media archaeology

media archaeology – Deborah Yun

by Michael Shanks

I have just written the foreword to Deborah Yun’s fabulous photographic study of payphones [Link] [Link] Portland Oregon Maybe they were never quite where you wanted them to be, but away from home, out of the office or workplace, seeking anonymity perhaps, or simply without a phone and needing to make a call, the payphone…

graveyards and a sentimental education

by Michael Shanks

I can’t help hanging around the dead. On a visit to Walter Scott’s grave in the ruins of Dryburgh Abbey. Some extraordinary gravestones. Early to mid 18th century. I have been talking with Bianca (Carpeneti) and Chris (Lowman) about a true education of the sentiments – as envisaged by Rousseau – so much more appropriately…

Steampunk at Oxford

by Michael Shanks

What if the Victorians (with their steam engine industrial aesthetic) had had access to digital technologies? What if a Victorian design sensibility had not been eclipsed by modernism and its minimalist aesthetic? What if technologies such as dirigibles, analog computers, or digital mechanical computers (such as Charles Babbage’s Analytical engine) were still with us? Steam-powered…

Holmes 2009 – documenting the past?

by Michael Shanks

It can’t really be called “period detail”. What impressed us about the new Sherlock Holmes movie [Link] was the way it handled the nineteenth century. It was the color space (very mannered, desaturated, toned) and the abraded, worn, littered look of the urban spaces. It just kind of felt like Victorian London. Of course, Victorian…