Media archaeology

Institutes

• Media Archaeological Fundus of Humboldt University, Berlin, founded in c2003. Collection supervisor: Wolfgang Ernst, curator: Ines Liszko.
• IMA Institute of Media Archeology, Hainburg, founded in 2005. Head: Elisabeth Schimana.
• Media Archaeology Lab, Boulder, Colorado, founded in 2009. Director: Lori Emerson.
• Preservation & Art – Media Archaeology Lab (PAMAL), Ecole Supérieure d’Art d’Avignon, founded 2014. Head: Emmanuel Guez.

Educational programs

• Medienkultur, Fakultät Medien, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar

Courses

• Languages, Text, and Technology, course by Roger Whitson, Washington State U, Fall 2017.
• Media Archaeology course (with Dead Media Archive wiki), Dept of Media, Culture, and Communication, NYU, led by Alexander R. Galloway, Spring (syllabus) and Fall 2010.
• Media Technology and Exploration course by Nicole Starosielski, Winter 2011.
• Pojmy z teorie a dějin médií II & Mediální archeologie courses by Lucie Česálková, Masaryk University, Brno, Spring 2012 and Spring 2015.
• Urban Media Archaeology course by Shannon Mattern, Fall 2012.
• Gebhard Sengmüller's lectures on media archaeology, UFG Linz.
• Medienarchäologie seminar by Claus Pias, Leuphana, 2012/2013.
• Media Archaeology and Media Poetics course by Lori Emerson, U Colorado, Boulder, Spring 2014.

Events

• Excavating the Future - An Archeology and Future of Moving Pictures symposium, Prague, 2-5 December 2001. Initiated by Jaroslav Anděl, collaboration: Miloš Vojtěchovský, Michael de la Fontaine, Michael Bielický.
• An Archaeology of Imaginary Media, mini-festival, De Balie, Amsterdam, 5-8 February 2004. Initiated by Eric Kluitenberg. Publication.
• Variantology: On Deep Time Relations of the Arts, Sciences and Technologies workshops, Cologne/Berlin/Naples, 2005-2011. Initiated by Siegfried Zielinski. Publications.
• Götter und Schriften rund ums Mittelmeer: Symposion in memoriam Friedrich Kittler, ZKM Karlsruhe, 19-20 October 2012.
• Network Archaeology conference, Miami University, 19-21 April 2012. Convened by Cris Cheek and Nicole Starosielski. Publication.
• Forum on the Genealogy of MediaThinking, University of the Arts Berlin, October 2012-June 2013. Facilitated by Siegfried Zielinski.
• Lichtklangphonogramm exhibition, Ethnological Museum in Berlin, 13 March-26 May 2013.
• Only Connect Festival of Sound: Machine Dreams, Oslo, 5-8 June 2013.
• Media Archaeology & Technological Debris, postgraduate workshop and conference, Goldsmiths, University of London, 20-21 June 2013. Organised by Stefania Charitou, Gabriel Menotti, and Corey Kai Nelson Schultz.
• Media Archeologies Institute lecture series, Film, Video, New Media, Animation department, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, October-November 2013. [1]

Artists, Theorists

• Zoe Beloff
• John M. Bowers
• Lucie Česálková
• Paul DeMarinis
• Bernhard Dotzler
• Timothy Druckrey
• Tomáš Dvořák
• Lori Emerson
• Wolfgang Ernst
• Lisa Gitelman
• Michael Goddard
• Erkki Huhtamo
• Alexandra Hui
• Francis Hunger
• IMA Institute of Media Archeology
• Gunnar Iversen
• Jonathan Kemp
• Friedrich Kittler
• Aleksander Kolkowski
• Markus Krajewski
• Julia Kursell
• Petra Löffler
• Patrik Lundell
• Irene Lusztig
• Thor Magnusson
• Bonnie Mak
• Shannon Mattern
• Media Archaeology Lab
• Shintaro Miyazaki
• Alberto Novello
• Jussi Parikka
• Lisa Parks
• Miklós Peternák
• Claus Pias
• Georgii Pocheptsov
• Joost Rekveld
• Axel Roch
• Wolfgang Schäffner
• Gebhard Sengmüller
• Bernhard Siegert
• Pelle Snickars
• Nicole Starosielski
• Jonathan Sterne
• Kateřina Svatoňová
• Tjebbe van Tijen
• John Tresch
• Pasi Väliaho
• Cornelia Vismann
• Thomas Weynants
• Siegfried Zielinski

Bibliography

Monographs

Friedrich Kittler, Discourse Networks 1800 / 1900, [1985] 1990, PDF.

Friedrich Kittler, Gramophone Film Typewriter, [1986] 1999, PDF.

Siegfried Zielinski, Audiovisions: Cinema and Television as Entr’actes in History, [1989] 1999, PDF.

Lisa Gitelman, Scripts, Grooves, and Writing Machines: Representing Technology in the Edison Era, 1999, PDF.

Cornelia Vismann, Files: Law and Media Technology, [2000] 2008, Log.

Lisa Gitelman, Geoffrey B. Pingree (eds.): New Media, 1740-1915, 2003, PDF.

Erkki Huhtamo, Jussi Parikka (eds.), Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications, and Implications, 2011, Log.

• Jacques Perriault, Mémoires de l’ombre et du son. Une archéologie de l’audiovisuel, Paris: Flammarion, 1981. (French)
• Friedrich A. Kittler, Aufschreibesysteme 1800/1900, Munich: Fink, 1985; 2nd ed., 1987. Reviews: Futterknecht, Holub, Sebastian. (German)
  • translations
• Friedrich A. Kittler, Grammophon Film Typewriter, Berlin: Brinkmann & Bose, 1986, 427 pp. (German)
  • translations
• Siegfried Zielinski, Zur Geschichte des Videorecorders, Berlin: Wissenschaftsverlag Spiess, 1986, 408 pp; new ed., Potsdam: Polzer Media Group, 2010. (German)
• Carolyn Marvin, When Old Technologies Were New: Thinking About Electric Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.
• Siegfried Zielinski, Audiovisionen: Kino und Fernsehen als Zwischenspiele in der Geschichte, Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1989. (German)
  • translations
• Peter Klier, Jean-Luc Evard (eds.), Mediendämmerung: Zur Archäologie der Medien, Berlin: Tiamat, 1989, 153 pp. (German)
• Lynn Spigel, Make Room for TV: Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar America, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
• Bernhard Siegert, Relais: Geschicke der Literatur als Epoche der Post, 1751-1913, Berlin: Brinkmann & Bose, 1993. (German)
  • Relays: Literature as an Epoch of the Postal System, trans. Kevin Repp, Stanford University Press, 1999, 340 pp.
• Ellen Lupton, Mechanical Brides: Women and Machines from Home to Office, Princeton Architectural Press, 1993.
• Lisa Cartwright, Screening The Body: Tracing Medicine's Visual Culture, University of Minnesota Press, 1995.
• Terry Castle, The Female Thermometer: Eighteenth-Century Culture and the Invention of the Uncanny, Oxford University Press, 1995.
• Stephen Herbert, Luke McKernan (eds.), Who's Who of Victorian Cinema: A Worldwide Survey, London: British Film Institute, 1996. Online version.
• Rachel P. Maines, The Technology of Orgasm: "Hysteria," the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999.
• Lisa Gitelman, Scripts, Grooves, and Writing Machines: Representing Technology in the Edison Era, Stanford University Press, 1999, 282 pp. [2]
• Cornelia Vismann, Akten. Medientechnik und Recht, Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2000. (German)
  • Files: Law and Media Technology, Stanford University Press, 2008.
• Donald F McLean, Restoring Baird's Image, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 2000, 295 pp. [3]
• Jeffrey Sconce, Haunted Media: Electronic Presence from Telegraphy to Television, Duke University Press, 2000, 272 pp. Chapter 1, Extract (pp 110-118).
• Stephen Graham, Simon Marvin (eds.), Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities and the Urban Condition, New York: Routledge, 2001.
• Markus Krajewski, ZettelWirtschaft, Berlin: Kulturverlag Kadmos, 2002. (German) Review, Review.
  • Paper Machines: About Cards & Catalogs, 1548-1929, MIT Press, 2011.
• Giuliana Bruno, Atlas of Emotion: Journeys in Art, Architecture, and Film, Verso, 2002. Chapter 1, Chapter 2.
• P.J.H. Kockelkoren, Technology: Art, Fairground and Theatre, Rotterdam: NAI Publishers, 111 pp.
  • Techniek: Kunst, Kermis en Theater, Rotterdam: NAI Publishers, 2003, 111 pp. (Dutch) [4]
• Friedrich Kittler, Optische Medien / Berliner Vorlesung 1999, Berlin: Merve, 2002.
  • Optical Media. Berlin Lectures 1999, trans. Anthony Enns, Polity, 2009.
• Siegfried Zielinski, Archäologie der Medien: Zur Tiefenzeit des technischen Hörens und Sehens, Reinbek: Rowohlt Taschenbuch, 2002. Contents, Introduction. (German)
  • Deep Time of the Media: Toward an Archaeology of Hearing and Seeing by Technical Means, intro. Timothy Druckrey, trans. Gloria Custance, MIT Press, 2006.
• Lisa Gitelman, Geoffrey B. Pingree (eds.), New Media, 1740-1915, MIT Press, 2003.
• Wolfgang Ernst, Medienwissen(schaft), zeitkritisch. Ein Programm aus der Sophienstraße. Antrittsvorlesung v. 21. Oktober 2003, Berlin: Humboldt University, 2004, 31 pp. (German)
• Wolfgang Lefèvre (ed.), Picturing Machines 1400-1700, MIT Press, 2004.
• Bernard Finn (ed.), Presenting Pictures, Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, 2004. [5] [6]
• Lisa Parks, Cultures in Orbit: Satellites and the Televisual, Durham: Duke University Press, 2005.
• Siegfried Zielinski, Silvia M. Wagnermaier (eds.), Variantology – On Deep Time Relations Of Arts, Sciences and Technologies, Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung König, 2005.
• Charles R. Acland (ed.), Residual Media, University of Minnesota Press, 2006. Chapter 2.
• Laurent Mannoni, Werner Nekes, Marina Warner, Eyes, Lies and Illusions: Drawn from the Werner Nekes Collection, ACMI, 2006. [7]
• Pierre Levie, Montreurs et Vues d' Optique, Editions Sofidoc, 2006. (French)
• Timothy C. Campbell, Wireless Writing in the Age of Marconi, University of Minnesota Press, 2006.
• Lisa Gitelman, Always Already New: Media, History, and the Data of Culture, MIT Press, 2006.
• Bernhard J. Dotzler, Diskurs und Medium. Zur Archäologie der Computerkultur, Munich: Fink, 2006, 233 pp. (German)
• Siegfried Zielinski, David Link (eds.), Variantology 2 – On Deep Time Relations Of Arts, Sciences and Technologies, Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung König, 2006.
• James Lyons, John Plunkett, Multimedia Histories: From Magic Lanterns to Internet, University of Exeter Press, 2007. [8]
• Eric Kluitenberg (ed.), Book of Imaginary Media: Excavating the Dream of the Ultimate Communication Medium, Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, with Amsterdam: De Balie, 2007, 292 pp. With DVD. Chapters by Eric Kluitenberg and Erkki Huhtamo. [9]
  • Imagināro mediju grāmata. Vispatiesākā komunikācijas medija sapņa meklējumos, trans. Daina Siliņa, Riga: RIXC, 2011, 280 pp. (Latvian) Preview. [10]
• Wolfgang Ernst, Das Gesetz des Gedächtnisses: Medien und Archive am Ende (des 20. Jahrhunderts), Berlin: Kulturverlag Kadmos, 2007. (German) Contents. Review.
• Jussi Parikka, Digital Contagions: A Media Archeology of Computer Viruses, New York: Peter Lang, 2007. Conclusions. [11]
• José Roca, Phantasmagoria - Specters of Absence, Independent Curators International, 2007.
• Chris Funkhouser, Prehistoric Digital Poetry: An Archaeology of Forms, 1959-1995, University of Alabama Press, 2007.
• Siegfried Zielinski, Eckhard Fürus (eds.), Variantology 3 – On Deep Time Relations Of Arts, Sciences and Technologies in China and Elsewhere, Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung König, 2008.
• Nike Bätzner, Werner Nekes, Eva Schmidt (eds.), Blickmaschinen, oder wie Bilder entstehen, DuMont, 2008. Catalogue. (German) [12]
• Marina Warner, Phantasmagoria - Spirit Visions, Metaphors, and Media, Oxford University Press, 2008. [13]
• Lynda Nead, The Haunted Gallery: Painting, Photography and Film around 1900, Yale University Press, 2008. [14]
• Deac Rossel, Laterna Magica - Magic Lantern Vol I, Füsslin, 2008. (German)/(English) [15]
• Dieter Daniels, Barbara U. Schmidt (eds.), Artists as Inventors-Inventors as Artists, Hatje Cantz, 2008, 240 pp.
• Ovidiu Tichindeleanu, The Graphic Sound. An Archeology of Sound, Technology and Knowledge at 1900, ProQuest, 2008, 555 pp.
• Kazys Varnelis (ed.), The Infrastructural City: Networked Ecologies in LA, New York: Actar, The Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design, and The Network Architecture Lab at Columbia University, 2009. Contents.
• Dominique Willoughby, Le Cinéma graphique: Une histoire des dessins animés, des jouets d’optique au cinéma numérique, Les editions textuel, 2009. (French) [16]
• Solveig Jülich, Patrik Lundell, Pelle Snickars (eds.), Mediernas kulturhistoria, Stockholm: Mediehistoriskt arkiv, 2009. (Swedish) [17]
• Anders Ekström, Solveig Jülich, Pelle Snickars (eds.), 1897 – Mediehistorier kring Stockholmsutställningen, Stockholm: Mediehistoriskt arkiv, 2009. (Swedish) [18]
• Jonas Harvard, Patrik Lundell (eds.), 1800-talets mediesystem, Stockholm: Mediehistoriskt arkiv, 2010. (Swedish) [19]
• Lars Björk, Jānis Krēsliņš och Matts Lindström (eds.), The Story of Storage I. Kompendium, Stockholm: Mediehistoriskt arkiv, 2010. (Swedish) [20]
• Siegfried Zielinski, Eckhard Fürus (eds.), Variantology 4 – On Deep Time Relations of Arts, Sciences and Technologies in the Arabic-Islamic World and Beyond, Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2010.
• Peter Morris, Klaus Staubermann (eds.), Illuminating Instruments, Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, 2010. [21] [22]
• Jussi Parikka, Insect Media: An Archaeology of Animals and Technology, University of Minnesota Press, 2010.
• Pasi Väliaho, Mapping the Moving Image: Gesture, Thought and Cinema Circa 1900, Amsterdam University Press, 2010.
• Erkki Huhtamo, Jussi Parikka (eds.), Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications, and Implications, University of California Press, 2011. [23]
• Paul DeMarinis, Buried in Noise, Kehrer, 2011. (German)/(English) [24]
• Siegfried Zielinski, Eckhard Fürus (eds.), Variantology 5: Neapolitan Affairs, Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung König, 2011.
• Florian Cramer, Exe.cut(up)able statements: Poetische Kalküle und Phantasmen des selbstausführenden Texts, Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2011. (German)
• Johan Jarlbrink, Patrik Lundell (eds.), Från pressarkivet 1800-1899. En källsamling, Stockholm: Mediehistoriskt arkiv, 2012. (Swedish) [25]
• Alexandra Hui, The Psychophysical Ear: Musical Experiments, Experimental Sounds, 1840-1910, The MIT Press, 2012. [26]
• Jussi Parikka, What is Media Archaeology?, Polity, 2012.
  • Medya Arkeolojisi Nedir, 2017. (Turkish)
• John Tresch, The Romantic Machine: Utopian Science and Technology after Napoleon, University of Chicago Press, 2012. [27]
• Jonathan Sterne, MP3: The Meaning of a Format, Duke University Press, 2012.
• Roger Whitson, Steampunk and Nineteenth-Century Digital Humanities: Literary Retrofuturisms, Media Archaeologies, Alternate Histories, Routledge, 2017.
• Karla Jasso, Daniel Garza Usabiaga (eds.): (Ready) Media: Hacia una arqueología de los medios y la invención en México, Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura, 2012, 519 pp. (Spanish)
• Wolfgang Ernst, Digital Memory and the Archive, University of Minnesota Press, 2012.
• Wolfgang Ernst, Chronopoetik. Zeitweisen und Zeitgaben technischer Medien, Berlin: Kadmos, 2013, 428 pp. ISBN 3865991432. TOC, [28]. Review: Powell (2014, EN).
• Shintaro Miyazaki, Algorhythmisiert: Eine Medienarchäologie digitaler Signale und (un)erhörter Zeiteffekte, Kulturverlag Kadmos, 2013, 281 pp. Introduction. (German) [29]
• Frode Weium, Tim Boon (eds.), Material Culture and Electronic Sound, Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, 2013, 312 pp. [30]
• Erkki Huhtamo, Illusions In Motion: Media Archaeology of the Moving Panorama and Related Spectacles, MIT Press, 2013. [31]
• Karla Jasso, Arte-tecnología. Arqueología, dialéctica, mediación, México D.F.: self-published, 2013, 329 pp. (Spanish)
• Lisa Gitelman, Paper Knowledge: Toward a Media History of Documents, Durham: Duke University Press, 2014, 210 pp.
• Marie Cronqvist, Patrik Lundell, Pelle Snickars (eds.), Återkopplingar, Lund University, 2014, 416 pp. (Swedish)
• Thomas Elsaesser, Film History as Media Archaeology: Tracking Digital Cinema, Amsterdam University Press, 2016, 414 pp. Collected essays. Epilogue. [32]
• Liam Cole Young List Cultures: Knowledge and Poetics from Mesopotamia to BuzzFeed. Amsterdam University Press, 2017. Introduction + TOC
• Thor Magnusson, Sonic Writing: Technologies of Material, Symbolic, and Signal Inscriptions, New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019, xiv+290 pp. Book website. [33]
• Publications on media archaeology at Monoskop Log

Journal issues and Special sections

• Grey Room, No. 43 (Spring 2011), Special issue: "Audio/Visual". [34]
• Amodern, No. 2 (2013), Special Issue: "Network Archaeology".

Book chapters, Papers, Articles

• Erkki Huhtamo, "From Kaleidoscomaniac to Cybernerd: Towards an Archeology of the Media", Leonardo, 3, 1997, pp 221-224.
• Wolfgang Ernst, "Medienarchäologie. Eine Provokation der Kommunikationsgeschichte", in Habbo Knoch, Daniel Morat (eds.), Kommunikation als Beobachtung. Medienwandel und Gesellschaftsbilder 1880–1960, Munich: Fink 2003, pp 37–56. (German)
• Thomas Elsaesser, "The New Film History as Media Archaeology", Cinémas, Vol. 14, No. 2-3, 2004, pp 75-117.
• Wolfgang Ernst, "Let There Be Irony: Cultural History and Media Archaeology in Parallel Lines", Art History 28, November 2005, pp 582-603.
• Shannon Mattern, "From Post Offices to Radiograms: Local Primary Resources on Urban Media History", Words In Space blog, 20 July 2010.
• Garnet Hertz, Jussi Parikka, "Zombie Media: Circuit Bending Media Archaeology into an Art Method", Leonardo, 2012.
• Roger Whitson, "The Difference Engine: 1832, 1855, 1876, 1991, 2002, 2008″, "BRANCH: Britain, Representation, and Nineteenth-Century History", 2017.
• Shannon Mattern, "Infrastructural Tourism", Words in Space blog, 20 July 2012.
• Petra Löffler, "Towards a new media archaeology? A report on some books and tendencies", NECSUS / European Journal of Media Studies 1 (Spring 2012).
• Bonnie Mak, "Archaeology of a Digitization", Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 2013.
• Sanne Krogh Groth, "Provoking, disturbing, hacking: Media archaeology as a framework to the understanding of contemporary DIY composers’ instruments and ideas", Organised Sound 18:3 (December 2013), pp 266-273. [35] [36]
• Morten Riis, "The Media Archaeological Repairman", Organised Sound 18:3 (December 2013), pp 255-265. [37]
• Georgii Pocheptsov (Георгий Почепцов), "Lozh Odisseya, kotoruyu otkryla novaya nauka media-archeologiya. Vvedenie v novuyu nauku: vlast obrazov nad syuzhetami" [Ложь Одиссея, которую открыла новая наука медиа-археология. Введение в новую науку: власть образов над сюжетами], Gefter, 11 Mar 2015. (Russian)
• Jacob Gaboury, "The Random-Access Image: Memory and the History of the Computer Screen", Grey Room 70, Winter 2018, pp 24-53.
• more, more

Theses

• Jentery Sayers, How Text Lost Its Source: Magnetic Recording Cultures, University of Washington, 2011. [38]
• Kristoffer Gansing, Transversal Media Practices: Media Archaeology, Art and Technological Development, Malmö: Malmö University, 2013. PhD dissertation.

Primary references

• Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, 1969–.

Research, Resources

• Bundled, Buried & Behind Closed Doors, documentary film by Ben Mendelsohn and Alex Chohlas-Wood, 2011.
• Early Visual Media, A Historical Window to Early Vintage Visual Media Archaeology, maintained by Thomas Weynants.
• First Sounds, an initiative founded by Patrick Feaster, David Giovannoni, Richard Martin, and Meagan Hennessey.
• The Cylinder Archive, cylinder phonograph recordings. Maintained by Norman Bruderhofer.
• René Rondeau's Antique Phonograph, Fan, and Photography Site
• Media Archaeology of Place, a project initiated by a collaborative course at Harvard University, Fall 2010.
• Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities' Vintage Computers, dir. Matthew Kirschenbaum.
• Institute for Algorhythmics, an ongoing research project investigating the algorhythmic structures in contemporary culture. Started in 2008 by Shintaro Miyazaki.
• Gebhard Sengmüller's links collection
• Renesys presentations and reports

See also

• Cultural techniques