An intelligent comment today in the NYT on the mismatch between modern and ancient Olympics [Link – “The Way We Live Now: What Olympic Ideal?” – Daniel Mendelsohn (Princeton)] (Thanks to Jody Maxmin for putting me on to this.) Main point – the Greeks were very different to how most people imagine them to be….
Author: Michael Shanks
Graflex Speed Graphic 1947 – media archaeology
I have decided our lab needs to take seriously the materiality of media. Not just the picture – but its texture, style, feel, ambience, aura, substrate – and its instrumentality – how it came to be made, by what means, agency, mechanism. So I have been buying old cameras. The Graflex Pacemaker Speed Graphic arrived…
exo-garbology
A couple of recent entries have been on the connections that run through garbage, science fiction, space exploration and archaeology. [Link] [Link] Here is more from Bill (Rathje) on exo-garbology – connections with the pioneering spirit of exploration, and memorabilia. A piece of his from 1999. On June 17 this year (1999), Air Force trackers…
Exo-Archaeology
Yesterday Bill (Rathje) commented on space junk. [Link] I asked him to say more about garbage and archaeology in space. He reminded me of something that was in a recent article of ours (Michael Shanks, William Rathje and David Platt, “The perfume of garbage: modernity and the archaeological” – last issue of the journal Modernism/Modernity,…
between prehistory and the stars – deadly litter
Bill Rathje on space junk I have been trawling eBay for the last month or so looking for old camera equipment for my Metamedia Lab – part of our explorations of media metarialities – getting away from the notion that new media are somehow immaterial data. Came across an item that I had forgotten –…
Barry Eisler’s archaeology
Barry’s latest in the John Rain series of novels – Rain Storm – is out. He was super smooth at the signing tonight at Kepler’s, Menlo Park. Didn’t you work for the government, Barry? What were you doing? Yes I did, … and no comment … [Link – Barry Eisler] John Rain, Barry’s anti-hero, Asian-American…