Guest talk on media archaeology by Wolfgang Ernst

ArcDigital guest talk:
November 18, Wednesday at 5 pm
Professor Wolfgang Ernst (Humboldt University, Berlin)

will give a talk on "Media Archaeology - Method and Machine"

At Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, East Road, Room: Helmore 302.

Media archaeology is both a research method in media studies, and an aesthetics in media arts. Furthermore it is a non-human procedure as well. Media archaeology does not look at media on the level of their surface effect on humans (interfaces), but rather (in a vaguely Heideggerian sense) tries to uncover the hidden agenda of technomathematical artefacts, or better: artefactuality. Media archaeology is concerned with media not only on their structural but on their operative level.

The talk intends to deal with this neologism in several perspectives:

a) Media archaeology as method (referring, among other aspects, to Foucault's archaeology of discourse)
b) Media archaeology in its metaphorical sense ("the archaeological dig")
c) Media archaeology as a critique of narrative media history
d) Media archaeology of sound and vision with media themselves as agencies of knowledge (therefore the subtitle "method and machine").

Wolfgang Ernst is professor of media theories at Humboldt-University, Berlin. Studied history, classics, and archaeology; Ph.D. thesis 1989 on historicism and museology. Teaching experience and guest professorships in culture and media studies at several universities (Leipzig, Cologne, Weimar, Bochum, Paderborn, Berlin). Publications include: M.edium F.oucault, Weimar 2000; Das Rumoren der Archive, Berlin 2002; Im Namen von Geschichte, Munich 2003; Das Gesetz des Gedächtnisses, Berlin 2007. Current research fields: time-based and time-critical media; the "sonic" dimension of techno-mathematics.

The talk is part of ArcDigital guest lectures with leading international media theorists and practitioners sharing their ideas of recent waves in media and cultural studies, creative practice and innovative perspectives to digital culture.

The event is sponsored by the Cultures of Digital Economy institute at Anglia Ruskin University.

More info on ArcDigital: http://www.anglia.ac.uk/arcdigital

Contact: jussi.parikka@anglia.ac.uk