012. ISBN 0258.