Media Archeology

Con le espressioni “Cinema a domicilio”, “piccolo cinematografo privato”, “cinema in casa”, giornalisti, intellettuali e addetti ai lavori salutano l’avvento della programmazione televisiva italiana sperimentale, alla fine degli anni Trenta. Alla fine degli anni Quaranta, quando la RAI riprende quegli studi e quegli esperimenti che, nel giro di pochi anni, porteranno al varo del servizio regolare di trasmissione, il dibattito si rianima; ma la ricerca dello specifico televisivo si accompagna questa volta alla crescente preoccupazione per l’avvenire del cinema stesso quale mezzo di intrattenimento di massa. Attraverso lo spoglio sistematico delle riviste corporative dell’AGIS, il mio intervento intende esaminare il posizionamento degli esercenti cinematografici italiani nel conflitto cinema-televisione e il loro contributo alla messa a punto delle principali strategie di contenimento della concorrenza.

With the labels “home cinema”, “small private cinema”, “home theater”, journalists, intellectuals and professionals welcome the advent of experimental television in Italy, during the late thirties. At the end of the forties, when RAI resumes those studies and experiments that, within a few years, will lead to the launch of the regular television service, the debate is revived, but the search for the specificity of the medium is accompanied by a growing concern for the future of cinema itself as mass entertainment. Through the study of AGIS’ major corporate magazines, this essay will examine the positioning of the Italian film exhibitors in the conflict cinema-television, and their contribution to the development of the main strategies of containment of the competition.

Przysługujący widmom wywrotowy, niemalże rewolucyjny potencjał został odsunięty oraz zagubiony poprzez pozbycie się tej kontrowersyjnej kategorii z terytorium metafizyki i zbyt pośpieszne odesłanie jej do przestrzeni badań nad literaturą, sprowadzając ją jedynie do roli użytecznego, bezpiecznego narzędzia interpretacji.

Książka Andrzeja Marca odzyskuje niepokojący charakter widmontologii i ponownie wprowadza widma do myśli metafizycznej. Czym nawiedzona i przeniknięta jest tradycyjna metafizyka, co właściwie ją dręczy, nie daje spokoju oraz nieustannie podmywa jej stabilność?

Kategoria widma Derridy posłużyła Marcowi przede wszystkim do rozważań nad charakterem współczesności i przeobrażeń, jakie dokonały się w obrębie myśli ponowoczesnej. Współczesna kultura, zdaniem Marca, stała się miejscem powstawania widm, nieustannie powracających z przeszłości. Uznając, że nie jesteśmy już w stanie tworzyć utopijnych wizji przyszłości, autor stara się zdać sprawę z widmowego charakteru współczesnej kultury, analizując m. in. strategie vintage, retro, nurt no future w kulturze lat 70. czy nurt fantastyki naukowej w literaturze.

Celem artykułu jest omówienie dwóch awangardowych, niezrealizowanych,
projektów budynków – Osvobozené divadlo Josefa Chochola
i Jiříego Frejki oraz Teatru Symultanicznego Szymona Syrkusa
i Andrzeja Pronaszki. W swoim tekście postuluję, że wspomniane
projekty możemy dziś interpretować z perspektywy współczesnego zainteresowania
twórców teatralnych nowymi technologiami oddziałującymi
na jakości inscenizacji. Metodą, która pozwala na taką interpretację, jest
archeologia mediów (opracowana i stosowana, m.in. przez Siegfrieda
Zielinskiego i Erkki Huhtamo). Pozwala ona odczytywać zapomniany
dorobek techniki i sztuki – nie pojmując historii mediów jako ciągu
następstw coraz to doskonalszych rozwiązań, lecz zauważając cykliczność
pojawiania się pewnych właściwości środków przekazu. Huhtamo, niezrealizowane
urządzenia i konstrukcje określa mianem dream machines.
Terminem tym nazywa niekiedy ekscentryczny, zapomniany dorobek
twórców, którzy z powodu braku sprzyjających okoliczności nie zdołali
zrealizować swoich projektów. W niniejszym artykule przedstawiam
tytułowe projekty jako przykłady dream machines oraz inicjatywy mające
odmienić sposoby komunikacji w sztukach performatywnych.

This research work focuses on the renewal of the artist’s practice of visual effects simulations in industry. The context of practice in industry now involves increasingly rationalized and rigid production models posing several challenges and discomforts for artists. Over the years, the problem experienced in the practitioner’s work experience refers to an aesthetic fatigue with regard to the tasks to be performed, that is to say to a lack of interest, disenchantment, a loss of pleasure in the act of creation, contrary to the strong passion that animated the beginning of his career. The practice in industry does not provide sufficiently interesting opportunities for the artist to pursue his development and quest for meaning; There is not much room for exploration, discovery, surprise, but on the contrary, its conduct becomes regulated and subject to the adjustments and procedures imposed by the choice of studios for the use of digital technologies. Thus, arising from the work structures where our professional practice is carried out, this malaise would be ideally surmountable by revisiting the traditional techniques of creating visual effects. The creative project will go in this direction ultimately aiming to allow us to regain the pleasure of creating visual effects. This project will consist of custom special effects experiments based on traditional techniques of fluid mechanics. Using the theoretical framework of Schön’s Reflective practice (1994), The goal of this research is to bring new meaning to visual effects artist practice. The project of creation thus takes the form of inquiry process and reflexive and interpretative analyzes, to lead to new senses. The analysis of the results reveals that particular satisfying conditions become necessary to find and regain the pleasure of creating. First of all, the first condition is that the practitioner must be able to make discoveries, that is to say that he must be able to observe and evaluate an emergent and unexpected content in his creation. Traditional techniques have allowed such fortuitous discoveries. While they present limitations in terms of capacity, traditional techniques require a great deal of creativity and adaptation in the artist. Paradoxically, the components then imagined demonstrate a great diversity, originality and efficiency. In contrast, the techniques underlying digital media (e.g., application software), in the context of production pipeline, are becoming instruments for standardizing the way things are done. The second condition, which has been clarified with information from the creative activity, implies that the artist can benefit from a space for his personal expression in the production of a work. The research work concludes on the relevance of offering these necessary conditions in artistic practice in industry. It raises certain issues concerning the development and flourishing of practitioners, by launching the invitation to develop reflexivity in practice. The contribution of this research is, first of all, personal to the researcher practitioner, who has been able to bring a new meaning to his practice, leading to the renewal of his practice. Then, this work serves to enrich the knowledge about new artistic practices, especially those in the creative industries.

The results of the experiments can be viewed at the following addresses:
https://vimeo.com/patrickparenteau/fluidespatial (this editing contains experiments 1 and 2)
https://vimeo.com/patrickparenteau/hadesfluide
https://vimeo.com/patrickparenteau/kirbycrackle
https://vimeo.com/patrickparenteau/europa

Techniques applied to description of hand-press-era literary works can be turned toward popular duplication processes. Close examination of material objects tests other forms of evidence and aids in identifying potential concerns regarding handling and care by special collections professionals. The initial issues of "The Ladder," produced by the Daughters of Bilitis from 1956 to 1972, suggest a route for identifying duplication methods during a period in which many reproduction technologies were available. That diversity points to a greater variety of papers and inks that need to be assessed for best care of materials. It also testifies to the pragmatic approaches that the Daughters of Bilitis took in establishing a publication that proved to be a foundation for the American LGBT movement. The article includes a historical section on the A.B. Dick Company and Mimeograph technologies, comparative images for identifying selected 20th-century duplication techniques, and a bibliographical essay noting technical and historical sources for forensic analysis of print.

Resumen: La presente investigación recoge conceptos sobre los artefactos surgidos a partir de la manufactura colombiana en donde se articulan el emprendimiento, la empíria, la técnica y conocimiento tecnológico para determinarse como-diseño basado en tecnología-. Se empleó el estudio de caso y la arqueología de medios para aproximarse a un artefacto colombiano surgido en la década del 70. El estudio muestra que este emprendimiento derivó en un caso frustrante sin consolidación sostenida en el mercado local, enredado en burocracia y desprotección legal.

The nineteenth-century ‘panstereorama’ was an urban relief model placed on display as a public spectacle. In this article, I consider first two affiliated forms that help to explain the genre, namely panorama paintings and plans-reliefs. I then go on to consider urban regional practices of city modelling in London and Paris before examining in detail panstereoramas representing Paris and New York. It is argued that this form of model urban cartography served as proxy for the view obtained from the increasingly popular balloon trip and that it accordingly provided virtual travel to, and a map of, the cities depicted.

This is my recent contribution to <Art in Culture>, Korean monthly art magazine, as part of my bigger project of writing an alternative lineage of contemporary Korean art scene, say, for the past 20 years.

Limited by time and space, I mainly focused on what I'm tempted to call a 'genealogical turn of media(art)' wherein a disparate group of artists engage with a series of dilapidated media technologies or 'dispositifs' such as shadow play, praxiscope, and phantasmagoria in such a way that even VR apparatus is rendered so to speak 'outdated' in advance.

(Originally I was asked to write about 'main features and prospects of (Korean) video art since 2000 'till now.' In a sense, then, you can read my article as an oblique defiance, if not a downright refusal, to suscribe to the old idea of 'video art' in favor of subterranean mutations set in motion albeit quietly)

Currently being updated, it will hopefully come out as a scholarly article in a revised and expanded format sometime later this year.

This study presents the movement history of Instrumental Transcomunication (ITC) and analyzes the discourse of supporters. We understand ITC as one of the possible uses and appropriations of communication technologies. ITC is a practice in which contact with spirits is believed through communication technologies, which capture sounds and images supposedly generated by the media. The theoretical framework is based on media archeology and technological imagery. We consider communication technologies as extensions of man, according to Marshall McLuhan. We understand that ICT reflects an imaginary of human extrasensory extension.
This study is a chapter of the book "Communication, languages and religions", published in January 2020, in Brazil.

In Paik’s Virtual Archive, Hanna B. Hölling contemplates the identity of multimedia artworks by reconsidering the role of conservation in our understanding of what the artwork is and how it functions within and beyond a specific historical moment. In Hölling’s discussion of works by Nam June Paik (1932–2006), the hugely influential Korean American artist who is considered the progenitor of video art, she explores the relation between the artworks’ concept and material, theories of musical performance and performativity, and the Bergsonian concept of duration, as well as the parts these elements play in the conceptualization of multimedia artworks. Hölling combines her astute assessment of artistic technologies with ideas from art theory, philosophy, and aesthetics to probe questions related to materials and materiality, not just in Paik’s work but in contemporary art in general. Ultimately, she proposes that the archive—the physical and virtual realm that encompasses all that is known about an artwork—is the foundation for the identity and continuity of every work of art.

Cosa facciamo oggi con le immagini? E soprattutto, che cosa le immagini fanno con noi e di noi? Questo libro cerca una risposta mediante l’analisi di cinque dispositivi (più uno): gli smart glasses, le camere a cam-po di luce, i visori notturni, la realtà aumentata, le reti neurali e la fotomicrografia elettronico-digitale. Le immagini computazionali, chiamate in queste pagine algoritmi, nascono dalla connessione di risorse apparte-nenti alla economia politica della luce e del visuale con quelle proprie dell’economia della informazione e dei dati. Algoritmi che sono, insieme,  oggetti e strumenti della produzione, estrazione e distribuzione delle ri-sorse comuni, al punto che  “capitale algoritmico” è il nome il più appropriato per definire i tratti costitutivi della società post-mediale.

This chapter takes up the question of media archaeology as a mode of collecting, and the collection as a media archaeological object. It asks whether media archaeology, in its materialist attitude, emancipates the object, as Ernst and Benjamin suggest, or whether it verges towards a mere connoisseurship in its fetishisation of outmoded processes and technologies. It takes as a case the recently rediscovered Chicago street photographer, Vivian Maier. It interrogates Maier's hoarding and media archaeological practices, as well as those of the guardian of the largest part of her archive, John Maloof, whose own media archaeological passions are much in evidence in his film Finding Vivian Maier (2013).

Media archeology as one of the most productive research method in recent film theories, constantly suggests the significance of media materiality. This essay attempts to start from the perspective of media in order to reconsider the model of cinema ontology, and its relationship to the materiality of film. Film as a visual-audio media, has not been fully discussed or analyzed in terms of its materiality. With the rise of media archeology and the prevalence of object-oriented philosophy, film also finds an opportunity to rethink about its own materiality. In the essay, I refers to many concepts of new materialism and methodologies of media archeology come into being after the new materialism turn. The essay aims at articulating film as a certain material archive in a relatively experimental way, and figure out possible working clues for further research.

"Nanna Verhoeff's new book is a a must for anybody interested in visual culture and media theory. It offers a rich and stimulating theoretical account of the central dimension of our contemporary existence - interfacing and navigating both data and physical world through a variety of screens (game consoles, mobile phones, car interfaces, GPS devices, etc.) In the process of exploring these new screen practices, Verhoeff offers fresh perspectives on many of the key questions in media and new media studies as well as a number of new original theoretical concepts. As the first theoretical manual for the society of mobile screens, this book will become an essential reference for all future investigations of our mobile screen condition." - Lev Manovich

"Mobile Screens charts a “navigational turn” in contemporary media culture and recasts screened images as “performative cartographies.” Fusing intermediale discussions of hand-held devices, gaming consoles, urban screens, and cinema, Verhoeff eloquently demonstrates the multi-sensorial nature of screened life while revealing how screens are reading life back to us in new ways. Lucidly written and cleverly theorized, the book is vital for anyone interested in contemporary media culture." - Lisa Parks

"Nanna Verhoeff has produced a fascinating examination of mobilities, screens and their many intersections in the digital age. Well worth reading." - John Urry

A first comprehensive historical survey of the evolvement of video art in Hong Kong and problems involved in writing such histories. The piece is my test of Stiegler’s general organology, which I adopts as the framework for description and analysis. This essay asks what is “video” in video art and what makes video “art,” which most existing local literature fails to answer. My analysis asserts the proliferating relations video has had with cinema, contemporary art, visual historiography and social activism in HK. Following a diagnostic analysis of HK video art in four modes, I point out the ellipsis in such an account: the lack of knowledge of the technical dimensions of the history of practice, such as the types of video-recorders, the technical affordance the television history highlighted and suppressed in existing histories, critics’ own fear for technical understanding and so on reduce the story of local video art often to a sub-history of cinema only. I highlight the importance of cinema to the understanding of video art in Hong Kong, and the problem of such an orientation. I also affirm the place momentary personal calling and survival tactics have in the evolvement of (video) art.

Imaginary media are machines that mediate impossible desires. As such they can be considered impossible machines. Because of their impossibility they appear to belong to the domain of pataphysics, the realm of imaginary solutions, or the study of unlogic. ey would seem to be entirely ctional creations, objects that exist only as literary or folkloristic imaginaries. If this were so, then it would be most straightforward to deal with imaginary media as purely narrative devices. ey would then in simplest terms be regarded as stories that convey what technological media are seen to be capable of. More o en than not, the expectations contained in such imaginaries far exceed that what actual media machines are actually capable of doing. However, impossible desires are also ascribed to or projected onto actual media machines both by their designers and by the public. e transition between imaginary and actual media machines, in terms of their signi cation, can be almost seamless. us the imaginaries of imaginary media tend to weave in and out of the purely imagined and the actually realized media machineries. Because impossible desires can never be fully realized or satis ed, imaginary media exceed the domain of apparatuses (realized media machines) and their "histories." ey articulate a highly complex eld of signi cation and determination that tends to blur the boundaries between technological imagi-naries and actual technological development. e archaeology of imaginary media is an attempt to shi attention somewhat away from a history of the apparatus and to focus on the imaginaries around technological media-communication media in particular-of both realized and unrealized media machines. e archaeology of imaginary media also suggests a shi away from the utilitarian and toward the phantasmatic in "excavating"

O ensaio propõe uma revisão historiográfica do cinema brasileiro a partir dos roteiros não filmados. Seguindo uma análise de roteiros não filmados de Mário Peixoto, Vítor Lima Barreto e Joaquim Pedro de Andrade, sugere-se captar estilos, projetos e intenções estéticas que anunciaram aspectos históricos não consolidados nos ciclos cinematográficos compreendidos por esses diretores. Os roteiros não filmados são analisados a partir de uma metodologia de uma arqueologia especulativa. Seja no cinema dos anos vinte, no projeto da Vera Cruz ou ainda nas relações entre o Cinema Novo e a Embrafilme, esse conjunto de roteiros revela imaginários estéticos potentes que nos permitem vislumbrar aspectos contracíclicos dos períodos cinematográficos que dialogaram e prenunciaram.

Between 1909 and 1914, Europe saw a wave of multi-media performances that featured three-dimensional cinematic images in color with synchronized sound on a physical stage. These shows, with fantastical names like Alabastra and Kinoplastikon, were essentially cinematic adaptations of the Pepper’s Ghost illusion, the very same technique that facilitated Tupac Shakur’s spectacular resurrection at the Coachella Music Festival in 2012. Set on a seemingly regular stage, Alabastra, Kinoplastikon et al. evoked the presence of live performers in the “here and now.” Far more radically than other types of 3-D cinema, these shows sought to obliterate the inherent separation between moving image and spectator, simultaneously negating the apparatus and calling attention to its technological marvels.

In principio, e poi per lunghi anni, la televisione è stata una “scatola nera”. Un’entità monolitica, priva di gradi e di articolazioni interne, quasi con una volontà propria, univoca e distinta: la Rai-tv che parla a una sola voce, la televisione che porta il mondo in ogni casa ed è capace di influenzare il suo pubblico.
Eppure, fin dai primi passi del nuovo medium, a vedere meglio emergono scelte, orientamenti, progetti, colpe e meriti: la tv è una struttura plurale, spesso al centro di scontri anche duri (che, una volta passato l’incanto, occupano pagine e pagine di giornali), costituita da dirigenti e da autori, da registi e da creativi, da tanti addetti ai lavori con competenze, obiettivi, talvolta persino visioni del mondo diverse.
Una storia della tv italiana deve così necessariamente tenere conto della varietà di quelle che si possono definire “culture della produzione” : delle diverse articolazioni del “mestiere” televisivo, dei soggetti in gioco e dei processi produttivi che compongono l’industria tv, dei passaggi che – spesso persino più del valore intrinseco dei singoli testi o delle scelte del pubblico – finiscono per incidere su quello che davvero va in onda in televisione, anno dopo anno e stagione dopo stagione.
Si tratta di una prospettiva difficile, inevitabilmente frammentaria, che si poggia su una documentazione scarsa e su molte testimonianze in prima persona inevitabilmente colme di imprecisioni e omissioni, ma che può offrire uno sguardo (almeno parzialmente) inedito sulla progressiva costruzione del mezzo tv in sé e insieme di un set di professionalità – spesso diversissime tra loro – utili a gestirlo al meglio.
Rileggendo le vicende della televisione in Italia alla luce del “fattore produttivo” , emerge un percorso spesso nascosto e carsico, lontano dall’attenzione dei media, fatto di sviluppo di ruoli e competenze, di attenzione a fenomeni prima trascurati, di controllo dell’inevitabile variabilità di un’industria culturale, di tentativi falliti, di snodi cruciali e di progressivo ampliamento della materia tv. Si viene così a stabilire, attraverso numerosi passaggi critici caratterizzati da personaggi, visioni e competenze forti, una sorta di percorso incrementale, un accumulo di elementi-chiave: in alcuni momenti al centro della scena ci sono necessità nuove, ma al tempo stesso tutto ciò che è già emerso e assestato, sia pur in modalità e forme che si possono ri-articolare, continua a mantenere un ruolo importante. [...]

indice: Gli archivi del futuro / L’angolo cieco delle scienze umane / L’altra Brighton
/ La scuola bolognese di restauro e l'archeologia dei media / Per concludere: il Prometeo ritrovato.
L'obiettivo di questa postfazione, in un momento cruciale per la traduzione
e innesto delle teorie media-archeologiche in Italia, è di guardare
ai media tecnici come angolo cieco persistente delle (nostre) scienze
umane, laddove, come ci ricorda Ernst, «l’a priori storico delle scienze
umane è allo stesso tempo l’a priori fisiologico dei media tecnici»
(Ernst, 2013,). Nello specifico, vuole quindi soffermarsi sulla
relazione tra condizioni tecno-culturali di conoscibilità e conoscenza
storica, tra storiografia del cinema e dei media, pratiche d’archivio e
media tecnici.

Artist's book centered around the destroyed amplifier of a former West German protest radio station. With photographs by Sandy Volz, drawings by Michael Fesca, and interviews and conversations with Bernd Lüke, Curator at the Museum of Technology Berlin, among others.