ATTENDED LECTURE BY ERKKI HUHTAMO
OPEN FORUM
OSLO NATIONAL ACADEMY OF THE ARTS
20 FEBRUARY 06
Laura Beloff organised a lecture by Erkki Huhtamo in the Academy's Open Forum
sessions.I have found Errki's writings on media arcaeology informative in
relation to my project.
Here's some information about Erkki taken from the forum website:
Huhtamo is a Finnish media researcher, curator and writer currently working in the United States; as a Professor of Media History and Theory at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), Department of Design/Media Arts.
Erkki Huhtamo was born in Helsinki, Finland and received his Masters
of Arts with honours from the University of Turku in 1987. He has lectured
worldwide, published extensively on media archaeology and media art, curated
media art exhibitions and directed television programs about media culture.
He is also known as an avid collector of media archaeological artefacts.
The workshop in Oslo uses media archaeology as a ‘tool’ for understanding
the ways in which media art is related to media culture and media history.
Media archaeology is an emerging approach within the field of media studies.
Although a uniform theory of media-archaeology does not exist, various approaches
have things in common. Media-archaeology "excavates" forgotten,
little known and/or misunderstood media cultural phenomena, thus shedding
light on apparata and phenomena that have been overlooked and/or suppressed
by hegemonic versions of media history.
Media archaeology is not interested in the past for its own sake. Rather,
by taking a detour through the past it sheds light on the present and future
forms of media culture as well. Media archaeology is culturalist: it does
not look for “universals” or unchanging “essences”
of the universe or of the human mind. Neither does it deal with technology
merely from a technical or formal "engineering” point of view.
It claims that technologies emerge and gain meanings in social and cultural
contexts. They cannot be fully understood separated from the cultural discourses
surrounding them.
I MET ERKKI
HUHTAMO
I later met Erkki Huhtamo at Spassi Bar, Oslo, where I introduced him to my
project and presented my website, which he desribed as something of an emotional
journey! Maybe a book can come out of it, he said.
He showed me many images that he thought could be interesting for me, especially
some beautiful Victorian fans that were made as navigational devices - fans
with maps by which women could orientate themselves in art exhibitions, etc.
The discrete language of fan signals, etc. We also talked about Japanese automatica
(including clockwork fan devices). He told me of several sites of interest
regarding my trip to the US including the Museum of Jurassic Technoloy, and
a private collection of colour organs, some of which have been restored and
are in working condition.
LINKS AND REFERENCES:
Resurrecting the Technological Past. An Introduction to the Archeology
of Media Art:
http://www.ntticc.or.jp/pub/ic_mag/ic014/huhtamo/
huhtamo_e.html
The Museum of Jurrasic Technology:
http://www.mjt.org/