Lecture with Professor Erkki Huhtamo, UCLA, USA
Date: 2. December 2008, 10.15-12.00.
Place: Store Auditorium, IT-Huset, Åbogade 15, Aarhus Universitet.

Public media displays have been neglected by media studies. A giant screen in an urban environment may be an imposing sight, but it hardly merits more than a glance from the passers-by. Why spend time researching and theorizing it?

This lecture presents some reasons by developing an archaeology of public media displays. It discusses their origins in trade-signs, billboards, outdoor magic lantern projections, "sky-signs" and cloud projections. It pays attention to the emergence of discursive giant screens in the writings of Albert Robida, Jules Verne, and others. Finally, the lecture discusses some of the ways in which artists from László Moholy-Nagy to Rafael Lozano-Hemmer have contributed to the development of public media displays and the discourses surrounding them.

Erkki Huhtamo is a media archaeologist, writer, and exhibition curator. He works as Professor of Media History and Theory at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), Department of Design | Media Arts. He has published extensively on media archaeology and the media arts, lectured worldwide, created television programs and curated media art exhibitions. His recent research has dealt with topics like peep media, the pre-history of the screen, and the archaeology of mobile media. He is just finishing a book on the history of the moving panorama (University of California Press), and working on another one on the archaeology of interactivity. Erkki Huhtamo is a member of DUL's international advisory board.

Illustration: McAllister adprojection from 1904