The touchscreen belongs to a century-long history of hands-on media practices and touchable art objects. This media-archaeological excavation examines the nature of our sensual involvement with media and invites the reader to think about the touchscreen beyond its technological implications. In six chapters, the book questions and historicizes both aspects of the touchscreen, considering "touch" as a media practice and "screen" as a touchable object.

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the use of experimental approaches to the study of media histories and their cultures. Doing media archaeological experiments, such as historical re-enactments and hands-on simulations with media historical objects, helps us to explore and better understand the workings of past media technologies and their practices of use. By systematically refl ecting on the methodological underpinnings of experimental media archaeology as a relatively new approach in media historical research and teaching, this book aims to serve as a practical handbook for doing media archaeological experiments. Doing Experimental Media Archaeology: Practice is the twin volume to Doing Experimental Media Archaeology: Theory, authored by Andreas Fickers and Annie van den Oever.

A material history of haptics technology that raises new questions about the relationship between touch and media Since the rise of radio and television, we have lived in an era defined increasingly by the electronic circulation of images and sounds. But the flood of new computing technologies known as haptic interfaces—which use electricity, vibration, and force feedback to stimulate the sense of touch—offering an alternative way of mediating and experiencing reality. In Archaeologies of Touch, David Parisi offers the first full history of these increasingly vital technologies, showing how the efforts of scientists and engineers over the past three hundred years have gradually remade and redefined our sense of touch. Through lively analyses of electrical machines, videogames, sex toys, sensory substitution systems, robotics, and human–computer interfaces, Parisi shows how the materiality of touch technologies has been shaped by attempts to transform humans into more efficient processors of information. With haptics becoming ever more central to emerging virtual-reality platforms (immersive bodysuits loaded with touch-stimulating actuators), wearable computers (haptic messaging systems like the Apple Watch’s Taptic Engine), and smartphones (vibrations that emulate the feel of buttons and onscreen objects), Archaeologies of Touch offers a timely and provocative engagement with the long history of touch technology that helps us confront and question the power relations underpinning the project of giving touch its own set of technical media.

“Huhtamo and Parikka, from the first and second generations of media archaeology, have brought together the best writings from almost all of the best authors in the field. Whether we speak of cultural materialism, media art history, new historicism or software studies, the essays compiled here provide not only an anthology of innovative historical case studies, but also a methodology for the future of media studies as material and historical analysis. Media Archaeology is destined to be a key handbook for a new generation of media scholars.” —Sean Cubitt, author of The Cinema Effect "Taken together, this excellent collection of essays by a wide range of scholars and practitioners demonstrates how the emerging field of media archaeology not only excavates the ways in which newer media work to remediate earlier forms and practices but also sketches out how older media help to premediate new ones." —Richard Grusin, author of Premediation: Affect and Mediality after 9/11 “In Media Archaeology, a constellation of interdisciplinary writers explore society’s relationship with the technological imaginary through history, with fascinating essays on influencing machines, Freud as media theorist, interactive games from the 19th century to the present day, just to name a few. As an artist, my mind is set on fire by discussions of the marvelous inventions that never made it to the mainstream, such as optophonic poetry, Christopher Strachey’s 1952 ‘Love letter generator’ for the Manchester Mark II computer, and the ‘Baby talkie.’” —Zoe Beloff, artist and editor of The Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society and Its Circle "A long-awaited synthesis addressing media archaeology in all of its epistemological complexity. With wide-ranging intellectual breath and creative insight, Huhtamo and Parikka bring together an eminent array of international scholars in film and media studies, literary criticism, and history of science in the spirit of making the discourse of the humanities legible to artist-intellectuals. This foundational volume enables a sophisticated understanding of reproducible audiovisual media culture as apparatus, historical form, and avant-garde space of play." —Peter J. Bloom, author of French Colonial Documentary: Mythologies of Humanitarianism "An essential read for everyone interested in the histories of media and art." —Oliver Grau, author of MediaArtHistories "Media archaeology is a wonderful new shadow field. If you are willing to step outside the glow of new media, this book's approaches can shift how you experience the objects and experiences that fill the new everyday of contemporary life. No one captures the beauty of studying new media in the shadow of older media implements and practices better than Erkki Huhtamo, the Finnish writer, curator, and scholar of media technology and design famous for his creative work as a preservationist and an interpreter of pre-cinematic technologies of visual display. He has teamed up here with Jussi Parikka, the Finnish scholar who has brought us an insect theory of media, to give us this long-awaited collection of essays in media archaeology. The surprise of the book is that the essays collectively bring forward a range of approaches to considering archaeological practice, giving us new ways to think about our embodied and subjective orientations to technologies and objects through the lens of the material remnants of practice, rather than offering a narrow definition of the field. The collection moves between computational machines and influencing machines, preservation and imagination, offering a range of ways to live the new everyday of media experience through the imaginary of archaeology." —Lisa Cartwright, co-author of Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture “Where McLuhan’s Understanding Media ends, Media Archaeology actually begins. Refusing the often futile search for the eternal laws of media, Media Archaeology does something more difficult and rare. It literally brings the history of media alive by drawing into presence the enigmatic, heterogeneous, unruly past of the media—its artifacts, machines, imaginaries, tactics, and games. What results is a fabulous cabinet of (media) memories: the imaginary moving with kinetic frenzy, histories of what happens when media collide in the electronic space of the virtual, and stories about those strange interstitial spaces between analogue and digital.” —Arthur Kroker, author of The Will to Technology and the Culture of Nihilism “Rupturing the continuities and established values of traditional media history, this exciting and thought-provoking collection makes a significant contribution to our understanding of media culture, and demonstrates that the presence of the past in present-day media is central to the recognition and re-cognition that media archaeology promotes.” —John Fullerton, editor of Screen Culture: History and Textuality “Here, at last, is a collection of essays that are a critical step to comprehending the history of our impulse to see ourselves in the machines we have made. This could be the beginning of 'Archaeology of Intention.'" —Bernie Lubell, artist “Huhtamo and Parikka’s expertly curated collection is a kaleidoscopic tour of media archaeology, giving us forceful evidence of that unruly domain’s vitality while preserving its wonderful unpredictability. With this essential volume, countless new paths have been opened up for media and cultural historians." —Charles R. Acland, author of Screen Traffic “This brilliant collection of essays provides much needed material and historical grounding for our understanding of new media. At the same time, it animates that ground by recognizing the integral roles that imagination, embodiment, and even productive disturbance play in media historiography. Yet these essays constitute more than a collection of historical case studies; together, they transform the book’s subject into its overall method. Media Archaeology performs media archaeology. Huhtamo and Parikka excavate the intellectual traditions and map the epistemological terrain of media archaeology itself, demonstrating that the field is ripe with possibilities not only for further historical examination, but also for imagining exciting new scholarly and creative futures.” —Shannon Mattern, The New School

Offers key historical and interpretative texts on the development and role of "the screen" in communications and the social sphere.

A novel interpretation of the history and theory of technology from the perspective of toys, play, and play objects. Toy Theory addresses the relationships between toys and technology in two distinct but overlapping ways: first, as underexamined cultural artifacts and behaviors with significant technical attributes and, second, as playful and toylike dimensions of technology at large. Seth Giddings sets out a “toy theory” of technology that emphasizes the speculative, experimental, and noninstrumental in technological paradigms and argues that children’s playthings, rather than being the most ephemeral and inconsequential of technical devices, instead offer analytical and anthropological resources for understanding the materiality and imaginaries of technology over time. After defining toy theory in general and conceptual terms, Giddings examines different types of toys to explore shifting relationships between the microcosmic symbolic or mimetic content, material and technical constitution, and modes of play of toys and toy-related artifacts, on the one hand, and prevailing, macrocosmic, technological paradigms and imaginaries, on the other. Taking a broad historical and genealogical view, Giddings traces contemporary postdigital toy and play culture to precedents from the neolithic through to the Enlightenment to consumer culture from the early nineteenth century to the present day.

This open access peer-reviewed volume was inspired by the UNESCO UNITWIN Network for Underwater Archaeology International Workshop held at Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia in November 2016. Content is based on, but not limited to, the work presented at the workshop which was dedicated to 3D recording and interpretation for maritime archaeology. The volume consists of contributions from leading international experts as well as up-and-coming early career researchers from around the globe. The content of the book includes recording and analysis of maritime archaeology through emerging technologies, including both practical and theoretical contributions. Topics include photogrammetric recording, laser scanning, marine geophysical 3D survey techniques, virtual reality, 3D modelling and reconstruction, data integration and Geographic Information Systems. The principal incentive for this publication is the ongoing rapid shift in the methodologies of maritime archaeology within recent years and a marked increase in the use of 3D and digital approaches. This convergence of digital technologies such as underwater photography and photogrammetry, 3D sonar, 3D virtual reality, and 3D printing has highlighted a pressing need for these new methodologies to be considered together, both in terms of defining the state-of-the-art and for consideration of future directions. As a scholarly publication, the audience for the book includes students and researchers, as well as professionals working in various aspects of archaeology, heritage management, education, museums, and public policy. It will be of special interest to those working in the field of coastal cultural resource management and underwater archaeology but will also be of broader interest to anyone interested in archaeology and to those in other disciplines who are now engaging with 3D recording and visualization.

Information visualization is a rapidly growing field that is emerging from research in human-computer interaction, computer science, graphics, visual design, psychology, and business methods. Information visualization is increasingly applied as a critical component in scientific research, digital libraries, data mining, financial data analysis, market studies, manufacturing production control, and drug discovery.

Common boundaries between the physical reality and rising digital media technologies are fading. The age of hyper-reality becomes an age of hyper-aesthetics. Immersive media and image technologies – like augmented reality – enable a completely novel form of interaction and corporeal relation to and with the virtual image structures and the different screen technologies. »Augmented Images« contributes to the wide range of the hyper-aesthetic image discourse to connect the concept of dynamic augmented images with the approaches in modern media theory, philosophy, perceptual theory, aesthetics, computer graphics and art theory as well as the complex range of image science. This volume monitors and discusses the relation of images and technological evolution in the context of augmented reality within the perspective of an autonomous image science.

Tracing the genealogy of our physical interaction with mobile devices back to textile and needlecraft culture. For many of our interactions with digital media, we do not sit at a keyboard but hold a mobile device in our hands. We turn and tilt and stroke and tap, and through these physical interactions with an object we make things: images, links, sites, networks. In The Fabric of Interface, Stephen Monteiro argues that our everyday digital practice has taken on traits common to textile and needlecraft culture. Our smart phones and tablets use some of the same skills—manual dexterity, pattern making, and linking—required by the handloom, the needlepoint hoop, and the lap-sized quilting frame. Monteiro goes on to argue that the capacity of textile metaphors to describe computing (weaving code, threaded discussions, zipped files, software patches, switch fabrics) represents deeper connections between digital communication and what has been called “homecraft” or “women's work.” Connecting networked media to practices that seem alien to media technologies, Monteiro identifies handicraft and textile techniques in the production of software and hardware, and cites the punched cards that were read by a loom's rods as a primitive form of computer memory; examines textual and visual discourses that position the digital image as a malleable fabric across its production, access, and use; compares the digital labor of liking, linking, and tagging to such earlier forms of collective production as quilting bees and piecework; and describes how the convergence of intimacy and handiwork at the screen interface, combined with needlecraft aesthetics, genders networked culture and activities in unexpected ways.