This is a report of the second international workshop of the DEMA project. Last year, we reflected on the question ‘How to document media archaeological experiments?’. For this second workshop, which took place online due to the current Covid-19 pandemic, our aim was to discuss and share experiences on how to perform media archaeological experiments and historical re-enactments, both in historical and artistic enquiries.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Introduction
- Panel I: Performative experiments in the DEMA project
- Panel II: Performative experiments in sound and acoustics
- Panel III: Performative experiments in early cinema and gaming
- Panel IV: Protocols of historical re-enactment in medical anthropology, surgery and fine arts
- Panel V: Media archaeology labs
- Panel VI: Closing discussion
Introduction
What approaches, methods and techniques can we use in performing and disseminating historical re-enactments and hands-on experiments? What best practices and “artful failures” can we distinguish? How can we learn from other disciplines in performing and disseminating historical re-enactments and hands-on experiments? In what ways does the performance of historical experiments produce new forms of (tacit) knowledge? What are the performative qualities of experimental historiography? And how can artistic practices that employ experimental historical research further the study of media archaeology? By reflecting on these questions and sharing experiences on historical re-enactments in various fields and domains – including media history, art history, musicology, history of science, sensorial ethnography, contemporary composition and sound art – the workshop aimed to contribute to the development of a best practice guide and protocol that we can use for performing and disseminating media archaeological experiments in the DEMA research project.
Due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, one of the challenges we faced in organizing the workshop was how to present the various historical re-enactments and media archaeological performances of the workshop participants. To foster our panel discussions, we decided to ask each of the participants to prepare a short video, which highlights some of their performative work done in current or previous research projects. These videos were produced and shared among the participants in advance of the workshop. They were watched collectively during the workshop as a way to inform our panel discussions. Most of these videos are embedded in this report as well.
In addition to the project team members, participants of this second DEMA workshop included (in order of appearance): John Ellis (Royal Holloway, University of London), Ludwig Vogl-Bienek (Philips Universität Marburg), Karin Bienek (illuminago), Sean Williams (Open University), Paolo Brenni (Fondazione Scienza e Tecnica of Florence), Roland Wittje (Indian Institute of Technology, Madras), Anna Giatti (Fondazione Scienza e Tecnica of Florence), Stefan Höltgen (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), Shintaro Miyazaki (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), Martin Loiperdinger (University of Trier), Maartje Stols-Witlox (University of Amsterdam), Anna Harris (Maastricht University), Roger Kneebone (Imperial College London), Lori Emerson (Media Archaeology Lab, University of Colorado Boulder), libi rose striegl (Media Archaeology Lab, University of Colorado Boulder), Paul De Marinis (Stanford University) and Erkki Huhtamo (UCLA).
Panel I: Performative experiments in the DEMA project
After a short welcome and introduction to the DEMA project by Andreas Fickers – the PI of the project – and Stefan Krebs – the project coordinator – the first panel included presentations by DEMA project researchers Aleksander Kolkowski and Tim van der Heijden as well as associated project partners Ludwig Vogl-Bienek and Karin Bienek.
In his video presentation entitled “Signal to noise”, Aleksander Kolkowski made a homage to Alvin Lucier’s seminal electro-acoustic composition “I am Sitting in a Room” (1969). Using a hybrid tape and disc recorder, a Wilcox-Gay Recordio from ca 1951, Kolkowski recorded speech onto magnetic tape, which was transferred to a lacquer disc and back again to tape; all on the same machine. Just like Lucier’s electro-acoustic composition, where a narrator’s voice is recorded, played back into the room and re-recorded repeatedly until the natural acoustic resonances of the room are so reinforced that they overwhelm the speech, Kolkowski’s experiment exemplified how in the repeated cycle of disc and tape recording the voice signal slowly transforms into noise as well. Throughout the process, his recorded voice becomes subsumed and buried under layer upon layer of tape hiss and disc-cutting and surface noises. Besides a creative reuse of the hybrid tape and disc recorder, the demonstration was also meant as a media-archaeological exploration into the usage and functions of this historical audio technology, highlighting its hybridity and the noises inherent to the tape and disc media technologies.
In his presentation entitled “Performing a historical re-enactment: the making of a 16mm home movie”, Tim van der Heijden reflected on the making of a home movie with an original Ciné-Kodak 16mm film camera from ca. 1930. By means of a split screen montage, he showed the making off process as well as the results of one of his analogue film experiments. The video that accompanied his presentation highlighted historical re-enactments of Lumiere’s Le Repas de Bébé (1895) and Dutch amateur filmmaker Piet Schendstok’s Jetty’s First Steps (1941). Furthermore, Van der Heijden’s presentation discussed the performative nature of media archaeological experiments in general. Asking the central question ‘what makes an experiment performative?’, he argued that in the case of the making of a home movie, the performative aspect is not merely limited to the screening practice but rather involves all phases of the production process. At the end of his presentation, he presented a possible typology of performative experiments, meant to serve as heuristic tool for the workshop discussions: (1) entertaining performative experiments, in which the experiment forms an “attraction”; (2) pedagogical performative experiments, in which the experiment serves as a lecture; (3) archival performative experiments, in which the experiment is a demonstration of tacit knowledge; and (4) reflexive performative experiments, in which the experiment and the way in which it is presented reflects on the experiment itself.
In their presentation “Media-archaeological experiments with ‘Improved Phantasmagoria Lanterns’ (1820-1880), Ludwig Vogl-Bienek and Karin Bienek, associated partners in the DEMA project, presented an overview of a series media archaeological experiments with “improved phantasmagoria lanterns”. As a project device, the phantasmagoria lantern was used from the 1820s to the 1870s to convey knowledge in an entertaining way. The experiments were conducted with surviving devices and associated glass slides (copperplate sliders). A screen for rear projection was used as a projection surface, which was reconstructed according to the original instructions from 1823. The presentation was nicely illustrated with photographs and video sequences that were recorded to document their media archaeological experiments.
The discussion of this first panel of the workshop addressed both epistemological and methodological concerns. In the case of Ludwig Vogl-Bienek and Karin Bienek’s presentation, the question was asked if the effect of the light source being visible on the projection screen in the documentation footage corresponds to the historical reception of phantasmagoria lantern images. Methodologically, it raised the question whether this perceptual effect was constructed or emphasized by the documentation means or actually visible within the experimental space itself. In the case of Tim van der Heijden’s presentation, the use of the “fresh” Fomapan black-and-white reversal film in his original 16mm film camera raised questions about the historical authenticity of the media archaeological experiments, both in terms of their process and (aesthetic) results. How is the experience of using historical media technologies similar or different compared to historical user practices? In relation to Aleksander Kolkowski’s use of his hybrid tape and disc recorder as a historical audio technology, the importance of developing (tacit) knowledge and (re)gaining technical skills was emphasized. The panel concluded with the observation that this is perhaps the main heuristic value of doing media-archaeological experiments: to become a “reflexive user” through hands-on experience. Whether this applies to dealing with oil lamps in the case of phantasmagoria lanterns, the use of acetate-cellulose in the case of a 16mm home movie, or the materiality of tape and disc as historical sound recording technologies.
Panel II: Performative experiments in sound and acoustics
Sean Williams’ video demonstration “Bandpass filters in Stockhausen’s Sternklang” gave an account of the technical challenges he dealt with in realising a performance of the titular piece in Hanover, August 2020. The piece, conceived for the open air, has had only a dozen performances since its premiere in 1971. Five groups of musicians – each having a vocalist, instrumentalists and live electronics – are dispersed in a park. The piece is based around vowel sounds and phonemes that are produced or mimicked by the vocalists and instrumentalists. Specific harmonics have to be emphasised using vocalisation, extended techniques and electronic filtering. The analogue low-pass filters used at the time of composition are limited in that they cannot adequately manipulate the sound in order to produce the desired harmonics as notated in the score. After trying alternative solutions, such as a multiband vocoder and formant filters, Sean Williams settled on designing a modular software program called a MAX Patch that enables the musician to manipulate a pair of band-pass filters, controlled by a foot pedal. A major development came from a chance meeting with Otto Kranzler, musician, studio engineer and a former colleague of Stockhausen, who in 1995, had designed and built analogue filters specifically for a performance of Sternklang. Sean acquired two of these filters which were equipped with numerous functions and could also be operated via foot-pedals. Unfortunately, they required a considerable amount of restoration and came without circuit diagrams and only scant documentation. Restoration work involved the exchange of faulty capacitors, potentiometers and reconnecting loose wiring. It was not entirely successful as some of the controls failed to work as expected. Nevertheless, the units functioned well enough to be used in the performance. A further difficulty arose in achieving accuracy with the foot pedal, which was circumvented by using a control knob on the filter itself. It was only in rehearsal and mostly in performance that one really has to be self-evaluative and understand the feasibility of controlling the devices to achieve the requirements of the score, by performing with them in the ‘heat of battle’. This shows the value of doing such research projects in live public performances; that the pressure of a performance situation can illuminate certain questions, in this case around performance practises in electronic music.
The demonstration of “The singing arc and the speaking arc”, conducted by Paolo Brenni, Roland Wittje and Anna Giatti is one of over a hundred videos made by Brenni for the Fondazione Scienza e Technica Firenza, that document historical experiments using original functioning scientific instruments from the museum’s collection, and serve as a source for historical research and teaching purposes. (See the Sound & Science database for more videos and information, including two essays: https://soundandscience.de/contributor-essays/speaking-and-singing-arc-sound-electricity-fin-de-siecle and
https://soundandscience.de/contributor-essays/nineteenth-century-acoustics-and-its-instruments-method-reenactment.)
Carbon arc lamps were used ca 1900 for street lighting and created light via an electrical arc between two carbon electrodes and often produced audible sounds. The demonstration followed contemporary experiments by W.B. Dudell and H.T. Simon in making the arc speak and sing, functioning both as a microphone and loudspeaker. Although it was not commercially exploited and largely confined to scientific demonstrations, the speaking arc is seen as the forerunner to wireless telephony and the thermionic valve or vacuum tube. Paolo and Roland described the major challenges they faced in their experiments using an original electric arc from the early 1900s. As well as posing unforeseen questions that hadn’t arisen from previous research, operating the arc also provided new experiences in the field of electro-acoustics that are far removed from modern domestic hi-fi electronics. In order to replicate the singing and speaking arc experiments, Paolo and Roland referred to original documents and employed apparatus made in the early 20th century, including items manufactured by Max Kohl and Ernst Ruhmer. One problem they encountered was achieving a pure direct current supply; a common diode rectifier produced an unwanted noise in the microphone. However, the problem was solved by using eight car batteries which in series gave the desired purity of direct current. Another major problem was due to the high current needed for the experiment, which caused the carbon microphone to become very hot after only a few seconds and a modern capacitor to explode leaving behind debris and narrowly avoiding harm to the experimenters.
The discussion that followed explored themes of authenticity in performance and replication of scientific experiments, and of the dichotomy between an experiment and its simulation, demonstration or performance. In the case of Sternklang, at the time of its composition, the electronic audio technology was not yet available to fill the requirements of the score. Sean Williams sought to use most appropriate historical techniques, but when they failed to work, he found modern alternative techniques that allowed him to achieve the desired results. His interaction with the piece was not based on the first iteration from 1971, but from half-way through its life-time and was meant to inform his own historical research through practice within the performance. As music lives in performance and each performance is a new iteration of the composition, finding a balance of using historical instrumentation and new ways of interpretation and using modern technologies to facilitate it, extends the biography of the piece. Perhaps such a creative approach could be extended to other fields, to add something to the biography of a practice, rather than in making the modern world as absent as possible as the case in some kinds of media archaeological work. In this way, the temporal trajectories of objects and technologies are taken into account, not only from the point of their inception.
However, the use of modern alternatives to the early 1900s apparatus as employed in the demonstration of the singing arc was simply not feasible. Aside from the marvellous authenticity of using original scientific instruments from the museum’s collection and bringing them back to life to recreate the historical experiment, modern substitutes would not have been fit for purpose; a modern microphone would have burnt-up, a voltage transformer caused interference and, as was shown, the modern capacitor exploded because of the high current. While recent demonstrations of singing arcs can be found on the internet, this ‘plasma speaker’ technology uses high voltage and high frequency, as opposed to the low voltage, high and continuous current of the early 1900s. The experimenters had to return to using a 1905 condenser and inductor. The positivistic idea that modern technology triumphs over all and that our understanding of past developments in technology is superior, is dispelled when confronted with the actual experience of early 1900s electro-acoustics. Using original devices and methods rather than modern alternatives also shows us the limitations and difficulties of operation, and gave reasons as to why the apparatus never succeeded as a wireless transmitter. In relation to practice, a distinction has to be made between an experiment and its demonstration. As a historical example, experiments at the Royal Society, throughout its history, would be conducted in basement laboratories until ready to be demonstrated in the public gallery. Classical scientific experiments, as described in textbooks, require proper training and rehearsal, even if they appear simple to reproduce. Many of the historic instruments featured in Paolo Brenni’s videos come from a teaching rather than a research context and the videos’ short duration, of around three or four minutes, also reflect the practice of scientific demonstrations in experimental physics lectures ca 1900, of several short experiments conducted one after another. Questions on how to capture the sensorial aspects of doing experiments and demonstrations were largely left unanswered as time ran short.
Panel III: Performative experiments in early cinema and gaming
In their presentation, Stefan Höltgen and Shintaro Miyazaki presented a short video about the first electronic video game called “Tennis for Two”, which was re-enacted by Stefan Höltgen and his students at the Media Archaeological Fundus (MAF) of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. In their talk, they discussed ideas, approaches and methods of the performance and dissemination of media-archaeological experiments and their media theoretical implications. “Tennis for Two” was originally implemented in 1957 at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, New York by the American physicist William Higinbotham. The game can be called the very first computer game. Unlike the “Pong”, the digital computer game from the early 1970s, “Tennis for Two” implemented analogue electronic technologies instead. Both games nevertheless have frequently been discussed within the realm of early computer games. On the basis of circuit diagrams from an original manual of the first Telefunken analogue computer, Stefan Höltgen was able to reconstruct the three parts of the analogue computer’s circuitry. The upper part steers the vertical direction of the ball (up and down), the middle part its horizontal direction (left and right), and the bottom part builds a circle on the screen. The operational amplifiers – arguably the core item of an analogue computer – are illustrated in the form of triangles in the circuit diagram. Their function is to steer the signals within the analogue computer’s circuitry, which ultimately leads to the creation of the picture on the oscilloscope. The original analogue computer uses around twenty of such operational amplifiers.
To experience and re-enact how “Tennis for Two” enables some interactive elements, Höltgen and Miyazaki could have followed William Higinbotham’s original circuitry from 1957. However, they decided to go one step further as the original idea for the game came from a “ball in the box” demonstration program that Higinbotham aimed to open up or “hack”. He wanted to let the ball no longer reflect from the walls – going left and right – but instead make this an interactive element, in which a player presses a button to control the electronic signal. While pressing the button, the player controls the electronic signal by means of creating an invisible wall on the position in the field where the ball is jumping. This invisible wall makes the ball bounce back as an effect. Because Höltgen and Miyazaki had not enough operational amplifiers at their disposal, they made an adaptation of the original circuit in which the ball just became a point on the oscilloscope that could move in both vertical and horizontal directions. By simulating these movements, Höltgen and Miyazaki implemented actual physics principles, including gravitation, to achieve a more realistic feeling of playing tennis – similar to what the inventors of early electronic computer games were trying to do in those years as well. At the end of the video demonstration, Stefan Höltgen argued that historical re-enactments with analogue and digital media technologies generally serve two different aims. First of all, they have an educational value, namely to show how the analogue or digital medium works or has worked in the past. Secondly, there is an epistemological objective. By trying to look at these media technologies not simply as things from the past but as present things instead allows for creating a dialogue between you as a researcher and the media object at stake. Consequently, this opens up the possibility to grasp the materiality and functionality of these media technologies, in their case the analogue Telefunken computer. Learning about such “old media” also gives you an idea of “new media”, yet in a playful manner. By implementing these learning by doing principles, in their case even a gamification of mathematics, students can first tinker with the technology to see how it works in practice before reading about it in the literature.
Martin Loiperdinger‘s presentation highlighted the “Crazy Cinématographe“, a historical re-enactment of early cinema performance organized on Luxembourg’s Schoeberfouer. From 2007 to 2011, for three weeks in August and September, short 35mm film-programmes of roughly 20 minutes each were performed in a tent cinema called Crazy Cinématographe. These early fairground cinema revival shows included all performative elements of live accompaniment that were usual before the First World War: live music, bonimenteurs, and front of show to draw patrons into the tent. Crazy Cinématographe was an experiment in media archeological practice – taking place not in a lab, but in today’s cultural context. The project was by far one of the greatest experiments on cinema archaeology – attracting nearly 10.000 participants every year. Crazy Cinématographe originated as a project of the Cinémathèque Luxembourg, conducted by director Claude Bertemes and Nicole Dahlen, within the framework of the European Capital of Culture project “Travelling Cinema in Europe” in 2007 (https://www.uni-trier.de/index.php?id=65359). The programmes of 2007 were curated by Vanessa Toulmin. Unfortunately, only the last edition of Crazy Cinématographe in 2011 has been documented on video, by the University of Trier.
In his presentation, Loiperdinger emphasized the challenge of performing the Crazy Cinématographe as a media archaeological experiment:
“[…] the re-creation of media experience in the lab tries to create an authentic experience of the senses of any individual participant of the experiment – an authentic experience which is not available in today’s media consumption. This is fine with media performances that took place in private homes for small audiences, but not with commercial film shows on fairgrounds or in public halls. In order to recreate the experience of mass audiences it is necessary to go to the places where early cinema was performed 100 years ago – the noisy and densely packed crowds on the fairgrounds […] In the special context of experimental media archeology, Crazy Cinématographe is a reminder to pay attention not only to the recreation of an individual sensual experience, but also to the recreation of the experiences of historical audiences which attended such and such media performances.”
During the workshop, Martin Loiperdinger presented and commented on an extract showing the 2011 Crazy Cinématographe performance of Winsor McKay’s “Gerti the Dinosaur”.
The discussion touched upon the role of imagination in performing hands-on media archaeological experiments. Andreas Fickers argued that one of the main purposes of doing media archaeological experiments is to steer our historical imagination, even more so than producing new historical knowledge. They can make us look differently at past media objects and historical practices. As Stefan Höltgen and Shintaro Miyazaki demonstrated, the heuristic potential of hands-on experimentation includes this epistemological dimension, which is not only beneficial for researchers, but can also be useful within the context of education. Stefan Höltgen argued that by tinkering and playing the “Tennis for Two” game, students learn about analogue electronics in practice. This allows to bring the discourse into a live demonstration, in which the historical device itself shows those things you cannot easily learn from the literature. This is an epistemological surplus, even in the case that the analogue computer doesn’t work. After all, an error always opens up the blackbox and lets you think about the internal mechanisms of the particular device. This fosters an epistemological drive to further think about and tinker with the medium at stake. Since the Media Archaeological Fundus of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin is no museum but a laboratory and educational space, students can explore and tinker with the objects themselves directly.
In relation to Martin Loiperdinger’s presentation of the Crazy Cinématographe as a media archaeological experiment, John Ellis remarked that the film of “Gerti the Dinosaur” is probably incomprehensible without such a performative approach. Furthermore, he wondered how experimental media archaeology, as a methodological approach, can not only produce new knowledge about the side of media production – like in the ADAPT project which focused on the history of analogue television production – but may also include the sides of transmission/distribution and reception. The Crazy Cinématographe specifically deals with these dimensions, which are often much more difficult to reconstruct by media historians. This is especially the case when involving large audiences, Loiperdinger argued, because it requires a rather different experimental space and environment than for instance a laboratory or museum setting in which experiments or demonstrations of historical media technologies usually take place. As a film historian, doing such hands-on experiments, demonstrations and performances, not only generates an intellectual connection, but also an emotional and sensorial relationship with the historical medium, in Loiperdinger’s case, the Lumière Cinématographe (in 1989). Working with the historical media technologies directly, instead of only reading about them, gives you an extra sensual relationship with that old medium. For him, this makes a strong argument for doing media archaeological experiments in academic education. Shintaro Miyazaki adds that by practically and critically looking at past media technologies – whether in the case of an object of early cinema or analogue computing – can make you learn not just about the workings of past media technologies, but also about current media technologies. This critical connection between the past and the present, Miyazaki argued, is central to media archaeology as an academic approach.
Panel IV: Protocols of historical re-enactment in medical anthropology, surgery and fine arts
In her presentation “The role of environment: Re-performing a historical recipe in two different settings”, Maartje Stols-Witlox reflected on lessons learnt in an experiment where she “re-performed” a seventeenth-century recipe in order to make a varnish twice in two distinctly different settings; the first in a clean laboratory setting, the second a more ‘historically appropriate’ setting out of doors. In the field of art conservation, re-enactments are used to learn about the properties and application of historical materials. Art conservation’s focus on material along with the strong voice of the natural sciences in this field and their influence on how re-enactments are approached, executed and interpreted, call for reflection. Conservation, as a discipline, strongly overlaps with hard science; it takes place in laboratories, uses scientific instruments and the conservators wear white lab coats. This influences the way in which they do their research and also the role given to doing reconstructions. The aim is preservation for future generations by understanding how something was created in the first place. Conservation is a collaboration between the conservator, the conservation scientist and the (art) historian, often described as the three-legged stool of heritage research. Stols-Witlox’s reconstruction of an historic varnish was done together with PhD researcher Thijs Hagendijk and was based on a 1700 recipe found in a manuscript by the painter and cartographer Simon Eikelenberg from Alkmaar, who is an interesting figure in that he experimented with contemporary recipes and documented his observations. His varnish was a reconstruction of a previous recipe and so the conservators were involved in a continuation of his experiment. In making the varnish in a laboratory and repeating the experiment outside, as was done historically, the conservators wanted to look at the influence of the environment and the type of equipment used by Eikelenberg. In the laboratory, a sand bath is commonly used for heating inflammable liquids and historical recipes often specify its use. Outside, an open fire and a specially-made earthenware pot were employed and this led to some unexpected consequences; certain factors noted by Eikelenberg, that were not understood when working in the lab, became apparent when repeating the experiment using an open fire, such as the curdling of the varnish and the far more rapid evaporation time. It was shown that the new earthenware vessel also played a role in the absorption of liquid. Working outside, the conservators were faced with unpredictable factors such as changing airflow caused by wind and the strong smell from the boiling mixture. It revealed much about the influence of the environment and the limitations of our modern clinical approach. Stols-Witlox asked if there are parallels with this type of experimental reconstruction and the role of environment in other fields of media archaeological research.
An anthropological perspective was given by Anna Harris who in her presentation: “Testing fields of view: Re-enactment as methodological probe in ethnographic fieldwork”, shared an aspect of her research that examines how doctors learn sensory skills of diagnosis. Her Making Clinical Sense project involves a team of three anthropologists, who simultaneously did fieldwork in medical schools located in Tamale – Ghana, Budapest – Hungary and Maastricht – The Netherlands. Harris’ field site was a classroom in a ‘skills laboratory’ where medical students learn skills of physical examination, such as listening to heart sounds and learning how to palpate – a simulated clinical environment in an educational setting. In their simultaneous fieldwork, the three researchers performed the same ethnographic experiments or ‘re-enactment probes’ in their individual locations, that were shared with each other in place of written reports. In this way the anthropologists were able to probe and access unexpected entry points into their field sites. One such ‘probe’, shown in Harris’ video, was to re-enact a scene from a photograph of a physical examination technique on how to test visual fields in patients. This test requires both patient and doctor to cover one eye through complicated mirror exercises and medical students often struggle to accomplish the technique. Harris sought to examine how doctors learn these skills and about the media and teaching materials they use and, through re-enactment, to get a sense of how the skills were documented within the material. These types of ethnographic experiments are atypical in that they re-enact something observed that day, or only a few days ago. The importance of the re-enactment was not only in assessing the complexities of learning these skills, but also in trying to embody the observed skills and help them to archive bodily experiences in their field of science. Importantly for team ethnography and also unexpectedly, it gave an insight into the ethnographic imagination of others, through being given the ‘probes’ to enact and by observing each other’s materials. Harris posed questions for the workshop, including how we learn sensory skills and what can materials afford and allow for their teaching? Harris uses ethnographic re-enactment in an experimental, somewhat ahistorical and playful way, as a methodological probe for ethnographic enquiry. Her engagement with artefacts used for teaching medical skills included a knitted uterus traditionally used to illustrate the dilation of a woman’s cervix when in labour and still used today even in modern, high-tech medical teaching institutions. Harris herself knitted such a uterus using an original pattern found in the Wellcome Collection and she also experiments with different materials used for model-making and for teaching aids found in medical schools for teaching anatomy in a three-dimensional and dynamic way. Questions were invited about methods of documenting and sharing these activities for use in teaching, research and in engaging audiences.
Through films of re-enacted surgical procedures and interviews with senior clinicians, Roger Kneebone’s presentation “Documenting the early days of keyhole surgery through simulation-based re-enactment” gave a glimpse of his work, looking at aspects of surgery that go beyond the scientific knowledge & more into its performance. Types of operations that were standard up until the 1980s, were examined through a present-day lens. In one example, he reunited a distinguished team, including Professor Harold Ellis (surgeon), Professor Stanley Feldman (anaesthetist) and Sister Mary Neiland (theatre sister), who had worked together for many years, to re-enact a surgical procedure (a cholecystectomy) at the London Science Museum. Using physical simulation, they aimed to get a sense and insight into the landscape of surgery of the kind Kneebone himself experienced as a junior surgeon and of the instruments used. What Kneebone had unforeseen though, was the important role played by social dynamics. In one video, Feldman was shown an anaesthetic machine from the Science Museum’s Medical Collection and, much to the dismay of conservators, began handling the machine and reconnecting its tubing while discussing its operation. This valuable episode showed an expert user of a now long obsolete machine, doing things that have been previously undocumented, and providing a sense of how to make it work at the limits of its capabilities. The re-enacted surgical procedure took place in the Wellcome Galleries of the Science Museum, where a full-scale replica of a 1984 operating theatre, complete with mannequins, had remained untouched for 30 years. The Science Museum allowed Kneebone and his colleagues to replace the mannequins with a live surgical team from the same period. Video footage showed Nieland intuitively preparing to hand a surgical instrument she knows the surgeon will need. The sequence of events, though, is out of sync: she proffers the instrument, Ellis takes it and then says “scissors please sister”. This sequence reveals a form of collaborative work that neither of the participants were aware of. They had not performed this operation for 30 years, but when reunited, were back into a way of anticipating one another movements and working intuitively as members of a team. This shows that there is much useful information to be gained from re-enactment.
To simulate the procedures of minimally invasive (‘keyhole’) surgery from the 1980s, a different team was invited to take part in Kneebone’s Science Museum experiment. This was led by the urologist John Wickham who had, along with a creative team of clinicians and design engineers, played a leading role in these surgical developments. Wickham and his colleague Mike Kellett (an interventional radiologist) performed the UK’s first percutaneous nephrolithotomy (removing a urinary tract stone through a small skin incision under X-ray control). Before then, the standard treatment for removing kidney stones from the urinary tract involved making large incisions in the patent and opening up the kidneys. Wickham also re-enacted that operation using pig kidneys and an instrument called a ‘Wickham Retractor’ that he himself had designed. In addition to pioneering work in the use of laparoscopic instruments, Wickham designed numerous and award-winning surgical instruments of his own. However, they soon became outdated because of the rapid advances in technology. The re-enactment and interviews with Wickham were able to document these instruments in the hands of their designer in a way that is far removed from inspecting disembodied instruments in museum collections. Doing the re-enactments triggered collective recollections of what was going on at the time, including the hostility and uncertainty with regard to new approaches and new technologies. Capturing these aspects is also an important part of looking at innovation, something that very often doesn’t get documented. Kneebone closed with a plea for the documentation of past practices involving living practitioners.
The discussion opened with questions on risks and the use of hazardous materials or methods, such as mercury or open flames, in reconstructing historical experiments, which can often be stymied by health and safety regulations. In art conservation, the conservators do their utmost to keep safe while experimenting with highly poisonous substances e.g. lead white or arsenic, which have to be used in order to comprehend the rheology of paint materials from the 1700s, for instance, as modern pigments are unsuitable. Kneebone’s experiments relied on simulation; no x-rays were used in the re-enactment of ‘keyhole’ surgery and dead animal organs substituted real human patents. There are always constraints on ‘realism’, and limits on how much you can recreate the original environment of an historical scientific experiment. For example, some kinds of experiments cannot be replicated in a modern room or outside environment. Materials, too, change over time or disappear all together. An example in India was given where the monopoly of Merino wool has meant that older types of wool and cotton have disappeared from the supply chain, because they cannot be machine-spun. This has affected some traditional handicrafts. There are stories and histories around the changes in use of materials and the skills involved in producing them that are interesting and also very complex. Anthropologists like Harris employ a methodology called ‘implosion’, following the historical, economic and social threads of an object and their interconnections. Harris also considers the mythology surrounding objects like the knitted uterus example and it’s disputed African origins, which can often be very revealing and opens gaps in knowledge that encourage further research on the object.
The significance of a performance situation was discussed, not as a workshop performance for students or academics, but for the public and in a public forum. How can we gauge the significance of the pressure of doing something ‘live’, as opposed to an experiment in a lab? Here it is not the material factor at play so much as the social factor. Kneebone’s reenactments were preceded by interviews with the participants about the work they did. These interviews were not very revealing. However, once placed in the recreated clinical environment, there were a lot of contextual cues that brought the re-enactment to life. In his case, they were fortunate to have used the Science Museum’s 1984 operating theatre exhibit that provided the necessary contextual ties, including the colour of the drapes and the material of the surgical gowns. The participants went back to the performative ways of their past, including the banter among them and even in the treatment of visiting medical students. The performance mode was heightened by the fact that the re-enactments took place inside a museum gallery, in the gaze of the public and these layers of performance served to make the experience more authentic for them. The absence of a real-life patent was unimportant as they had something that resembled human tissue. Kneebone asserted that if you get some things right in a re-enactment, then it doesn’t matter if other things are not so authentic. If you provide a minimum necessary level of engagement for people to believe as strongly as they need to, it can effectively take them back to the past situation. The essence of Kneebone’s re-enactment was what the clinicians did with one another around something they perceived, at the time, to be a real person.
Harris’ anthropological reenactments are also about extracting an essence, capturing and conveying it. It is an embodied language or form of communication that is more than a gesture. Returning to the knitted uterus example, it is unimportant that it bears no resemblance to a real uterus. The lesson is about dilation and contraction, which it perfectly conveys. With a re-enactment for medical teaching purposes, sometimes the gaps in authenticity can be as important as the authentic depiction of a complex skill. The student is required to make all the connections, which are often part of the learning process. The role of improvisation shouldn’t be underestimated. When working in a team, for instance in a clinical environment, it went beyond individual physical processes. Moreover, it had to do with relationships between the clinicians and the world around them at the time, which required improvisation, response on the hoof and making use of the new technologies that were emerging. Only by talking to the surviving actors you get a sense of what really went on as this isn’t documented nor discussed in journal articles. Live performance, jeopardy, being on your toes because of a live audience and never quite knowing what is going to happen; the creativity needed to deal with old technologies and uncertainty is very close to past practices. When technologies and ways of working with them were new, you still needed to improvise because they were never perfect to begin with. You couldn’t simply take them out of the box and use them, but had to acquire skills and deal with errors and failures.
John Ellis, whose own ADAPT project was greatly influenced by Kneebone’s work, remarked that skills are generally undervalued in the academic world. There is a difficulty in representing skills in a conventional academic paper, which is better suited at recording certain types of knowledge. The archiving of skills in our own bodies, as exemplified in Harris’s ethnographic work, goes to the core of hands-on work; it is about the interaction between people and things, of how we change ourselves and those things in order to undertake any kind of technology-based activity. Very often, we are left with objects and not the people who operated them, when beyond living memory. Often in the past, documentation focused on the main protagonist. However, it is important to capture as much as possible: the whole ecosystem including the other actors who contribute and the interfusion of different kinds of expert knowledge. Andreas Fickers asked how we, as historians, should deal with the question of habituation, of getting accustomed to something and forgetting about the effects of ‘newness’ and distortion that would have been experienced when first encountering the object of study. How can we re-sensitise ourselves as historians to gain attention to this question? If we can use the historical imagination to allow us to recreate the past, then equally an ethnographic imagination can play a role in our media archaeological experiments. Harris’ trio of ethnographers began thinking of their sensory experiments in a very pragmatic way, of how to use different methods to study skill. They realised the importance of their role as ethnographers, in terms of how they were observing, what they brought to situations and the different imaginaries each had of what was occurring. Working as a team, they sought to foster and bring together these different stories and imaginaries. Kneebone stressed the importance of capturing what was transitional, appearing briefly then disappearing from the ‘fossil record’. Information you can only get from people who were present at the time, but that the objects themselves don’t reveal. Transitional stages are important and illuminating to look back on but easy to lose sight of.
Panel V: Media archaeology labs
The workshop’s fifth panel was organized around the theme of media archaeology labs. The panel started with a video-presentation from the Media Archaeology Lab (MAL) of the University of Colorado Boulder. The video “560 KhZ+” was produced by artist, teacher and manager of the MAL libi rose striegl. It presented some of the experiments she and MAL founder Lori Emerson have recently done with their apparatus collection of over-the-air transmission and reception devices. (See for more information about the MAL experiments, including experimental reports: https://loriemerson.net/blog/.) In their joint presentation, striegl and Emerson performed the MAL as experienced in the frequency ranges of 500-1100kHz and 30mHz to 3GHz. The video starts with how radio as a medium represents space in the sense of distance and obstruction. For instance, in the ways buildings and landforms may dictate how information can be transmitted over the air. A short-ranged television transmitter, part of the MAL collection, was used for broadcasting VHS tapes to various televisions at the MAL. It was set to broadcast channel 8, which receives a VHS signal between 180-186 MhZ, which means a wavelength of 161-166 centimeters. When talking about AM-radio, however, this means a spectrum of 560-1600 KhZ, so a wavelength of approximately 535 meters.
Their hands-on experiments with over-the-air transmission made striegl and Emerson further explore the concept of broadcast strength and the specifics of antenna shape and power. But even more interesting, they argued, is to do hands-on experiments with the objects of the MAL collection in the lab. Recent experiments involve devices that allow for harnessing the power of radio waves, such as television antennas but also a wireless intercom from the 1970s which can be used to explore other forms of open radio frequency. Furthermore, experiments have been done with a slow-scan television transmitter. Outside of radio and television as media technologies, there are actually many more devices that use radio frequencies as part of their operating procedure. For instance, devices that use bluetooth or cellular technologies to communicate, either with devices nearby or in relation to a wider international network. The MAL hosts a number of rare objects that make use of radio frequencies as such to directly communicate with each other. They experimented with a children’s laptop to create an ad hoc network that doesn’t require any external networking system but instead communicates over shortwave radio. The video demonstrated the workings of this technology and software, which could be seen as the precursor of Google Docs. The video ends with the statement that a lot of research and exploration has yet to be done with the MAL collection. Nevertheless, one conclusion can be drawn already: the hands-on experiments with over-the-air transmission and reception devices made striegl and Emerson experience and conceptualize a new way of measuring space, namely in terms of wavelengths. As a laboratory space, the MAL can be measured for instance as 10 x 20 channel 8 wavelengths in size. Navigating the world based on such measurements and thinking about what it takes for the invisible signals that emanate from every device and connect us to every other device to get through the world, striegl and Emerson conclude their presentation, gives a new sensory experience of, and perspective on both our past and current (media) landscapes.
Erkki Huhtamo followed with a video-presentation of Clarke’s Astronomical Lantern, which he conceived as a “forgotten chapter in the history of mobile media”. The presentation starts by describing the main features of this astronomical lantern: it has a chimney on top, a matte glass screen at the front, and a door at the back. Inside the device there are four candle stands. While using a light source and projecting one of the original pictures that came with the lantern, Huhtamo explained the basic operating principles of the lantern. He demonstrated how spots of light are falling into the illustration through various small holes of the plate. This lantern was patented in the United States by the American churchman and writer James Freeman Clarke in 1870. Among others, Huhtamo discusses an important part of Clarke’s lantern design: the handle. It was placed on the side of the device, which suggests the device could be used as a mobile medium. Rather than being exclusively used within the home, like other lanterns of the 18th and 19th centuries, Clarke’s astronomical lantern was meant to be taken outside and into the night. It could be used, as illustrated in various magazine advertisements, for comparing the constellations of the stars in the sky – as visualized on the lantern picture – with the real stars in the sky itself. The lantern as such was configured as a kind of game. In this presentation, Huhtamo conceptualized the lantern as a “forgotten chapter” in the history of mobile media. After all, its dispositive is rather different from other lanterns of the time, such as Franklin Bailey’s Astral Lantern, which was patented in 1881. This lantern was one of the main competitors of Clarke’s astronomical lantern, yet was designed to be used exclusively inside the home. From a media archaeological point of view, Huhtamo argues that it is interesting to place Clarke’s lantern as an object not just within its own historical context, but also to connect it to manifestations of today’s media culture. The smartphone app “Star Walk” (now ‘Star Walk 2‘), for instance, can be seen as a reinvention of Clarke’s astronomical lantern in the era of “Augmented Stargazing”. The Star Walk app, Huhtamo argues, turns the smartphone into an astronomical lantern, which raises various interesting media archaeological questions. It makes us think about, for instance, the genealogy of “mobile media”. Furthermore, Clarke’s astronomical lantern provides an interesting case study about the interconnections between media technology (‘technological apparata’) and media dispositifs. Finally, the object raises questions about cultural influence versus independent creation: did the developers of the “Star Walk” app know that the basic functions of their invention already existed and were used by many more than a century ago?
In the closing video “How to cut faulty record from a plastic picnic plate”, the sound and visual artist Paul De Marinis gave an illustrated account of an artistic project that was forged out of adversity, employing a mixture of practices and a novel use of materials. His story began with the destruction, caused by an industrial fire, of the Apollo Masters factory in Los Angeles, the world’s leading supplier (verging on total monopoly), of blank lacquer discs used for cutting and mastering records. Prior to this event, De Marinis had been developing an automated CNC (Computer Numerical Control) disc recording lathe that could cut grooves on a record that will randomly skip, depending on the ballistics of the turntable that they are played on. The aim was to cut a lacquer master, have it plated and pressed, so as to publish a limited edition of vinyl discs that all start out the same but diverge with play. The vagaries of each turntable the disc is played on will impart its own preferences of skips and stuck grooves and reinforce them on each play. He was about to place an order for lacquer discs when the Apollo fire happened. Soon after, the Covid-19 pandemic struck the West and De Marinis was unable to access his studio to continue work, but had to continue all his research and art-making from a small garden shed in his backyard. New projects had to be developed along with other media to work on. At the suggestion of Gib Epling, a recording lathe expert who as West-Tech Services in Ohio, repairs cutter-heads from old lathes, De Marinis learnt how to cut 7-inch flexi disc records made from plastic picnic plates – a common and long-standing practice among DIY disc recording enthusiasts. During the Spring & Summer of 2020, he created a system for cutting expendable records that reproduce the sound of random skips, even if they proceed from the lead-in groove, smoothly across the disc to the lead out groove. These were developed initially as an experiment in listening attention, but became his contribution to a collaborative work with Laetitia Sonami and Sue-C, for the Experimental Sound Studio Online Gala event, Chicago, July 2020. For this event, He gave a DJ performance using a host of his self-made 7-inch plastic discs, each one having been cut with random skips & leaps to extend and also rush through familiar sound and music recordings. A deep scratch on a vinyl record will, on each rotation of the disc, cause the needle to randomly skip one groove forwards or backwards or may continue to play, albeit with a loud click. In order to emulate this effect, De Marinis devised an ingenious system using a magnetic sensor on the turntable of his 1948 Rek-O-Kut recording lathe. Each revolution of the turntable triggers the sensor to send a signal to a Max MSP patch installed on a computer, which responds by outputting the duration of one revolution of audio signal to the disc-cutter. The Max MSP patch generates random files, that either simulate the skipping forwards and backwards or that proceed to the next groove’s worth of audio material. De Marinis also added additional audio files of groove glitch sounds to add to the plausibility of a record playing that is constantly skipping. Making the discs involves cutting a perfect circle from the plastic plate, punching a centre hole for the turntable spindle and mounting the disc on a metal base for cutting on the lathe. In this demonstration De Marinis used the Beatles’ “Hard Day’s Night” as the audio track.
De Marinis’ employment of multiple practices and techniques and the experimental nature of the end result proved fascinating on many levels: from his combining of old disc-cutting methods with state-of-the-art digital automation and DIY handicrafts, to the use of glitch and malfunctioning media as the basis for creating music recordings. The moving back and forth in time, not only historically, but within the recording itself, and the creative use of media technologies were topics that were constantly referred to in the ensuing discussions.
The astronomical lantern, as demonstrated by Huhtamo, raised questions around early handheld image viewing devices. Prior to this, most viewing devices were always stationary and placed on a pedestal. His lantern is fitted with a handle which may or may not be original to the device. Another example had a wire loop inserted into small holes made in the top of the lantern. This user-made modification is interesting as it shows a concern for stabilising the device perhaps by hanging it from a tree in the outdoors at night. Another example of an early handheld optical device, the Claude glass (or black mirror) – a curved glass used by artists to capture the outline of a landscape – had metal rings on each side that allowed the user to hang the glass from a wall or stand, perhaps to give more freedom for sketching and painting. While these objects are essentially mobile devices, such features or modifications show a tendency to enhance their performance by stabilising and fixing them in place when in use, although there is no mention made of this in the historical sources. These small details are very relevant when talking about media archaeology. Interestingly, with the early image viewers such as the astronomical lantern and also the phantasmagoria lanterns, physical bodily motion is needed to make the effect work. The device becomes an extension of hand and body. With the astronomical lantern, there is an interconnection with the body, the device, and the visual matching of the lantern images to the night sky.
It was furthermore noted in the discussion that when we replicate historical objects, we often refer back to their first genuine form. However, so many devices that have been in use become modified and get improved over time. In some fields, such as surgery, there is a constant state of improvement, innovation and improvisation, as discussed in Kneebone’s presentation. There is more difficulty when going back to the distant past, as there is no opportunity to do ethnographic work with surviving users. Objects are not “static things”, especially if they have a history of use. The art practice of De Marinis raises this issue in its own way. He often takes existing devices, ideas and patents as inspiration, but reinvents that technology for his own artistic purpose, opening up or revealing its unused possibilities and directions. In media archaeology, we can make links and parallels between such practices and different cultural contexts of use. He speculated as to whether scholars and theorists should investigate improvements on existing patents in the archive, making intermediate patents and designs for historical devices.
Emerson and striegl’s presentation was discussed with regard to infrastructure. Often and particularly with objects associated with mass media, we can make them function again, but are missing the infrastructure, such as the television or radio frequencies in which they operate. The MAL has a limited distance television transmitter and is planning to build a small scale cellar infrastructure, therefore they don’t require access to external sources. Broadcasting on a short scale they don’t experience interference when working within the confines of the building. Their work also searches the nooks and crannies of the wider existing infrastructure to find what is not visible, neglected or on its way to becoming obsolete. Experiments with early computers such as the Altair, showed that it could transmit radio frequencies on the AM band to a nearby radio. Some early computers such as TRS 80 produce sounds without having a loudspeaker and have games that use this feature to make sound effects and music. It was posited that work should be done on different analogue and digital electronic devices, to work with interferences and radio transmissions to “detect an algorithm of electronic media” which could be an interesting epistemology of electronic media devices as well as for artistic experimentation. The $100 laptop featured in Emerson and striegl’s video is a relatively recent device and also a controversial one, being part of ideological efforts and structures to bring computing to poor parts of Africa through the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) initiative. This laptop model was sold until only a few years ago and is a device that became very well known via the internet. One asks, “how close to the present do we need to extend this kind of experimental media archaeological approach?”. In response it was argued that although they were widely known, most people have not seen them in real life or touched them. Things that were released or marketed relatively recently but that quickly became discontinued are important avenues for exploration, partly because of the lack of physical experience of them among the general population. There are also devices that are commonly used by the general public, but that have been discontinued from production. However, important things may be learnt from them, even if they are relatively new.
Panel VI: Closing discussion
The workshop concluded with a closing discussion that focused on the theoretical and methodological issues of performative experiments. It began with a question about how the experimentation that we saw during the day has been documented and shared. Referring to the creative approach taken by some in presenting their documentation footage, it was asked how artistic and historical approaches can go hand in hand when doing media archaeological experiments and historical re-enactments. Are they complementary or contradictory to each other? In striegl’s case, her background in film studies and film production has led to a preference for a more artistic and experimental method of documentation. The MAL is increasingly becoming a centre for the practiced-based PhD program, “Intermedia Art, Writing and Performance” (IAWP) at the University of Colorado Boulder, from which striegl graduated. A required course is a seminar on “Doing Media Archaeology”, whose underlying premise is that in keeping with ideas that are appropriate to media archaeology, and in order to move away from teleologies and linearity, it is necessary to employ creative and experimental methods.
Returning to De Marinis’ earlier suggestion about the study of patents, it was observed that we take them as a symbol for invention. However, patent libraries are also archives of buried creativity and can be a great source of inspiration for us as researchers and historians. Few of the inventions in these libraries successfully became innovations. However, there is a lot of potential, from a media archeological perspective, to explore these archives. Not only to study them as texts, but also to give ourselves agency to become creative; to try to improve on, rebuild or reconstruct these inventions. Within the DEMA project, such work is actively being pursued in our on-going collaborations with the Department of Engineering of the University of Luxembourg, where replicas of historical artefacts, such as the Kinora motion picture viewer and the Auxetophone and Stentorphone devices for the pneumatic reproduction of sound from gramophones, are being constructed using CAD modelling and 3D printing. These projects are being undertaken by students as part of course work and case studies where, in addition to studying the patents of these artefacts and reconstructing exact replicas, they are also being tasked to look for improvements and modifications to the original designs. It should be noted, however, that this initiative has come from the engineering course supervisor and as a pedagogical exercise, and not prompted by the DEMA research team.
Stols-Witlox asked if the dimension of time is an omnipresent undercurrent in media archaeology. When we not only look back to the past but also to the present and towards the future, then what do we classify as media archaeology and what lies within and outside of it, given the diversity of fields represented in this workshop? Huhtamo understands media archaeology as a conceptual time machine, travelling back and forth in time. A future dimension can play a role, but always in relation to those other moments in time. It is a dialogical approach, trying to bridge moments and places together, and creating dialogues between those moments and technological devices. The time machine metaphor is something that media theorist Siegfried Zielinski has explored in his work. De Marinis recounted that he had offered a class in art practice called Media Archaeology at the Department of Art and Art History at Stanford University, only to receive very few students. When he changed the name to “Future Media, Media Archaeologies“, the take-up increased considerably. Fickers argued that media archaeology is a “provocation to the field of history and media history”, which has told the history of media as a linear, teleological narrative of leading and enduring types of media. An ambition of media archaeology is to go back to what Reinhart Koselleck called the “horizon of expectation” that existed when people developed new technologies. We know that only a fraction of those inventions went on to become innovations. Media archaeology, as an approach, goes back to that moment of openness of historical development in order to see the potential history and not just the history that we already know.
In closing, Fickers announced a forthcoming edited volume to be published at the end of the DEMA project, which takes up many of the themes from the many presentations and works featured in workshops and events organised by the DEMA team. He expressed his hope for collaboration from the participants on this publication.
