EVENT DETAILS

Epistemic Engines: Media Technology and Cultural History conference

Epistemic Engines: Media Technology and Cultural History

Between storytelling, interactivity, and immersion, audiovisual media are not only representations of space but also spaces of representation; they are pivotal as cultural technologies that reflect how we view and construe our past, present, and future. The conference to celebrate 10 years of Film and Media Studies at UCI will offer scholarly presentations and discussions of the role of audiovisual media as "epistemic engines" throughout history: for Descartes and Locke it was the camera obscura, today it may be the computer - and along that trajectory other devices for the storage, processing, and distribution of texts, sounds, and images.

10:00 am - Continental breakfast
10:30 am - Peter Krapp (UCI), Introduction: "... and Media"
11:00 am - Lisa Parks (UCSB), "'Stuff You Can Kick': Toward a Theory of Media Infrastructures"
12:00 pm - Lunch break
2:00 pm - Jean-François Blanchette (UCLA), "A Material History of Bits"
3:00 pm - Benjamin Bratton (UCSD), "Further Remarks on Cloud Medievalism: Political Theology & Augmented Reality"
4:00 pm - Geoffrey Bowker (UCI), "The Academic Article: Origins and Dissolution"
5:00 pm - Reception

Free and open to the public.

Supported by the Office of Research, the School of Humanities Dean's Office, and the Humanities Center, as well as by the Department of Film & Media Studies at UC Irvine.