Media Archaeology Approaches, Applications, and Implications [Paperback]

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 todays 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.

Erkki Huhtamois Professor of Design | Media Arts at the University of California, Los Angeles.Jussi Parikkais Reader at Winchester School of Art (University of Southampton, UK) and the author ofDigital Contagions: A Media Archaeology of Computer VirusesandInsect Media: An Archaeology of Animals and Technology.

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 Observers Dilemma: To Touch or Not to Touch
Wanda Sl/