From Topos to Virus: A Media Archaeology of Networked Visual Culture
Erkki Huhtamo
Apr 9, 2014, 6:30pm
The James Gallery
The Internet is a viral image disseminator-generator. Its enormous, nearly instantaneous “traffic” of imagery is in a state of constant flux. This is a major challenge for visual cultural analysis. We don’t have effective tools for analyzing it, especially when it comes to the transmission, transformation, and migration of meanings. Yet, as Erkki Huhtamo will illustrate, media archaeological topos analysis can grant us insight into this transformative cultural sphere.
Erkki Huhtamo is a Professor in the Design Media Arts department at University of California, Los Angeles. He is considered a founding figure of media archaeology, an emerging approach within media studies. His latest books areMedia Archaeology: Approaches, Applications, and Implications (edited with Jussi Parikka, University of California Press, 2011) and Illusions in Motion: Media Archaeology of the Moving Panorama and Related Spectacles (The MIT Press, 2013).