Beyond the Image Machine A History of Visual Technologies

by Tomas, David

• ISBN13: 9780826462732
• ISBN10: 0826462731
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-05-01
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

The Image Machine is an eloquent and stimulating argument for an alternative history of scientific and technological imaging systems. Drawing on a range of hitherto marginalized examples from the world of visual representation and the work of key theorists and thinkers, such as Bruno Latour, Michel de Certeau, Marshall McLuhan and Roland Barthes, David Tomas offers a disarticulated and deviant view of the relationship between archaic and new representations, imaging technologies and media induced experience. Rejecting the possibility of absolute forms of knowledge, Tomas shows how new media technologies have changed the nature of established disciplines. The book develops Tomas's own theory of transcultural space and makes several original contributions to current debates on the culture of advanced technology.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
Thresholds Between Media and History	p. 11
Pictures of the New and the Materialization of Vision from the Age of Discovery to the Era of the Posthuman	p. 13
Reinventing Media Histories	p. 41
The Materialization of Sentience: The Dynamo and the Virgin	p. 43
The Incubator: Niepce's Heliographic Imprint of 1826	p. 61
Reimagining the Computer's Origins: Mechanical Drawing and Charles Babbage's Calculating Engines	p. 84
Alternate Models of the Virtual: Optical Thresholds in Camera Lucidas and Head-mounted Displays	p. 105
Beyond the Cyborg: Antonio Panizzi's 1852 Diagram for a Circular Reading Room at the British Museum	p. 136
Future Histories	p. 159
Unorthodox Time Machines: Images and Instruments across Space, Time and History	p. 161
Notes	p. 196
Bibliography	p. 213
Index	p. 221
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