Erkki Huhtamo
(Professor)
Professor Erkki
Huhtamo is a media archaeologist, writer and exhibition curator. At
D|MA his area is media history and theory. Professor Huhtamo holds a
Ph. D. in Cultural History. He has written extensively on media archaeology
and the media arts. Media archaeology is an emerging critical approach
Professor Huhtamo has pioneered (together with a few other scholars)
since the early 1990's. It excavates forgotten, neglected and suppressed
media-cultural phenomena, helping us to penetrate beyond canonized accounts
about media culture. Huhtamo pays particular attention to the "life"
of topoi, or clichéd elements that emerge over and over again
in media history and provide "molds" for experiences. What
may seem new often proves to be just new packaging of ideas repeated
during hundreds and even thousands of years. In recent years, Professor
Huhtamo has applied this approach to phenomena like peep media, the
notion of the screen, games and mobile media. He has also written about
the ways in which media artists like Paul deMarinis, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer
and Bernie Lubell have integrated media-archaeological elements into
their work. Professor Huhtamo has just finished a book on the history
of the moving panorama and the diorama, tentatively titled Illusions
in Motion (California University Press, forthcoming 2009). With
Dr. Jussi Parikka (Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK) he is preparing
a collection of writings on media archaeology, also for California University
Press (forthcoming 2009).
As a curator Professor Huhtamo has created many media art exhibitions, for example
the major project Alien Intelligence (KIASMA Museum of Contemporary
Art, Helsinki, 2000). He has served in many art exhibition and festival
juries worldwide, including Siggraph, Ars Electronica and the Interactive
Media Festival. He has lectured very widely in Europe, the US, Japan,
and elsewhere. He has also written and directed television programs
about media culture, for example the series Archaeology of the Moving
Image (YLE, The Finnish Broadcasting Corporation, 1995-96). In 2005-06
Professor Huhtamo created with the acclaimed media artists Golan Levin
and Zachary Lieberman (Tmema) a multi-media performance titled Musings
on Hands. It was performed in Tokyo at Waseda University's Ono
Memorial Hall and the Ars Electronica 2006 festival in Linz, Austria.
Professor Huhtamo also gives magic lanterns shows with an authentic
late 19th century biunial magic lantern and original hand-painted
slides. He has an extensive collection of antique optical viewing devices,
such as magic lanterns, peep show boxes, camera obscuras, praxinoscopes,
kinoras, etc., which he often demonstrates to the students.
http://dma.ucla.edu/events/calendar.php?ID=379