Towards a hybrid experimental media archaeology. Reflections on doing hands-on media history in the digital age

Description

How can we effectively document analogue media technologies, such as historical film devices, and capture their histories of use? What role can digital tools – like 3D and 360-degree photography – play in preserving both material and immaterial forms of media heritage? This presentation will explore the value of experimentation, documentation and digitization for doing hands-on media history in the digital age. Specifically, it will highlight hands-on research on the Kinora motion photography viewer (ca. 1907) and Pathé Baby 9.5mm film projector (ca. 1924) as media historical devices. The Kinora, as an individual viewing apparatus, and the Pathé Baby, as a collective screening device, arguably present two distinct dispositifs of early-twentieth-century home cinema. In the first part of the presentation, I will discuss my hands-on experiments conducted as part of the project "Doing Experimental Media Archaeology" (DEMA) at the University of Luxembourg, including a 3D replication of the Kinora viewer and a series of historical re-enactments with the Pathé Baby projector. The second part will demonstrate how these early-twentieth-century home cinema technologies were 3D-digitized and how their materiality and practices of use can be "re-animated" in virtual yet multisensorial ways. Ultimately, I will advocate for a hybrid approach to experimental media archaeology that is positioned in between the analogue and the digital.

Period	12 Nov 2025
Event title	MUSTS Colloquium
Event type	Seminar
Location	Maastricht, NetherlandsShow on map
Degree of Recognition	Local