media archaeology lab – loriemerson

Flexible, Emergent, and Medium-Specific | Methodologies for Hands-On Experimentation

Below is the text of a talk I’m giving on September 8, 2022 for the Doing Experimental Media Archaeology research group at the University of Luxembourg. The text is written to be a talk, which means I haven’t been as thorough about citing outside sources as I would if it were to be published. *** […]

by Lori Emerson

The Importance of Getting the Weather on Your Atari 800, or, Slow Networks Experiment 7

Happily, libi striegl and I are slowly getting back to our Slow Networks experiments in the Media Archaeology Lab we began in 2020 as a way to, well, stay sane during the pandemic and have a little fun. To inaugurate our return, today’s experiment involves learning how to use our Fujinet network adapter. We first […]

by Lori Emerson

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

Excavating Future Histories of the Internet: AfroNet | Newsletter | Telegraph

I forgot how pleasurable and meaningful it can be to write book reviews! I am, then, very grateful to the Los Angeles Review of Books for publishing my review of three books (“Alternative Internets and Their Lost Histories“) which all, in their way, excavate alternative visions of the internet: Charlton McIlwain’s Black Software, Cait McKinney’s […]

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 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

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

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

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 […]