{"id":7505,"date":"2021-05-24T06:35:42","date_gmt":"2021-05-24T04:35:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uni.lu\/c2dh-en\/articles\/workshop-report-performing-media-archaeological-experiments\/"},"modified":"2025-03-26T10:09:55","modified_gmt":"2025-03-26T09:09:55","slug":"workshop-report-performing-media-archaeological-experiments","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/www.uni.lu\/c2dh-en\/articles\/workshop-report-performing-media-archaeological-experiments\/","title":{"rendered":"Workshop report: Performing media archaeological experiments"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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On 18 December 2020, the second workshop of the DEMA project – Doing Experimental Media Archaeology: Practice & Theory – project took place at the C\u00b2DH. For this workshop, participants from various fields, including media history, art history, musicology, history of science, sensorial ethnography, contemporary composition and sound art were invited to share experiences on how to perform historical re-enactments and how experimental research can serve or operate in artistic practice.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

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What approaches, methods and techniques can we use in performing and disseminating historical re-enactments and hands-on experiments? What best practices and \u201cartful failures\u201d can we distinguish? How can we learn from other disciplines in performing and disseminating historical re-enactments and hands-on experiments? In what ways does the performance of historical experiments produce new forms of (tacit) knowledge? What are the performative qualities of experimental historiography? And how can artistic practices that employ experimental historical research further the study of media archaeology? By reflecting on these questions and sharing experiences on historical re-enactments in various fields and domains \u2013 including media history, art history, musicology, history of science, sensorial ethnography, contemporary composition and sound art \u2013 the workshop aimed to contribute to the development of a best practice guide and protocol that we can use for performing and disseminating media archaeological experiments in the DEMA research project.<\/p>\n\n

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Last year, we reflected on the question \u2018How to document media archaeological experiments?<\/a>\u2019. For this second workshop, which took place online due to the current Covid-19 pandemic, our aim was to discuss and share experiences on how to perform media archaeological experiments and historical re-enactments, both in historical and artistic enquiries.\u00a0Due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, one of the challenges we faced in organizing the workshop was how to present the various historical re-enactments and media archaeological performances of the workshop participants. To foster our panel discussions, we decided to ask each of the participants to prepare a short video, which highlights some of their performative work done in current or previous research projects. These videos were produced and shared among the participants in advance of the workshop. They were watched collectively during the workshop as a way to inform our panel discussions. Most of these videos are embedded in this report as well.<\/p>\n\n

In addition to the project team members, participants of this second DEMA workshop included (in order of appearance): John Ellis (Royal Holloway, University of London), Ludwig Vogl-Bienek (Philips Universit\u00e4t Marburg), Karin Bienek (illuminago), Sean Williams (Open University), Paolo Brenni (Fondazione Scienza e Tecnica of Florence), Roland Wittje (Indian Institute of Technology, Madras), Anna Giatti (Fondazione Scienza e Tecnica of Florence), Stefan H\u00f6ltgen (Humboldt-Universit\u00e4t zu Berlin), Shintaro Miyazaki (Humboldt-Universit\u00e4t zu Berlin), Martin Loiperdinger (University of Trier), Maartje Stols-Witlox (University of Amsterdam), Anna Harris (Maastricht University), Roger Kneebone (Imperial College London), Lori Emerson (Media Archaeology Lab, University of Colorado Boulder), libi rose striegl (Media Archaeology Lab, University of Colorado Boulder), Paul De Marinis (Stanford University) and Erkki Huhtamo (UCLA).<\/p>\n\n

A full report of the workshop on performing media archaeological experiments, can be read at the DEMA website here:\u00a0https:\/\/dema.uni.lu\/performing-media-archaeological-experiments-report\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n

\nPanel I: Performative experiments in the DEMA project<\/h3>\n\n\n

<\/strong>After a short welcome and introduction to the DEMA project by Andreas Fickers – the PI of the project – and Stefan Krebs – the project coordinator – the first panel included presentations by DEMA project researchers Aleksander Kolkowski and Tim van der Heijden as well as associated project partners Ludwig Vogl-Bienek and Karin Bienek.<\/p>\n\n\n

\nSignal to noise<\/h4>\n\n\n

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In his video presentation entitled \u201cSignal to noise\u201d, Aleksander Kolkowski made a homage to Alvin Lucier\u2019s seminal electro-acoustic composition \u201cI am Sitting in a Room\u201d (1969). Using a hybrid tape and disc recorder, a Wilcox-Gay Recordio<\/em> from ca 1951, Kolkowski recorded speech onto magnetic tape, which was transferred to a lacquer disc and back again to tape; all on the same machine. Just like Lucier\u2019s electro-acoustic composition, where a narrator\u2019s voice is recorded, played back into the room and re-recorded repeatedly until the natural acoustic resonances of the room are so reinforced that they overwhelm the speech, Kolkowski\u2019s experiment exemplified how in the repeated cycle of disc and tape recording the voice signal slowly transforms into noise as well. Throughout the process, his recorded voice becomes subsumed and buried under layer upon layer of tape hiss and disc-cutting and surface noises. Besides a creative reuse of the hybrid tape and disc recorder, the demonstration was also meant as a media-archaeological exploration into the usage and functions of this historical audio technology, highlighting its hybridity and the noises inherent to the tape and disc media technologies.<\/p>\n\n

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\n (c) Aleksander Kolkowski \u2013 \u201cSignal to Noise\u201d. <\/p>\n <\/figure> <\/span>\n \n

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