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Nostalgic Media: Histories and Memories of Domestic Technology in the Moving Image

Hansen, James Paul
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1492451165107021

Abstract Details

2017, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, History of Art.
Nostalgic Media: Histories and Memories of Domestic Technology in the Moving Image investigates the history of four consumer technologies – slide projectors, Pixelvision toy cameras, home video, and video games – and their appropriation in experimental cinema and contemporary art. Considering the socio-cultural emergence of each technology alongside close analysis of films, videos, and gallery installations, I demonstrate how cinema artists harnessed these technologies’ plural histories in their practice. Analyzing the work of numerous American experimental filmmakers and figures from the international art world, I argue that cinema artists have turned to ephemeral moving-image technologies as a part of what I call “nostalgic media.” Through an interdisciplinary approach that draws upon histories and theories of cinema studies, art history, psychoanalysis, and media archaeology, I contend that the practice of nostalgic media interweaves personal and cultural memory with technological history, displaying a longing for the past not yet experienced. In contrast to the postmodern condemnation of nostalgia as a sentimental and stereotypical return to the static, idyllic past, I illustrate how these artists use experimental cinematic forms to reveal nostalgia as a moving image, one that highlights how contingent memories of film and technology alter their form over the passage of time. Intervening in current debates concerning obsolescence and rapid technological development, my project embraces nostalgia as a time-based process that resists the determinism of technological progress and examines how artists intertwine the disappearing past into the fabric of an ever-changing, globalized present.
Kris Paulsen (Advisor)
Erica Levin (Committee Member)
Lisa Florman (Committee Member)
218 p.
Art History; Film Studies
nostalgia, experimental film, experimental cinema, artists cinema, contemporary art, media archaeology, technology, obsolescence

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Hansen, J. P. (2017). Nostalgic Media: Histories and Memories of Domestic Technology in the Moving Image [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1492451165107021

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Hansen, James. Nostalgic Media: Histories and Memories of Domestic Technology in the Moving Image. 2017. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1492451165107021.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Hansen, James. "Nostalgic Media: Histories and Memories of Domestic Technology in the Moving Image." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2017. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1492451165107021

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1492451165107021
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© 2017, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.