Performing Presence
Our project to investigate “presence” in live performance and media draws to a close with a final conference – March 25-30 Exeter University UK – summing up a tremendous five years of work … [Link] Link – Presence – the conference Next comes a book from Routledge – “Archaeologies of Presence” – due out in [...]
ghosts in the mirror 1
Spent a family Thanksgiving up in Boonville, Anderson Valley with Sam and Angela Schillace. As ever, the locality is, for me, one of few fragile traces of somewhat indeterminate and agricultural pasts, juxtaposed with major investment in business futures. An old (cultivated) apple tree in the nearby field, railway carriages in the town converted to [...]
Hershman – Strange Culture – Sundance
Stanford Humanities Lab at Sundance Film Festival On Monday 22 January and Wednesday 24 January our experimental facility in the online world Second Life will host the première of Lynn Hershman’s new movie “Strange Culture” as part of the Sundance Film Festival. In 2004 artist and college professor Steve Kurtz was preparing for a [http://www.massmoca.org/ [...]
Found photos
Fascinating website of photographs found undeveloped in old cameras – [Link - westfordcomp.com] Camera c 1947. (Thanks again to Sam (Schillace) for this link.)
Gary Hill’s theatre/archaeology at the Colosseum
Rome Risonanze Oscure Dark Resonances We are at the Colosseum, the Flavian Amphitheatre – me, Nick (Kaye) and Gabriella (Giannachi). It is 10pm. Across the street beneath the temple of Venus we have been looking at flickering images of what look to me like archaeological sediments projected into the foundation arches, behind the protective iron [...]
Tim Webmoor on social software and heritage politics
Great talk last night from Tim Webmoor at our New Media workshop at Stanford. He is working at the fabulous site of Teotihuacan, Mexico, on different attitudes and understandings of the site – local and beyond. Teotihuacan has become emblematic of the Mexican state and Mexican heritage. I posted some comments last year from Meg [...]
The Brick Testament
In the light of my recent posts about creationism [Link], contemporary culture and the science wars [Link] and then the Barbie Doll Bronze Age [Link], Cornelius (Holtorf) has put me on to The Brick Testament. Yes – the Bible in lego bricks … The death of Jacob by The Reverend Brendan Powell Smith
organizing memories – the example of Flickr
For some time I have been promoting collaborative information building and sharing. Philip put me on to Flickr – a photo store and share site. You can upload your pictures from camera phone or computer and organize them, keep them private or share them with others. You can “tag” them or part of an image [...]
landscape messaging – weaving collective stories
Randommedia, the UK based games/web design people, have a fascinating virtual world called Dreamdomain. You design yourself a “drone” – a flying insect, with a “blindwatchmaker” genetic algorithm and then off you go to fly round some very weird landscapes. The dots are messages – text, and video! But you are not at all alone [...]
“Seeing the Past” – archaeology conference at Stanford
I wound up a fine conference at Stanford today – Seeing the Past – Building knowledge of the past through acts of seeing. Congratulations to the organizers – Stacey Camp, Sarah Levin-Richardson and Lela Urquhart. All the papers are on line and available for comment – [Link]. It is a high quality collection and worth [...]
Foresight, design studies, the long term, and archaeology
Last Friday Bill Cockayne (Stanford Humanities Lab Assoc. Director) and I (also in my role as co-Director of Stanford Humanities Lab) were at the local office of DaimlerChrysler – RTNA (Research and Technology North America). In response to their request, we were proposing a project to research the future of car culture, with a focus [...]
archaeography.com
Archaeography – the new archaeology photoblog from Metamedia at Stanford – is up and running. [Link] This is how we describe the project Archaeography is a photoblog that explores the connections between photography and archaeology. This is not some quirky juxtaposition – we are convinced that photography is profoundly archaeological, and that archaeography is about [...]
screen cast – media archaeology from Jon Udell
The heavy metal umlaut Now this entry is going to sound very esoteric to many of you. But please persevere and watch the linked movie. This is about the future of cross-disciplinary collaborative research. In the Metamedia Lab here at Stanford, we make much of the facility of our social software (like the Metamedia pages [...]
archaeology – the “materialities of its discourse” – depressing lecture halls
Mike (Pearson) and I presented a series of performed lectures in the first years of the European Association of Archaeologists annual meetings across Europe – 1991 through 1996. Performed lectures – raising the level of expressive demands upon presenter and audience with intellectual content uncompromised – intermedia presentation dealing in the textures of archaeology and [...]
media archaeology meets theatre/archaeology
Media archaeology – working on the traces of a medium. Theatre/archaeology – the (re)articulation of traces of the past as real-time event. 10×10 / 100 Words and Pictures that Define the Time / by Jonathan J. Harris 10×10 (’ten by ten’) is an interactive exploration of the words and pictures that define the time. The [...]
more fantasy archaeology
– the never-ending search for the Holy Grail … The BBC is reporting what looks like another publicity scam Fascination with the Holy Grail has lasted for centuries, and now the Bletchley Park code-breakers have joined the hunt. But what is it that’s made the grail the definition of something humans are always searching for [...]
dead media project
More media archaeology – not sure why it has taken me so long to come across the Dead Media Project. This is how Bruce Sterling and Richard Kadrey put it in their modest proposal Think of it this way. How long will it be before the much-touted World Wide Web interface is itself a dead [...]
the database imaginary
– another reason for the importance of categories and databases One of my interests is the way we use databases to organise and administer the collections that are at the core of our archaeological lives. (And have played a crucial role in state society since ancient Mesopotamia.) Databases – sounds dull and tedious? Have a [...]
Media trips – digital trash and garbology
A new blog devoted to remix and sampling – Media trips Here’s an entry of theirs from October 20 – Check out the newly posted projects at the recently launched online exhibition Digital Recycling at The Stunned Net Art Open 2004, where one person’s trash is another’s treasure trove: What’s more, you can participate by [...]
Mike Pearson and theatre/archaeology
Mike Pearson, performance artist, was in Stanford this week. We wrote the book Theatre/Archaeology together. He talked to our New Media Workshop about recent work of his, and then to the Archaeology Center about his research into what really went on in the expeditions to the Antarctic back in the early 1900s. Both were provocative. [...]
Bulgaria’s golden archaeological hopes
BBC item today Bulgaria’s ancient Thracian heritage has been thrust into the spotlight this year with a number of key archaeological discoveries in the so-called “Valley of the Thracian Kings”. The golden treasures are attracting international attention and there is a push to make the Thracian heritage Bulgaria’s trademark abroad in a bid to boost [...]
