Media History

Language of instruction: Hungarian
Course description:
The media history lectures aim to present an overview of the history of medialisation and the civilizatory techniques of preservation and distribution that have always existed in one form or another. A further aim is to find the historical context of the tools, forms of expression and phenomena that emerged in the wake of technological development and played a part in the emergence of the information society, as well as to introduce the central topics and concepts of media theory.
In a completely medialised environment where communication equals existence, the emergence of new technological media is followed by global feedback, a totally self-reflexive social environment that is shot through with uncontrollably complex communication relations. Whatever exists will provide feedback, generate information, manipulate data-is, in other words, interactive in the broadest sense of the word. The paradigm-shift of the Enlightenment was followed by a technological boom best described by its feature of asynchronicity, the temporal shift between social reality and rhetoric, the techniques of persuasion, i.e. the effectiveness of the media. The so-called new media are not the fruit of cultural development but a result of technological progress - which means art also finds itself handling tools which do not have a past, tools that have hardly been used, their functions largely unknown, and are under constant development. Pushing beyond boundaries, the classic avant-garde tactics, is the only valid strategy here, since both developers and users want to know what all this can be used for - what as-yet-unknown needs are met by the emerging holistic unity and menacing convergence of digital communication and methods of self-expression.
Topics:
1st semester:
Writing, oral tradition, early preservation techniques, book printing, duplication, the effectiveness of the media, subjective image, manipulated image, conscious vision.
2nd semester
Technical image, photography, copying, duplicating, early cinema: cinema language, history of censorship, the cult of speed, technological optimism, electricity.
3rd semester
Text, sound and image transfer, cinema, television, video, publicity, public images, television
4th semester
Cybernetics, computers, virtuality, networks, hacker ethics, hypertext, multimedia, interactivity, the body, the private sphere, code, identity and complexity.
Textbooks, readings: Own publications to be used as texts