For some time I have been developing ideas about media archaeology. There's a lot about this in my blog, some notes too in traumwerk, my wiki.
Media archaeology. Tracking the traces and remains of media, old and new. There are archaeological matters at the heart of all media, involving questions like:
- what, archaeologically, happens and has happened to the technology, apparatuses, instruments and products of media?
- how does the material and archaeological aspect
of a medium affect its operation?
- how does the archaeological and material aspect of media help us understand them in new ways?
Thhis summer I discovered daguerreotypes. The beginnings, almost alchemical, of modern photography. This sequence comes from the height of popularity of the medium in the 1850s.
But these are not just simply early photographs. Daguerreotypes are wonderfully hard to view. They switch between positive and negative in a polished silvered plate. They are delicate, scratch easily, and fade.
These are flawed daguerreotypes. I was drawn to those that are damaged, discarded, neglected. All have lost their protective cases. Many appear blank at first glance.
I couldn't at first capture the images with any camera or lighting technique. But then I discovered that my scanner not only did what the camera couldn't, but also picked up what you couldn't or could hardly see by just looking at the plate.
The irony then is that computer scanning brings to light in these earliest of fixed images what seemed lost forever.