Date: 7 Sept. 2023
Time: 4.00 - 5.00 pm
Location: University of Antwerp city campus, s.R.007 (Rodestraat 14, 2000 Antwerp)
There are many ways of doing media archaeology. One of them is "media archaeology as topos study" or "topos archaeology", an approach the speaker has been developing and applying for 30 years. Topos archaeology traces commonplaces or topoi that migrate within cultures serving ever-new purposes and gaining ever-new meanings. Within media culture, ideas marketed as novelties often prove to be "topoi in disguise." Hundreds of years old motifs travel in the deep structures of culture, surfacing over and over again. They provide material for cultural agents who apply them either consciously or unconsciously.
This lecture demonstrates why topos archaeology matters not only for media-historical scholarship but also for investigations of contemporary digital culture. The talk is a kind of preview of the author's forthcoming book, Fairy Engine: Media Archaeology as Topos Study.
About Erkki Huhtamo
Erkki Huhtamo is Professor of Design Media Arts, and Film, Television, and Digital Media at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). He is internationally known as a founding figure of media archaeology. He is also a major collector of items related to the early history of visual media. Professor Huhtamo has lectured worldwide, curated exhibitions, directed television programmes, and published widely in over ten languages. His most important book to date is Illusions in Motion: Media Archaeology of the Moving Panorama and Related Spectacles (The MIT Press, 2013). The Fairy Engine: Media Archaeology as Topos Study is forthcoming.