scholarly journals Crosscurrents in ‘micro’ marketing: home computers and media genealogy

Artnodes ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jörgen Skågeby
Keyword(s):  
Research Question ◽  
Media History ◽  
Digital Culture ◽  
Marketing Concept ◽  
Science And Engineering ◽  
Home Computer ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Home Computers ◽  
Single User ◽  
Software And Hardware

From the late 1970s to the mid 1980s, many countries experienced a “home computer boom”. The “home computer” (or “micro” as it was colloquially referred to) had become a viable marketing concept because companies, having developed advanced and expensive machines for business, science and engineering applications, now identified a new market segment for more affordable, accessible, and less advanced single-user “home computers”. The domestication of the computer is, naturally, an interesting phase in media history, revealing intermedialities, continuities, and disruptions in the development of digital culture. By analysing home computer marketing as it appears from 1981 to 1985 in magazine advertisements, this paper argues that we can come to a better understanding of the mutually transformative relation between the inherently technical design and language of software and hardware engineering and the ideological and cultural language of computerisation. The key research question for this paper is: How was the inherently technical language, and indeed material operations, of software and hardware engineering transcoded into marketing concepts? Or, in other words, how was human agency and technological agency negotiated through the visual language of marketing? Answering this question will provide insights into how the impending computerisation of society started to take place at an ideological and semiotic level, which in turn is underpinned by the material capacities of media technologies. As a result, the paper identifies three tentative ‘crosscurrents’ where materialities, agencies and discourses are negotiated.

scholarly journals Migrating Home Computer Audio Waveforms to Digital Objects: A Case Study on Digital Archaeology

2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-98
Author(s):  
Mark Guttenbrunner ◽  
Mihai Ghete ◽  
Annu John ◽  
Chrisanth Lederer ◽  
Andreas Rauber
Keyword(s):  
Working Condition ◽  
Original System ◽  
Digital Data ◽  
Audio Tape ◽  
Specific Storage ◽  
Home Computer ◽  
Storage Media ◽  
Home Computers ◽  
Digital Archaeology

Rescuing data from inaccessible or damaged storage media for the purpose of preserving the digital data for the long term is one of the dimensions of digital archaeology. With the current pace of technological development, any system can become obsolete in a matter of years and hence the data stored in a specific storage media might not be accessible anymore due to the unavailability of the system to access the media. In order to preserve digital records residing in such storage media, it is necessary to extract the data stored in those media by some means.One early storage medium for home computers in the 1980s was audio tape. The first home computer systems allowed the use of standard cassette players to record and replay data. Audio cassettes are more durable than old home computers when properly stored. Devices playing this medium (i.e. tape recorders) can be found in working condition or can be repaired, as they are usually made out of standard components. By re-engineering the format of the waveform and the file formats, the data on such media can then be extracted from a digitised audio stream and migrated to a non-obsolete format.In this paper we present a case study on extracting the data stored on an audio tape by an early home computer system, namely the Philips Videopac+ G7400. The original data formats were re-engineered and an application was written to support the migration of the data stored on tapes without using the original system. This eliminates the necessity of keeping an obsolete system alive for enabling access to the data on the storage media meant for this system. Two different methods to interpret the data and eliminate possible errors in the tape were implemented and evaluated on original tapes, which were recorded 20 years ago. Results show that with some error correction methods, parts of the tapes are still readable even without the original system. It also implies that it is easier to build solutions while original systems are still available in a working condition.

scholarly journals The Power of the In-Between: Intermediality as a Tool for Aesthetic Analysis and Critical Reflection

10.16993/baq ◽  
2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Critical Reflection ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Individual Case ◽  
Media History ◽  
Cultural Objects ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Media Objects ◽  
Theatre Studies ◽  
Methodological Approaches ◽  
The Aesthetic

The Power of the In-Between: Intermediality as a Tool for Aesthetic Analysis and Critical Reflection gathers fourteen individual case studies where intermedial issues—issues concerning that which takes place in between media—are explored in relation to a range of different cultural objects and contexts, different methodological approaches, and different disciplinary perspectives. The cases investigate the intermediality of such manifold objects and phenomena as contemporary installation art, twentieth-century geography books, renaissance sculpture, media theory, and public architecture of the 1970s. They also bring together scholars from the disciplines of art history, comparative literature, theatre studies, musicology, and the history of ideas.Starting out from an inclusive understanding of intermediality as “relations between media conventionally perceived as different,” each author specifies and investigates “intermediality” in their own particular case; that is, each examines how it is inflected by particular objects, methods, and research questions. “Intermediality” thus serves both as a concept employed to cover an inclusive range of cultural objects, cultural contexts, methodological approaches, and so on, and as a concept to be modelled out by the particular cases it is brought to bear on. Rather than merely applying a predefined concept, the objectives are experimental. The authors explore the concept of intermediality as a malleable tool of research.This volume further makes a point of transgressing the divide between media history and semiotically and/or aesthetically oriented intermedial studies. The former concerns the specificity of media technologies and media interrelations in socially, politically, and epistemologically defined space and time, and the latter targets formal considerations of media objects and its various meaning-making elements. These two conventionally separated fields of research are integrated in order to produce a richer understanding of the analytical and historical, as well as the aesthetic and technological, conditions and possibilities of intermedial phenomena.

scholarly journals Analogue video in the age of retrospectacle

2017 ◽  
pp. 39-58
Author(s):  
Jonathan Rozenkrantz
Keyword(s):  
Magnetic Tape ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Video Art ◽  
Digital Culture ◽  
Short Film ◽  
Music Video ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Visual Variable ◽  
Material Conditions

This article explores the various manifestations of analogue video in digital culture. Introducing the framing concept of an aesthetics of remanence, it argues that the “society of the spectacle” (Debord) has entered an age of retrospectacle, a dominant signifier of which is the remediation and/or simulation of analogue videography. The concept of remanence connects the material conditions of magnetic tape with analogue video’s aesthetic expressions, and the cultural situation in which analogue video finds itself today. By looking at three different cases related to retro gaming, contemporary hip hop, and “old skool” rave, the article shows how the aesthetics of remanence remains highly susceptible to subcultural sensibilities—while it also functions as their shared visual variable. The short film Kung Fury (David Sandberg, 2015) is a playfully post-ironic recuperation of failed media technologies. The music video “Fromdatomb$” (David M. Helman, 2012) is a complex exploration of the idea(l) of the historical real. And the work of video art Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore (Mark Leckey, 1999) is a creative treatment of nostalgia which invites us to reconsider the medical origins of the term.

Shaping Interactive Media with the Sewing Machine

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 12-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniela Reimann
Keyword(s):  
Interactive Media ◽  
Media Art ◽  
Electronic Textiles ◽  
Science And Engineering ◽  
Mobile Media ◽  
Sewing Machine ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Smart Textile ◽  
Contemporary Media ◽  
Flexible Applications

In the context of converging media technologies, the concept of mobile media embedded in wearable material was introduced. Wearable Computing, Fashionable Technology, and Smart Textile are being developed at the intersection of media, art, design, computer science, and engineering. However, in Germany, little research has been undertaken into Smart Textile in education1. Those activities are not realized at school in the context of artistic processes in general MINT2 education in classroom settings. In order to research the interplay of electronic textiles and wearable technology, hard and software tools, such as Arduino LilyPad, a programmable board designed for stitching into clothing and flexible applications are scrutinized. In the project, contemporary media art projects in the field of Fashionable Technology are explored to inspire interdisciplinary technology education. The project described in this paper engages girls in technology and engineering by integrating artistic processes as well as a more playcentric approach to technology and engineering education.

Mobile Electronic Media

Transfers ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heike Weber
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Electronic Media ◽  
Media History ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Mobile Media ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Sport Activities ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

This article takes the history of mobile electronic media as a vantage point from which to view a transformation in everyday Western mobility culture. It argues that mobile media technologies rather than transport technologies constitute today's guiding symbols of mobility whilst mobility itself is seen as going beyond physical movement. In the late twentieth century, its understanding has been broadened and now refers to the mere capacity to be ready for action and, thus, movement. This shift from movement to the potential to move can be observed in the material culture of mobile media. Initially designed to accompany travel, tourism or sport activities, portable radios or cell phones have been increasingly used in stationary or domestic settings, thereby challenging the Western dualisms of mobile/sedentary and public/private. On a methodological level, a focus on mobile media history involves merging the fields of media and transport history with the aim of arriving at a comprehensive mobility history.

scholarly journals Swipe-Technology’s Influence in Born Digital Culture: Redesigning Pedagogy in Early Childhood Education

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashley Tencer
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Learning Styles ◽  
Digital Literacy ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
Digital Culture ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
The Social ◽  
Digital Language ◽  
The Impact

This essay examines the ways in which technology defines and divides generations and considers how swipe-­technology (touch-­screen technologies) shape emerging learning styles. Specifically, it focuses on the research currently being investigated on how forms of digital literacy represent a radical shift, away from traditional forms of literacy (Prensky, 2001a, b; Frand, 2000; Prensky, 2001b; Tapscott, 1997; Franco, 2013; Plowman & McPake, 2013; Infante, 2014; Passey, 2014) and evaluates various claims made about the social consequences of such change. This paper emphasizes the impact that swipe-­technology has on young children during early stages of their development and seeks to answer the following question: what are the consequences of digital language becoming the Born Digital’s (Franco, 2013) primary form of expression? The paper draws on some traditional theories such as those of Mannheim (Kecskemeti, 1952) and Vygotsky (1929, 1962, 1978) to provide a broader contextualization. In so doing, it hopes to contribute to the dialogue about how educational institutions should be redesigned to accommodate new media technologies.

Shaping Interactive Media with the Sewing Machine

2012 ◽  
pp. 1342-1351
Author(s):  
Daniela Reimann
Keyword(s):  
Interactive Media ◽  
Media Art ◽  
Electronic Textiles ◽  
Science And Engineering ◽  
Mobile Media ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Technology And Engineering Education ◽  
Smart Textile ◽  
Contemporary Media ◽  
Flexible Applications

In the context of converging media technologies, the concept of mobile media embedded in wearable material was introduced. Wearable Computing, Fashionable Technology, and Smart Textile are being developed at the intersection of media, art, design, computer science, and engineering. However, in Germany, little research has been undertaken into Smart Textile in education1. Those activities are not realized at school in the context of artistic processes in general MINT2 education in classroom settings. In order to research the interplay of electronic textiles and wearable technology, hard and software tools, such as Arduino LilyPad, a programmable board designed for stitching into clothing and flexible applications are scrutinized. In the project, contemporary media art projects in the field of Fashionable Technology are explored to inspire interdisciplinary technology education. The project described in this paper engages girls in technology and engineering by integrating artistic processes as well as a more playcentric approach to technology and engineering education.

Lesbian Cinephilia and Digital Affordances

2021 ◽  
pp. 72-90
Author(s):  
Patricia White
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Media History ◽  
Film Adaptation ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Queer Women ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Hollywood Films ◽  
Digital Era ◽  
Todd Haynes ◽  
Classical Hollywood

This chapter revisits critical work on the challenges and promises of lesbian cinema spectatorship in light of new media technologies that allow for citation of audiovisual images. Analog videos made by lesbians in the 1990s about the homoerotic pleasures of watching classical Hollywood films are compared with contemporary queer fan videos and community practices on the internet as well as with scholarly video essays. Close readings of these works speculate on the connections between the datedness of cinema as a medium in the digital era and uneasiness with the connotations of the term lesbian on the part of contemporary queer women. Carol, the 2016 film adaptation, by Phyllis Nagy and Todd Haynes, of the 1950s lesbian romance by Patricia Highsmith is an example of a work that appeals to contemporary viewers by engaging both lesbian and media history.

A Trans Historiography of Glitches and Errors

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 197-230
Author(s):  
Whitney (Whit) Pow
Keyword(s):  
Computer System ◽  
Digital Tv ◽  
Media History ◽  
Media Production ◽  
Home Computer ◽  
History Of ◽  
Game Console ◽  
Experimental Video

In 1978, queer and transgender programmer Jamie Faye Fenton created the first piece of experimental video glitch art, Digital TV Dinner, using the Bally Astrocade, a home computer and game console of her own design that was, for six months, the cheapest home computer available. Digital TV Dinner stands as a record of computational failure: it was created by Fenton through a pointed misuse of the computer system that caused the screen to dissolve into waves of pixelated glitches. What might it mean to center the glitch as a historically trans mode of media production? And how might we write trans media history as a history of unmediation—that is, a history of undoing mediation? A history of things that cannot be documented, or that evade or dismantle mediation, in which the fullness of trans life and history exceeds the images presented in the screen itself?

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