Media Archaeology
With Matt Kirschenbaum and Wendy Hui Kyong Chun
March 1st, 2013 – Doors @ 4pm | Event @ 4:30pm
The Great Room
19 University Place
New York, NY 10003
Too often we view “new” media technologies as though they exist outside the longer historical trajectory of technological development. The hype and enthusiasm surrounding the rise of the information society praises each new technology as a brilliant and dramatic innovation, when in fact there is often very little “new” in the “new media.” At the very least that “newness” has a rich historical context for analysis and critique, and at most it is in fact nothing new at all. Media archaeology is both an examination of the new and a focus on the material functionality of these “new” media technologies.
In the past Matthew Kirschenbaum, Associate Professor of English at the University of Maryland, has introduced a new materialist methodology to the study of literature and new media, taking up the forensic imaginary and applying it to the magnetic media on which we store and encode digital information. His new project Track Changes is a literary history of word processing, and investigates the way in which technology has changed the way we write and produce literature.
Wendy Chun, Professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown Univeristy, has written extensively on the function of power and control in new media systems, combining her backgrounds in both Systems Design Engineering and English Literature. Her new book titled Programmed Visions: Software and Memory investigates the concept of “programmability” which functions in a predictive mode to shape and predict future behavior through technology. Yet these same technologies rely on the separation of interface and human engagement from algorithm and technical hardware in order to hide the functionality of technical systems, producing a highly manipulable technology that nonetheless conceals its functionality.
With Matt Kirschenbaum and Wendy Hui Kyong Chun
March 1st, 2013 – Doors @ 4pm | Event @ 4:30pm
The Great Room
19 University Place
New York, NY 10003
Too often we view “new” media technologies as though they exist outside the longer historical trajectory of technological development. The hype and enthusiasm surrounding the rise of the information society praises each new technology as a brilliant and dramatic innovation, when in fact there is often very little “new” in the “new media.” At the very least that “newness” has a rich historical context for analysis and critique, and at most it is in fact nothing new at all. Media archaeology is both an examination of the new and a focus on the material functionality of these “new” media technologies.
In the past Matthew Kirschenbaum, Associate Professor of English at the University of Maryland, has introduced a new materialist methodology to the study of literature and new media, taking up the forensic imaginary and applying it to the magnetic media on which we store and encode digital information. His new project Track Changes is a literary history of word processing, and investigates the way in which technology has changed the way we write and produce literature.
Wendy Chun, Professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown Univeristy, has written extensively on the function of power and control in new media systems, combining her backgrounds in both Systems Design Engineering and English Literature. Her new book titled Programmed Visions: Software and Memory investigates the concept of “programmability” which functions in a predictive mode to shape and predict future behavior through technology. Yet these same technologies rely on the separation of interface and human engagement from algorithm and technical hardware in order to hide the functionality of technical systems, producing a highly manipulable technology that nonetheless conceals its functionality.