Recovering Mechanology: The Canadian Media Theory that Never Was | Ghislain Thibault

The contribution of Canadian scholars Carpenter, Innis and McLuhan to media studies has been widely acknowledged worldwide, almost to the point of canonization. In the Toronto School’s shadow, however, other minor intellectual paradigms in the country also sought to address the complex relationship between culture and technology in the postwar era. Among those was “mechanology,” or the “science of machines,” first outlined by the French engineer and architect Jacques Lafitte in his book, Reflections on the Science of Machines (1932), and later recovered by two Canadians in the 1960s, essayist and filmmaker Jean Le Moyne and computer scientist John Hart.  Centering on their collaboration, the revival of mechanology in Canada sought to bring about a renewal in humanist thought by introducing technology as paramount and essential to human culture. Through their interaction and engagement with the work of artists, such as Glenn Gould and Greg Curnoe, and philosophers, such as Gilbert Simondon and Georges Canguilhem, Le Moyne and Hart outlined a project that aspired to bridge the humanities, applied sciences, and the arts. Tracing the development of this now forgotten science of machines provides a way to reexamine the intellectual and political context out of which Canadian media theory gained significance nationally and internationally. Moreover, mechanology’s failure to become as visible as cybernetics or media theory offers a meaningful site for thinking the pivotal cultural and technological changes that marked the shift from energy to information machines in the second half of the twentieth century.

Thurs Feb 7 | 5 – 7 PM
Milieux Institute EV 11.705
Concordia University
1515 St. Catherine St. W 

Open University home experiment kit box, ca. 1980 (Credit © CCA)

The Other 1960s | Charles Acland, Rick Prelinger & Haidee Wasson

The 1960s is generally understood to be a period of tumultuous social and cultural change, and there are numerous histories and documents that recount the upheaval. As with any accepted historical narrative, alternative versions await to be told. This is especially the case when considering art and media of the 1960s, with Pop Art, media installations, and popular television occupying central and conventional places. Inspired by the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) exhibition The University is Now on Air: Broadcasting Modern Architecture, this panel will explore media ephemera and the newly applied ideas about mass education for a new information society that arose in the 1960s. These everyday and functionalist uses of media shaped the modern world and continue to influence the digital era.

Charles Acland is a professor and acting chair in the Department of Communication Studies at Concordia University. Rick Prelinger is an archivist, writer, filmmaker and outsider librarian. In 1982, he founded Prelinger Archives, a collection of industrial, advertising, educational and amateur films that was acquired by the Library of Congress in 2002. Haidee Wasson is a professor of film studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema, Concordia University.

Moderated by Lev Bratishenko, CCA Curator, Public, and presented in collaboration with the MHRC and the Centre Canadien d’Architecture / Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA)

May 3 | 6:30 PM
Paul Desmarais Theatre
1920 Baile St Montréal Québec

Katharina Niemeyer | From the live-event to history: the fall of the Berlin Wall, television news and (n)ostalgia

Drawing upon a reflection on different types of historical narratives and memory layers that are shaped and created by television news, Katharina Niemeyer will discuss the transition from the live-broadcast event of the fall of the Berlin Wall, to televisual forms of commemoration and forgetting, and continue through to expressions of ostalgia (the nostalgia of the East) in media cultures and in current online communities. This talk will focus on theoretical concepts and reflections developed by historians, philosophers and media scholars on time, media events, memory and history and puts them in relation to the media-temporality shifts of the last thirty years.

April 9 | 4:30 – 6 PM
Milieux Institute EV 11.705
Concordia University
1515 St. Catherine St. W