Media as....

technologysocial practicescultural productsindustryideologyenvironmentobject of study, i.e. Media Studies

Representation vs. Transmission

Indexicality

The Cottingley Fairies

Immediacy vs. hypermediacy

Hypermediacy:style of visual representation whose goal is to remind the viewer of the medium

- Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin

The Uncanny Valley

The Spaces of Film and Television

Shakespeare-inspired class warfare in Manhattan: the Astor Place Riot,1849

Replica of a frontier opera house in Pinos Altos, New Mexico

1878 opera house in Central City, Colorado

1889 opera house in Nacogdoches, Texas

"Vaudeo"Above: Bing Crosby, Jack Benny, George BurnsRight: Milton Berle, Desi Arnaz, Lucille Ball

Edison declared that his "kinetoscope" would "do for the Eye what the phonograph does for the Ear" in 1888Telegraph

Photograph

Vaudeville

Wireless telegraph

Chronophotograph

Vaudeo...

(video?)

"The venue had ten machines, set up in parallel rows of five, each showing a different movie. For 25 cents a viewer could see all the films in either row; half a dollar gave access to the entire bill"

(1896)

(DW Griffith, 1915)

From New York to California...Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens (above)DW Griffith directing WC Fields in 1926 (right)

"Optoscope" "Seeing by Telegraph""Electric telescope" "Radiovisor"

Television: Invented "by committee"Karl Braun in GermanyBoris Rosing in RussiaKenjiro Takayanagi in JapanJohn Logie Baird in ScotlandCharles Francis Jenkins, broadcasting out of DC, 1926-9Philo Farnsworth in IdahoVladimir Zworykin, Russian migr, refugee of the Revolution, with Westinghouse in the 1920s and RCA in the 1930s

1946: 6 TV stations3 in NYC1 in Schenectady (home of General Electric), Chicago, and Philadelphia20,000 TV sets

1947: Baltimore, DC, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, St. Louis, and LA join the list

1947: 44,000 television sets, 18 stations in 11 cities1952: 107 stations in65 cities

"In 1947 AT&T technicians laid cables that connected Boston through New York to Washington, DC, and another linking San Francisco to LA. As TV broadcasting expanded outward from its original big city bases, the network system extended slowly down the East Coast."- Edgerton, p. 105

First Southern station: WSB in Atlanta, 1948First Florida station: WTVJ in Miami, 1949

"Network cables linked St. Louis and Milwaukee to Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Buffalo...Cables continued to snake across the South and Midwest while they extended on the West Coast down to San Diego and up to Seattle. In mid 1951, the coasts were finally linked as the cables spread from Omaha to Denver, Salt Lake City, and Reno to San Francisco."- Edgerton, p. 105

The Goldbergs (radio:1929-1946, TV: 1949-1956), Leave It to Beaver (1957-1963)

A 1951 Muntz TV

(1949)