loriemerson

the cosmic internet

Is there a difference–or, how big could the difference really be–between a defunct network that may have stuttered along for just a year or two, thirty or forty years ago, and a fictional network that never existed at all? If the late 20th century and 21st century have taught us anything at all it’s that […]

by Lori Emerson

Why is this all so delightful? Or, Slow Networks Experiment 6

Now that the Media Archaeology Lab is, incredibly for a humanities/media lab, turning 12 years old, and now that I’ve written on the lab in many different ways (how it embodies certain principles from media archaeology, intervenes in the divide between theory/practice, empowers students to reimagine the future, gives us all meaningful access to how […]

by Lori Emerson

Slow Networks Experiment 5: very short range over-air transmission

Continuing on from “Slow Networks Experiment 1: Over-Air Tranmission,” “Slow Networks Experiments 2 & 3: VHF Radio Transmission,” and “Slow Networks Experiment 4: Videotelephony,” this time we played with a strange and relatively recent entrant to the home security market: the X-10 Wireless video sender which we believe came out in about 1998. This is a puzzling […]

by Lori Emerson

Slow Networks Experiment 4: Videotelephony

Continuing on from “Slow Networks Experiment 1: Over-Air Tranmission” and “Slow Networks Experiments 2 & 3: VHF Radio Transmission,” this time we experimented with videotelephony or videophones – the ancestor of today’s Skype and Zoom. Details below. * Date: Dec. 18, 2020 Location:Media Archaeology Lab, 1320 Grandview Ave., Boulder, CO 80309 Participants:Lori Emerson, libi striegl Network […]

by Lori Emerson

Slow Networks Experiments 2 & 3: VHF Radio Transmission

Continuing on from “Slow Networks Experiment 1: Over-Air Tranmission,” this time we performed two different experiments with VHF Radio Transmission – details below. * Experiment 2 Date: Friday Dec. 14, 2020 Location:Media Archaeology Lab, 1320 Grandview Ave., Boulder, CO 80309 Participants:Lori Emerson and libi striegl Network Type: One-to-many broadcast networkOne-directionalOver-the-Air Audio Transmission using VHF Tools:Panasonic Bi-Sider TV/FM-AM […]

by Lori Emerson

“Did We Dream Enough?” THE THING BBS as an Experiment in Social-Cyber Sculpture

In 1990, artist Wolfgang Staehle and Blackhawk (the handle for Peter Von Brandenburg…), conceived of the idea of an online virtual community for artists. By 1991, Staehle, Blackhawk, and a group of about ten others launched The Thing Bulletin Board System into what was then exuberantly called “cyberspace.” The renowned early virtual community was at first for […]

by Lori Emerson

Slow Networks experiment 1: Over-the-Air TV Transmission

Happily, I have returned to working on my “Other Networks” research project. As one facet of the project, libi striegl (manager of the Media Archaeology Lab) and I are performing weekly experiments with what I call “Slow Networks” – ‘slow’ in the sense of temporality and ‘slow’ in terms of an embrace of deliberateness (ie. […]

by Lori Emerson

Future Histories of the Internet Syllabus

Below is a syllabus for a sophomore-level class I hope to teach in Fall 2021. This class is a reflection of my ongoing work on a cluster projects I call “Other Networks“–attempts to uncover and document the technical specs and functionalities of pre-internet networks (particularly from the 1970s and early 1980s) as well as artistic […]

by Lori Emerson

Towards a Variantology of Hands On Practice

Thanks to the hard work of co-editors Patrick Ellison and Collin Williamson, a special issue of Early Popular Visual Culture is now out – “Object Lessons, Old and New: Experimental Media Archaeology in the Classroom.” Below is the final draft of the Afterword I wrote, in which I outline six opportunities provided by hands-on practice, […]

by Lori Emerson

Interfaced

Thanks to the hard work of Matthew Rubery and Leah Price, Further Reading: Oxford Twenty-first Century Approaches to Literature (Oxford UP) has just been published with an incredible line-up of people. I revisited and expanded on some ideas I wrote about in Reading Writing Interfaces via my piece “Interfaced” – a draft version of which […]