Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination

Kirschenbaum, Matthew G.

ISBN 10: 0262113112 / ISBN 13: 9780262113113

Published by MIT Press, 2007

About this Item

Light wear to jacket. Name of previous owner (noted Joyce scholar Michael Groden) with purchase location and date in ink on endpaper. Book and jacket otherwise fine.

Seller Inventory # ABE-1741891988666

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination
• Publisher: MIT Press
• Publication Date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0262113112
• ISBN 13: 9780262113113
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Near Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • Literary Theory, Criticism, & History
  • Philosophy
  • Science & Technology

About this title

Synopsis

In Mechanisms, Matthew Kirschenbaum examines new media and electronic writing against the textual and technological primitives that govern writing, inscription, and textual transmission in all media: erasure, variability, repeatability, and survivability. Mechanisms is the first book in its field to devote significant attention to storage--the hard drive in particular--arguing that understanding the affordances of storage devices is essential to understanding new media. Drawing a distinction between "forensic materiality" and "formal materiality," Kirschenbaum uses applied computer forensics techniques in his study of new media works. Just as the humanities discipline of textual studies examines books as physical objects and traces different variants of texts, computer forensics encourage us to perceive new media in terms of specific versions, platforms, systems, and devices. Kirschenbaum demonstrates these techniques in media-specific readings of three landmark works of new media and electronic literature, all from the formative era of personal computing: the interactive fiction game Mystery House, Michael Joyce's Afternoon: A Story, and William Gibson's electronic poem "Agrippa."

About the Author

Matthew G. Kirschenbaum is Associate Professor of English and Associate Director, Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH), University of Maryland. He was a 2011 Guggenheim Fellow.