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35 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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Sterling
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Media palaeontology
Criticizes Whig theory of history, talks about media resurfacing and the forced obsolescence of digital media that doesn't actually aim to be better than old. We give symbols their own meaning and they mean different things to different people Signs = less arbitrary (stop signs, numbers)Writing = sign systems, marked the division from pre-history into history Memetic aids = ways to remember stories in order to recall which were copious, redundant and formulaic |
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Durham Peters
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Tracks the history of the photograph, telegraph and phonograph (separators of senses)Telegraph - morse code, sent through telephone wiresPhonograph - first record player
Mass media connects across distance and/or time Changes role of audience such that feedback becomes optional or even challenging whereas in a conversation both poeple are constantly communicating back and forth |
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Schmandt-Basserat
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How Writing Came About
Symbols, signs, tallies, tokens, complex tokens, pictograph, writing The rebus principle, cuneiform |
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Ong
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Some Psychodynamics of Orality
Primary orality = the culture hasn’t been introduced to the written word yet, no literacy Secondary orality = mix of literacy and orality , restricted literacy = only upper class is literate, broken down by vernacularization by Martin Luther Power & memory, witnessing |
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Burke & Briggs
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Printing in its Contexts Copyright - Authorship began after the rise of the Gutenberg Press Printing someone’s text was equivalent to burglary Development of legitimization, authority and regulation by the Church/State
Scrotorium Block printing Vernacularisation Clorporteur Moveable type Guttenberg Martin Luther |
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Spiegel
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Portable tv = locations to watch tv in the home changeProgramming becomes more personalized + programming increases in generalAdvertising shifts to target their markets (man of the house, woman, children)The idea of public/private merge
Privatized mobility (Spiegel), mobile privatization (Williams) |
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Peters 2 |
Logistical mediaHelps us understand the world around us. Constitute, intervene and orient.
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Belting
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Image and Death: Embodiment in Early CulturesImages + death
Neolithic Period: symbols, represents a person, images with agency, ritual, funerals, cultsPlatonic: true form and essence is in the body only, against the monument, monument does not have agency, memory is the only way to recreate their memory Ancient Greek: mimetic stand in replica, heroic monuments, honor and idealized dead onesThe image is subjective + culturally drivenThe way we see the world is embedded in our own perspective The world around us can influence our sense perceptionMimetic function = something that stands in for reality (true copy ex: x-ray)Expressive function = art production (subjective)Anthropology of the imageWhat drove humans to create the image? Death compelled us to create images |
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Kemp
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A Perfect and Faithful RecordPhotography: Mimetic vs. Expressive functionDaguerreotype: Louis Daguerre (France) artist and chemist, Daguerreotype = first publicly available photographic process 1840s 1850s, advocates expressive function Pencil of Nature: is a book title, William Henry Fox Talbot, photo = objective, drawing = subjectiveKodak revolution: George Eastman = founder of Kodak, mass production, Kodak Camera, roll fill (1880), access to photo (anyone can be a photographer)Physiognomy: Sir Francis Galton judge character based on physical traits, photo as science/objective, eugenics
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Smith
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HearingSoundscapes: how sounds can situate you through time and spaceThe idea of sound tied in with colonialism: sound as a tool as colonization, Church bell = imposed order, Language = imposed, resistance through African slave songsMedieval Soundscape: classical music, horses, theatre, yelling, cobblestones, water being thrown on the street Victorian Era Soundscape: repressed, prudes, noisy poor people coughing, town criersAccents = connotations of classGenres of music: locates a particular space, period and history Anthem: structures national identity
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Sterne
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Plastic AuralityTechnologies and malleableIdea, invention, application, production, reception New media technologies go through a multitude of changes Morse code made ways for the invention of the telephone Radio : used by amateurs originally until it was taken over by the radio
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Whig Interpretation of History
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Sterling: every technology resolves the problem of the past. History recounts the steady growth of literacy, freedom, creative self expression, enlightenment, knowledge, and democratic participation for both individuals and societies thanks especially to “improvements” in media technologies. Every new media technology resolves the inadequacies or constraints of previous media forms. New media presumed to represent reality better, or more successfully permit info to flow between producers and receivers, thereby improving people’s lives. Importance of residual media→ not obsolete, still in use. Active in our cultural process. Remediation. ex: Lectors in cuban cigar factories. |
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Mass Media
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Peters: distinguished by 3 things: content (what), transmission/distribution (how), producers/consumers + authors/audiences (who). Mass media have distinct way of combining the 3 things: Mass address (geared/aimed to large numbers of people at once, at the many, doesn’t always imply mass delivery), mass delivery (how is it possible to reach large number of people at once, not always at once i.e. pilgrimage, radio broadcast), mass accessibility/reception (even if radio system allows mass delivery, not everyone has/turns on radio so the message doesn’t get to anyone)Aimed at large scale audiences. Expansion of circulation print, cinema, radio, TVImpersonal and unidirectional, standardized practices & products, distant, multiple receivers, synchrony (short time lag between sender and receiver)
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Technological vs. Cultural Determinism:
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Peters: Related to plasticity and critiquing the myth of progress |
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Logistical Media
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Peters: represent and describe time and space (definition of work day); Fundamental way time and space are mediated
Constitute, intervene, orient Ex/ clock, calendar, tower |
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Eastman
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Kemp: inventor of the Kodak. Invented plastic pellicle (film: celluloid roll). Shapes the way we understand image production and interact with photography today. Invents box camera (fits in your hand). Slogan: you press the button, we do the rest. Expansion for amateur photography. “You press the button we do the rest”. Kodak popularized the use of roll film. Allowed the access of photography. Photo to remember. Immortalize the moment.
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Galton
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Kemp: English Victorian polymath, anthropologist, tropical explorer, geographer, inventor, meteorologist, proto-genecist, psychometrician, and statistician. Pioneer in new science of eugenics. Composite photography: depicted criminality, illness and deformity, family resemblances, lunacy. His theory evolved around"survival of the fittest". Pioneer of eugenics explains human differences and body types and inherited intelligence. According to “data” photographic form, statistics. Produce a master race. Related to anthropometry.
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Daguerre
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Kemp: Inventor of the daguerreotype, which produced images of very high clarity with a three dimensional effect. Highly vulnerable to physical damage and scratching. Very expensive to produce. Daguerreotypes became a scientific tool to support eugenics. Advocates for artistic use of photographs, expressive function.
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Talbot |
Kemp: claimed photography as the pencil of nature. Inventor of calotype: made archives of botanical specimens: studied them in a more mechanical way. Argues that photographs are spontaneous, and an objective vision of the way the world is: nature draws the picture/setting. Refers to pencil of nature. Camera can do visual observation/documentation that the human eye cannot. True’ picture of nature untainted by human hands. Sun-pictures themselves. Can be reproduced as many time as one would want. Process cheaper and faster, results nicer and sharper than Daguerreotypes.
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DX Fishing
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Sterne: Hobby of tuning in and identifying distant radio or television signals, or making two way radio contact with distant stations in amateur radio, citizens’ band radio or other two way radio communications. Name of hobby comes from DX, telegraphic shorthand for “distance” or “distant”
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Sonic Purification
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Sterne: Hearing isn’t the same as listening. Hearing = psychological process of reception. Listening = concerted attention, effort to exclude undesirable sounds (noise). Technologies designed to “improve” listening are based on an idea that there can exist “pure” sounds, untainted by noise. Stethoscope (Laennec) helps in the hearing process to diagnose heart and lung conditions. Cleansing of a soundscape (allows historians to trace activities around sound).
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Phonautograph
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Smith: Earliest known device for directly transcribing sound. Created by Frenchman Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville. Could transcribe sound to a visible medium, but had no means to play back the sound after it was recorded. Made speech visible. Originally conceived as a machine that could assist and educate the deaf. It was not a talking machine, but rather a hearing machine (machine that can hear for us). The task of hearing is now delegated from the human to the machine, based on the principle that the tympanic function within the human ear can be faithfully reproduced. The ear phonautograph by Alexander Graham Bell was a device for converting sound into visible traces. Accomplished by rigging up a needle or brush hair to a membrane and allowing the needle or hair to scratch smoked glass as the membrane vibrated. Recording stylus attached to ear. Stylus recorded speech on glass. Direct precursor of the phonograph and the telephone. |
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Menlo park |
Smith: The world’s first research and development (R&D) Laboratory. Projects were undertaken by a lot of people. Patents: legal owners of the idea. Invention is never simply work of isolated manSterne’s model: place where technologies were invented in order to generate funds for even more technologies, everything was patented to monopolize technological development. Edison was a major actor in this research facility.
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Gramophone
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Smith:patented by Berliner to compete with Edison’s phonograph. Adapted to domestic consumption of mass produced vinyl recording. With this, the music industry took off. Was in disk form.
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Bell
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Smith: Telephone patented in 1876. Developed a harmonic telegraphy, hence the invention of telephone. Telephone designed as business machine. Telephone users would make brief, business-like calls. Operators were girls because it was a more amicable voice to hear. Control from the men in the house towards their wives in case they talked on the telephone for too long. The ear phonautograph by Alexander Graham Bell was a device for converting sound into visible traces. The phonautograph is the precursor of the telephone.
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Morse
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Smith Inventor of the telegraph. Co-inventor of the Morse code. It made way to the telephone. Individual to individual. He was also part of the invention of the telegraph.
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Edison
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Smith Inventor of phonograph. Creator of Menlo Park. Kinetograph. Patents. Phonograph: developed as business machine. First recording technology that could playback (but cannot be reproduce it because it uses a tin foil). Invented by Edison – was in cylindrical form. Facilitates the reliable inscription of messages, ultimately to be stored as written documents, promoting localized interests. Edison took all the credit for himself.Émile Berliner: inventor of the microphone and gramophone. Worked for Bell. Patented the gramophone system to compete with Edison’s phonograph. Gramophone was more easily adapted to domestic consumption.
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Privatized mobility
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(Spiegel) idea that we move through the world bringing personalized media bubbles with us. We have privatized our public experiences. Private=individualized
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Mobile privatization
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(Williams) idea that public life has been brought into the private sphere of life through television & print, reorganizing home life in the process. Private=domestic |
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Anthropometry |
Kemp: "Bertillonage” -The science of measurement of the human individual, developed especially by the French criminologist and eugenicist, Alphonse Bertillon.-Anthropometric measurements were used for identification and also to study human physical variation and comparative possibilities between groups(like criminals)-Followers of Bertillon further attempted to correlate physical with racial and psychological traits -hence the alliance between anthropometry and eugenics-Bertillonage came up with mugshot formula
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Physiognomy
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-An ancient theory based on the idea that by looking at a person’s outside appearance, especially facial features, we can determine the inner trait, personality, and characteristics of that person-In 1671, Charles Le Brun created a series of comparative drawings of human and animal faces depicting the physiognomy theory. He believed that if a human’s face resembled an animal, he or she would have the same character traits of that type of animal. (Example: lion = fierce, goatlike eyes = stupid)-Photography extended this tradition by providing evidence of human facial features and expressions
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Bertillon |
Anthropometry (physical measurements, idea that insides are reflected by outsides |
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Le Brun |
Physiognomy (animals resemblance drawings) |
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Berliner |
Gramophone |
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von Helmholtz
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Studied the physiological mechanics of hearing and developed a key theory about how hearing occursHis theory “upper partials” established that what makes every sound distinct is its particular combination of fundamental tones and harmonic overtones (so it could be reproduced synthetically).No difference between a natural and a synthetic sound
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