Media Archaeology . . . . . . . Feb 2025

       Part of my coursework for useless machines, taught by Blair Simmons, this sculpture was made in response to reading an excerpt from Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications, and Implications by Jussi Parikka and Erkki Huhtamo. I created the project coming from the idea that media archaeology is an emerging study and that nothing done within it is necessarily correct (2); I didn’t quite know what the assignment wanted or what I wanted to give as a maker. 

       I take on this idea in my project by creating a sculpture prominently displaying a meticulously modern, yet retro colorwaved screwdriver pointed down towards some dated mediums of media, where here they’ve become a little bit of both (5). Compactape and what I assume must be some variation of film reel are represented, although I’ve swapped it out with an LED strip. The screwdriver too evokes a callout to a certain media. Indeed it is the poster child of LTT’s merch, a well known YouTube channel dedicated to technology. Like Sigfried Geidion, I was drawn to the concept of “tools that shape our everyday life” (6) as I feel like that goes back to a question asked in class about “What is art?” “What is design?” “What is a useful/useless machine?” or “What makes one of those things what they are?” Through technological advances, we, some people, create new media, arts, tools, etc. as a reflection or part of our culture that fulfills the “technology-culture-subject” triad, all this before repeating itself and “dressing up” the “molds” of old to be something new (14).

       Consider the fact that just about all the pieces for this project came from the IMA junk shelf. They were all things I took to be old out of a group of others just as old or devalued items, a literal manifestation of the culture (3) of constantly building and breaking things. I treated pieces and the work with sincerity and seriousness despite its seeming randomness. I built something up to show you. In time, it will be broken down once again.