Alex M. Ingersoll is Assistant Professor of Media Studies and Production at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. His research and creative interests involve technologies of spatial representation, orientation, and navigation. His recent work deals with a media archaeological account of orientation and navigation technologies as a way to analyze their contributions to the social imaginations of space and to map new terrain for digital media culture.
Authors | Alex Ingersoll
Articles on Amodern by Alex Ingersoll
DIVINING THE NETWORK WITH THE FORKED TWIG
An Archaeological Approach to Locative Media
When connected to a network, locative media encompass a range of technological, bodily, spatial, and cultural components that are not completely unique to contemporary technologies. This paper suggests that the marginalized history of divining rods can be linked to a historical constellation of which locative media are the latest manifestation. This archaeological approach takes into account forgotten continuities with the divining rod, which as an orientation device, is often disarticulated from contemporary network technologies. The result is a focus on the desire to reveal extra dimensions of space or the networked externalization of consciousness – a desire that some see realized via the mediation of the digital network.