MachineMachine /stream - tagged with archaeology http://machinemachine.net/stream/feed en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Sweetcron text@machinemachine.net Cross-section of a tree played like a record on a turntable http://boingboing.net/2012/01/19/cross-section-of-a-tree-played.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter/cross-section-of-a-tree-played-like-a-record-on-a-turntable-boing-boing Cross section of a tree played like a record on a turntable (via @boingboing) http://t.co/GRnvPszB ]]> Thu, 19 Jan 2012 08:54:06 -0700 http://boingboing.net/2012/01/19/cross-section-of-a-tree-played.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter/cross-section-of-a-tree-played-like-a-record-on-a-turntable-boing-boing On A History of the World in 100 Objects http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Objects-101-7212 Objects 101 by Roger Sandall What interests me here however is something else—the profoundly paradoxical position of MacGregor himself. When resisting Greek calls for the return of the Elgin Marbles, he is on record as saying that it is his museum’s duty to “preserve the universality of the marbles and to protect them from being appropriated as a nationalistic political symbol.” They belong to mankind, they are part of the human heritage, and though the Greeks may wish to regard them as an integral part of their national identity, the Greeks, alas, must be seen here as the deluded victims… ]]> Mon, 14 Nov 2011 07:59:54 -0700 http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Objects-101-7212 Zombie Editions: An Archaeology of POD Areopagiticas http://blog.whitneyannetrettien.com/2010/12/zombie-editions-archaeology-of-pod.html This is a zombie edition, one of many I found for early modern texts on Amazon. Produced as cheap print-on-demand editions from EEBO or GoogleBook scans, they're listed alongside reputable scholarly print editions published by university presses, indistinguishable at first glance except for a few glaring markers. Like a mismatched cover image -- -- or excessively expressive titles: Closer examination reveals their undead status. In the case of English Reprints Jhon Milton Areopagitica, the publisher is the aptly-named BiblioLife, a project of BiblioLabs, which designs software "to address the challenges of cost-effectively bringing old books back to life." (BiblioLabs takes… ]]> Sun, 16 Oct 2011 09:06:15 -0700 http://blog.whitneyannetrettien.com/2010/12/zombie-editions-archaeology-of-pod.html The ancient cloud http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/ancient-cloud The crowd-sourced, wikinomic cloud is the new, new thing that all management consultants are now telling their clients to embrace. Yet the cloud is not a new thing at all. It has been the source of human invention all along. Human technological advancement depends not on individual intelligence but on collective idea sharing, and it has done so for tens of thousands of years. Human progress waxes and wanes according to how much people connect and exchange. ]]> Sat, 24 Sep 2011 08:50:36 -0700 http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/ancient-cloud How Can We Understand Code as a "Critical Artifact"? http://henryjenkins.org/2011/09/how_can_we_understand_code_as.html The working definition for Critical Code Studies (CCS) is "the application of humanities style hermeneutics to the interpretation of computer source code." However, lately, I have found it more useful to explain the field to people as the analysis of technoculture (culture as imbricated with technology) through the entry point of the source code of a particular digital object. The code is not the ends of the analyses, but the beginning. Critical Code Studies finds code meaningful not as text but "as a text," an artifact of a digital moment, full of hooks for discussing digital culture and programming communities.… ]]> Wed, 21 Sep 2011 04:23:48 -0700 http://henryjenkins.org/2011/09/how_can_we_understand_code_as.html How Can We Understand Code as a "Critical Artifact"? http://henryjenkins.org/2011/09/how_can_we_understand_code_as.html The working definition for Critical Code Studies (CCS) is "the application of humanities style hermeneutics to the interpretation of computer source code." However, lately, I have found it more useful to explain the field to people as the analysis of technoculture (culture as imbricated with technology) through the entry point of the source code of a particular digital object. The code is not the ends of the analyses, but the beginning. Critical Code Studies finds code meaningful not as text but "as a text," an artifact of a digital moment, full of hooks for discussing digital culture and programming communities.… ]]> Tue, 20 Sep 2011 10:26:12 -0700 http://henryjenkins.org/2011/09/how_can_we_understand_code_as.html Accuracy takes power: one man's 3GHz quest to build a perfect SNES emulator http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/08/accuracy-takes-power-one-mans-3ghz-quest-to-build-a-perfect-snes-emulator.ars Emulators for playing older games are immensely popular online, with regular arguments breaking out over which emulator is best for which game. Today we present another point of view from a gentleman who has created the Super Nintendo emulator bsnes. He wants to share his thoughts on the most important part of the emulation experience: accuracy.

It doesn't take much raw power to play Nintendo or SNES games on a modern PC; emulators could do it in the 1990s with a mere 25MHz of processing power. But emulating those old consoles accurately—well, that's another challenge entirely; accurate… ]]> Thu, 11 Aug 2011 04:25:22 -0700 http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/08/accuracy-takes-power-one-mans-3ghz-quest-to-build-a-perfect-snes-emulator.ars The truth is in there http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2011/06/12/the_truth_is_in_there/?page=full “I had all these ideas,” he said, speaking slowly and searchingly, like someone looking back on life and trying to figure out where it all went wrong. “I don’t know what happened to me.”

What happened, strictly speaking, was that Morris fought with the head of his program, Thomas Kuhn, a decorated philosopher specializing in the history of science at Princeton. Kuhn believed it was fundamentally impossible for someone in the present to understand the past — that what was considered “true” in one era might be thought false in another, and therefore “objective reality” as such… ]]> Thu, 16 Jun 2011 16:11:12 -0700 http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2011/06/12/the_truth_is_in_there/?page=full GIF Archaeology http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/186002 I'm writing a paper on (animated) GIFs and am trying to track down some of the most (in)famous. I suppose I am talking memes, but I'm more interested in the GIF as an archaeological reference point. I frequent sites like dump.fm, tumblr etc. so am quite tuned in to the glitchy/kitschy side of GIF culture. How theoretical have people got on these wonders of the web? How does one trace the history of an animated GIF? I have a personal take on this (my paper is only short), but would love to find some well recognised, well lauded… ]]> Mon, 16 May 2011 08:17:15 -0700 http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/186002 Digital legacy: Archaeology of the future http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20395-digital-legacy-archaeology-of-the-future.html The historians of 2061 will want to study the birth of the world wide web. How on earth will they know where to start?

Today, historians have to piece together the details of their subjects' lives from tiny scraps of evidence. Their successors are more likely to be overwhelmed: the problem will be making sense of our vast digital legacies. What techniques will they use to make sense of this deluge?

Many of us now generate more data than we can manage – think of all those holiday pictures you'll never get round to… ]]> Tue, 03 May 2011 03:12:21 -0700 http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20395-digital-legacy-archaeology-of-the-future.html Radical Ethology: Jussi Parikka's Insect Media http://rhizome.org/editorial/2011/apr/20/radical-ethology-jussi-parikkas-insect-media/ In a fundamental sense, technology is deeply non-human. While we might apply a humanist logic to the function and workings of technological systems, and view technological objects as extensions of the human body and its capacity for adaptive prosthesis, the very purpose of technology is to be that which the human is not or to achieve that which the human could not otherwise do. As such, technology exists beyond the humanist understanding of the individual, the body, and the subject, particularly in contemporary network culture in which technology is in part transformed from concrete and material objects into molecular, adaptive,… ]]> Wed, 20 Apr 2011 15:25:08 -0700 http://rhizome.org/editorial/2011/apr/20/radical-ethology-jussi-parikkas-insect-media/ Clovis People Weren’t First in Americas http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/science/25archeo.html?_r=1 Archaeologists and other scientists report in Friday’s issue of the journal Science that excavations show hunter-gatherers were living at the Buttermilk Creek site and making projectile points, blades, choppers and other tools from local chert for a long time, possibly as early as 15,500 years ago. More than 50 well-formed artifacts as well as hundreds of flakes and fragments of chipping debris were embedded in thick clay sediments immediately beneath typical Clovis material. “This is the oldest credible archaeological site in North America,” Michael R. Waters, leader of the discovery team, said at a news teleconference. Dr. Waters, director of… ]]> Thu, 24 Mar 2011 16:00:47 -0700 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/science/25archeo.html?_r=1 Credit in the Straight WWW: "DDDDoomed", Berger, and the Image Aggregator http://2thewalls.com/journal/2011/1/10/credit-in-the-straight-www-ddddoomed-berger-and-the-image-ag.html [ED: Nearly all of the text in this post is taken from R. Gerald Nelson's independently published, occasionally problematic but more often brilliantly concise treatise DDDDoomed. Anyone concerned with issues of and methods pertaining to digital image dissemination, authorship and context should make an effort to purchase and read this chapbook. I cannot recommend it enough.]

"With new blogs springing up every day, beautiful images & words are springing up with them. I try to credit everything I put on this blog. I know sometimes I fail. Many of the images I feature are scanned by me… ]]> Tue, 15 Mar 2011 08:01:21 -0700 http://2thewalls.com/journal/2011/1/10/credit-in-the-straight-www-ddddoomed-berger-and-the-image-ag.html R. Gerald Nelson’s DDDDoomed essay http://www.hyperjunk.net/?p=22 R. Gerald Nelson’s DDDDoomed essay has been making the rounds lately and it sparked a healthy amount of curiosity and note-taking on my part that I felt I wanted to share with some reactions. The essay is published as the first volume of eight in Nelson’s Making Known Img Ctrl series based out of Minneapolis. The image heavy text is “crafted as a speculative fiction that unfolds from the perspective of a future commentator reflecting back and theorizing about the factors that brought about the dysfunctional state of the contemporary image world.” The highlights and corresponding notes aren’t presented in… ]]> Tue, 15 Mar 2011 07:59:20 -0700 http://www.hyperjunk.net/?p=22 Errors in Things and “The Friendly Medium” http://machinemachine.net/text/ideas/errors-in-things-and-the-friendly-medium

What is it about a particular media that makes it successful? Drawing a mini history from printing-press smudges to digital compression artefacts this lecture considers the value of error, chance and adaptation in contemporary media. Biological evolution unfolds through error, noise and mistake. Perhaps if we want to maximise the potential of media, of digital text and compressed file formats, we first need to determine their inherent redundancy. Or, more profoundly, to… ]]> Wed, 16 Feb 2011 08:39:59 -0700 http://machinemachine.net/text/ideas/errors-in-things-and-the-friendly-medium The Library in the New Age http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21514 Information is exploding so furiously around us and information technology is changing at such bewildering speed that we face a fundamental problem: How to orient ourselves in the new landscape? What, for example, will become of research libraries in the face of technological marvels such as Google?

How to make sense of it all? I have no answer to that problem, but I can suggest an approach to it: look at the history of the ways information has been communicated. Simplifying things radically, you could say that there have been four fundamental changes in information technology since… ]]> Wed, 16 Feb 2011 08:03:34 -0700 http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21514 Museum finds the only painting of the Antarctic (William Hodges) http://www.nmm.ac.uk/visit/exhibitions/past/william-hodges/william-hodges-1744-1797-the-art-of-exploration In preparing paintings for the exhibition, the head of oil painting conservation noticed usual things about some of them, prompting her to X-ray, among others, 'A view of Pickersgill Harbour, Dusky Bay'.

It was discovered that the rainforest gives way to a startlingly different view – of Antarctic icebergs in a rough sea. Clearly, Hodges had painted the Antarctic and then decided for whatever reason to paint over it – the only known 'oil painting' of the Antarctic. ]]> Wed, 16 Feb 2011 07:58:06 -0700 http://www.nmm.ac.uk/visit/exhibitions/past/william-hodges/william-hodges-1744-1797-the-art-of-exploration Unearthing Prehistoric Tumors, and Debate http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/28/health/28cancer.html Often thought of as a modern disease, cancer has always been with us. Where scientists disagree is on how much it has been amplified by the sweet and bitter fruits of civilization. Over the decades archaeologists have made about 200 possible cancer sightings dating to prehistoric times. But considering the difficulties of extracting statistics from old bones, is that a little or a lot?

A recent report by two Egyptologists in the journal Nature Reviews: Cancer reviewed the literature, concluding that there is “a striking rarity of malignancies” in ancient human remains.

“The rarity… ]]> Mon, 27 Dec 2010 16:38:00 -0700 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/28/health/28cancer.html On (Text and) Exaptation http://machinemachine.net/text/ideas/on-text-and-exaptation

(This post was written as a kind of ‘prequel’ to a previous essay, Rancière’s Ignoramus)

‘Text’ originates from the Latin word texere, to weave. A material craft enabled by a human ingenuity for loops, knots and pattern. Whereas a single thread may collapse under its own weight, looped and intertwined threads originate their strength and texture as a network. The textile speaks of repetition and multiplicity, yet it is only once we back away from the tapestry that the larger picture comes into focus.

At an industrial scale textile looms expanded beyond the frame of their human operators. Reducing… ]]> Mon, 06 Dec 2010 14:41:24 -0700 http://machinemachine.net/text/ideas/on-text-and-exaptation The Clock http://machinemachine.net/text/arts/the-clock

Language is not what it is because it has meaning… It is a fragmented nature, divided against itself and deprived of its original transparency by admixture; it is a secret that carries within itself, though near the surface, the decipherable signs of what it is trying to say. It is at the same time a buried revelation and a revelation that is gradually being restored to ever greater clarity.

Michel Foucault, The Order of Things

Every Thing has to end, but not so its fragments. Energy flows amongst systems. It constitutes as it destroys, but never does energy… ]]> Fri, 05 Nov 2010 10:11:00 -0700 http://machinemachine.net/text/arts/the-clock