About us

The Archaeologies of Media and Technology (AMT) Research Group has unique international expertise in media archaeology as well as image studies, cultural theory and critical practices and discourses of art and design. Because of the emphasis on media archaeology, the group is well placed for work with cultural heritage sector too; as advisors, research partners, and working directly on projects that help rethink technology as an object of our historical interest – and technology as the infrastructure in which cultural institutions work.

What is AMT?

Archaeology of media and technology refers in this sense then both to the historical links between art, science and technology and their elaborations in critical work and creative projects. We are interested in conditions of the contemporary: what sort of conceptual and material infrastructures are the effective conditions of contemporary cultural formations? What are the educational and collaborative forms that are best placed to critically unfold them? Where might they lead in the future?

 

How we work

AMT is an operational office between projects, conceptual work, cultural institutions and partners both within University of Southampton and external in the international university and art and cultural sectors; our work is expressed in workshops and conferences, seminars, artistic projects, curated shows and other activities that are academic as well as facing the wider public. We are keen to participate in public discussions about the role of technology in contemporary culture and in cultural heritage.

Current group projects address:

• the geopolitical stakes of technology and science in contemporary media culture;
• the planetary condition, inclusive of environmental questions as well as the material transformations that consider the orbital as a central concern of media;
• teletechnologies and their effects on perception and political agency;
• continuities of Cold War systems into the present;
• and the status of the image in various medial forms.

 

PhD projects

These engage with:

• contagious network culture and technological art practices,
• media archaeology
• and the new materialism of the arts.

 

Partners

We currently work with the British Library on an AHRC project on the Internet of Cultural Things that addresses the centrality of data as an infrastructure for cultural institutions. AMT is also part of WSA’s partnership in The Consortium, which links the Department of Visual Arts and the Center for Design and Geopolitics at UC San Diego (Benjamin Bratton and Jordan Crandall) and The Center for Transformative Media at the Parsons School of Design in the New School (Ed Keller and Mackenzie Wark).