Media Devices of Spatiality

Space does not exist independently of the cultural techniques used to control, visualize, and produce it. Studying the history of spatiality in its multiple declinations and articulations thus becomes a way to interrogate the medialities of the gaze at the heart of different “spatial revolutions”.

Woodcut illustration of Robert Hooke’s design for the “Picture Box”, from Philosophical Experiments and Observations of the Late Eminent Dr. Robert Hooke, ed. W. Derham, London 1726 — Woodcut illustration of Robert Hooke’s design for the “Picture Box”, from *Philosophical Experiments and Observations of the Late Eminent Dr. Robert Hooke*, ed. W. Derham, London 1726

Woodcut illustration of Robert Hooke’s design for the “Picture Box”, from *Philosophical Experiments and Observations of the Late Eminent Dr. Robert Hooke*, ed. W. Derham, London 1726

This line of research examines the workings of media and media devices, focusing on how they take root in space and contribute to its formation. If texts, monuments, images, maps, and films are clearly agents of the construction of space, then studying their technologies of production and the way they function, the position they assign to the observer, and the operations and gestures they require or make possible, becomes crucial. Such an approach shifts the inquiry from the medium as an object to the process of mediation itself.