Abram (Stern) was through at Stanford last night talking to our Mellon Workshop in New Media about net.art – here is the talk in his wiki – [link] There are many interesting matters for an archaeologist – net.art’s focus on broken bits of computer code, frequent nostalgia for older art forms, reuse of media fragments….
archaeological imagination
a new species of homo?
The discovery of remains of another species of homo that lived alongside modern humans only 18 or even 13 thousand years ago is everywhere today – Guardian Unlimited | Life | “From 18,000 years ago, the one metre-tall human that challenges history of evolution” – a new “hobbit” species found on the Indonesian island of…
Michael Casson – studio potter – 1925-2003
In class this morning I ran a google search for a picture of Mycenaean marine style pottery, and it turned up an obituary for Michael Casson, the studio potter. He was a giant in the world of craft pottery, a pioneer of 20th century studio ceramics, and a lovely man. He died last December. We…
Steve McQueen, San Francisco and the 2005 Ford Mustang
More media archaeology Chris (Witmore) put me onto this item in Yahoo! News – Mustang Ads Feature Late Steve McQueen. Ford is to resurrect Steve McQueen in its promotional campaign for the new 2005 Mustang. They did this in the UK a few years back – clever cuts of footage from Bullitt – the very…
Ancient Corinth and the stories archaeologists tell of the past
Ok, it’s quite an obscure source for archaeological news of Europe – NEWS.com.au – but they are running a headline at the moment about the discovery of two large sarcophagi in ancient Corinth. The story is that they are so big that ancient Greeks in 900BCE can’t have done it using only human power but…
Why fakes and counterfeit pasts are fascinating
A couple of things last week have got me thinking about an old fascination of mine – fakes and ideas of authenticity. My angle – some notions of authentic reality and truth can be quite mischievous and misleading! And lying can be liberating! It started in the Washington Post – Sure, It’s Real! Real Fake…