TALK: Culture(s) in the Keyhole: An Archaeology of Peep Media
Erkki Huhato (Dept. of Design | Media Arts, UCLA)
Friday, May 16 / 11:30 AM
1714 Ellison
Peeping is one of those issues that psychologically inclined observers tend to consider as pre- (or infra-) cultural: belonging to the “human nature” and perhaps even to our “animal nature.” Whether it originated from our innate curiosity towards the “outside,” from the survival instinct, or from the shock of witnessing the “primal scene” are issues that are of no interest in this lecture. The focus will be on “peep media” as an aspect of interfacing with technology during the past five hundred years. The lecture considers peeping as a topos, a culturally determined construct that is affected by and affects in turn other cultural forms. Here are some of the questions that will be raised: When, how and why did “peep media” develop? How has the idea of peeping been “built into” technical apparatuses of vision? How has it been exploited and for what purposes? Erkki Huhtamo’s research has dealt with topics such as peep media, the pre-history of the screen, tactility in art history and the archaeology of mobile media.
Sponsored by the Department of Film and Media Studies, the Department of the History of Art and Architecture, and the IHC.
