Erkki Huhtamo,
Spring 2015

Professor Erkki Huhtamo is a  media archaeologist, author, and exhibition curator. At DMA his areas are the history and theory of media culture and media arts. He is internationally known as a pioneer of an emerging approach to media studies called media archaeology. It excavates forgotten, neglected and suppressed media-cultural phenomena, helping us to penetrate beyond canonized "grand narratives" of media culture. Professor Huhtamo pays particular attention to the "life" of topoi, or clichés and commonplaces that emerge over and over again within media history and provide "molds" for new experiences. What may seem new things often prove to be just newly packaged ideas repeated during hundreds and even thousands of years.

Professor Huhtamo has applied this approach to phenomena like "peep media" (a notion he has coined), the screen, panoramas and dioramas, video games, and mobile media. He has also written about the work of many media artists, including Paul deMarinis, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Golan Levin, and Bernie Lubell. Professor Huhtamo's most recent books are Media Archaeology. Approaches, Applications, and Implications (ed. with Dr. Jussi Parikka, University of California Press, 2011) and the large monograph Illusions in Motion. Media Archaeology of the Moving Panorama and Related Spectacles (The MIT Press, 2013). He is currently working on a number of new books: a media archaeology of interactive media (The MIT Press, under contract), a history of mechanical theaters and a theoretical volume tentative titled “Media Archaeology as Topos Study.”

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