criticism – loriemerson

Six (Difficult and Inconvenient) Values to Reclaim the Future with Old Media

Below is the pre-print version of a book chapter I wrote for The Bloomsbury Handbook to the Digital Humanities, edited by James O’Sullivan and forthcoming in 2022. Gratitude to James for the opportunity to write this piece! * In the face of entrepreneurs’ and tech companies’ attempts to over determine the shape of what’s to […]

by Lori Emerson

The Net Has Never Been Neutral

Below is a piece, part of my larger Other Networks project, I originally posted on my blog some years ago but then took it down in the hopes that it would find a home in a journal. I’ve since realized that it would be better to share this piece on my website after all! *** […]

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

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 […]

by Lori Emerson

Towards Feminist Labs: Provocations for Collective Knowledge-Making

“Towards Feminist Labs: Provocations for Collection Knowledge-Making” (pdf) is an essay co-written by Maya Livio and Lori Emerson and appears in Critical Makers Reader, edited by Loes Bogers and Letizia Chiappini (Institute of Network Cultures, 2019). Below are the introductory paragraphs for our piece. * In recent years, the lab as a site of knowledge […]

by Lori Emerson

Lab as Living Thing, Media Archaeological Fundus as Assemblage

The following is a draft version of an essay that appears in Achaeographies: A Festschrift for Wolfgang Ernst, Ed. Stefan Holtgen. Berlin, Germany: Schwabe Verlag Publishers (2019): 37-46. *** “Lab as Living Thing, Media Archaeological Fundus as Assemblage” 0.0 I checked. The first email I received from Wolfgang Ernst was in 2012. When it arrived in […]

by Lori Emerson

Excavating, Archiving, Making Media Inscriptions // In and Beyond the Media Archaeology Lab

“Excavating, Archiving, Making Media Inscriptions // In and Beyond the Media Archaeology Lab” appears in Inscription, published in Gothenburg, Sweden by their Regional State Archives (2018): 247-272. * This autobiographical short essay provides a snapshot of how scholarship might engage with the materiality of seemingly immaterial media and thus, by extension, with the ways in […]

by Lori Emerson

Media Archaeology Lab as Platform for Undoing and Reimagining Media History

“The Media Archaeology Lab as Platform for Undoing and Reimagining Media History” appears in Hands on Media History: A new methodology in the humanities and social sciences (Routledge 2019), edited by Nick Hall and John Ellis. * Introduction It is hard not to notice the rapid proliferation of labs in the arts and humanities over […]

by Lori Emerson

now out: “Anarchive as technique in the Media Archaeology Lab | building a one Laptop Per Child mesh network”

I am thrilled to have had the opportunity to co-author a paper, titled “Anarchive as technique in the Media Archaeology Lab | building a one Laptop Per Child mesh network,” with a remarkable PhD student I work with, libi striegl. It is now out as open access in the inaugural issue of The International Journal […]

by Lori Emerson

What and Where is the Interface in Virtual Reality? An Interview with Illya Szilak on Queerskins

It’s been four years since the publication of Reading Writing Interfaces (University of Minnesota Press 2014) and admittedly, to my ears and eyes, the first chapter on gestural and multitouch interfaces already seems outdated – at least outdated in terms of specific tech if not in terms of the general principles. If I were going […]