How to make

photosculpture.V (1)

How does material or information pass through the generations? As affect, as engram, as copy: mediated by the technologies of its reproduction.
The re-use of objects, of commodities within art has a rich lineage of traditions, assemblage, bricolage, ready-made, collage and recently circuit bending, the creative short-circuiting of electronic gadgets. This repurposing of obsolescence has also become a tool of Media Archaeology, a ‘methodology for lost ideas’. J. Parikka

In Beyond the Cybernetic Hypothesis (2012) Alexander Galloway reconstructed a genealogy not for the moving image but for the information model. In this lecture he highlighted Francios Willeme’s 19th Century Photosculpture apparatus as an early form of digital data capture. This was remade by Winchester School of Art, in order to better understand recently acquired 3D scanning and printing equipment.

This presentation will discuss the project explore its relationship to techne, the knowing how to make things and how this might have illuminated another aspect of theory, ‘that unlike the modern conception of theory which stresses the detached observation of a phenomenal event, (this) emphasises the act of witness and the ancient notion of theoria which contributes to the emergence of the event participated in.’ N. Davey

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I completed a BA in Archaeology and Anthropology at University of Cambridge in 2007. I then worked in commercial archaeology before beginning a masters in Archaeological Computing at the University of Southampton in 2010. I am now undertaking a PhD with the ACRG focussing on the visualisation and analysis of medieval Cairo, with particular emphasis on simulating movement, visibility and acoustics. My research interests include procedural modelling, visualisation of ancient cities, the visualisation of uncertainty in archaeological reconstructions, medieval and Roman urbanism, the archaeology of early Christianity and Islam.

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