Lucy Kimbell, ed. (2004), New Media Art: Practice and Context in the UK 1994-2004, London: Arts Council of England with Cornerhouse.  


Geoffrey Batchen (2004), 'Electricity Made Visible', in Kimbell, 2004: 26-44.

Manovich describes the language of new media in formalist terms as a set of conventions and forms, exemplified by five key differences that mark its distinction from old media: 'numerical representation, modularity, automation, variability, and cultural transcoding' (Batchen, in Kimbell, 2004: 27). Manovich argues that from the early 19th century, the history of photography and computing, although simultaneous, developed in parallel rather than in interaction until 1936 with the invention of Konrad Zuse's Z1 digital computer (incidentally Turing's abstract for the universal computing machine was in 1937). This suits Manovich's project well using the history of cinema as a central conceptual device, as Zuse's machine used 35mm film with punched holes to convey programming instructions. Manovitch sees this as the first merger of 'Daguerre's daguuerotype and Babbage's Analytical Engine, the Lumiere Cinˇmatographie and Hollerith's tabulator' (Batchen, in Kimbell, 2004: 27). A history of new media here ironically begins at the time of the publication of Benjamin's artwork essay that also centrally uses cinema but precludes Benjamin's historical references that consider photography and early forms of technical reproducibility.  

Batchen adds to this some historical detail to this discourse in the form of a photogenic drawing of lace presented to Charles Babbage by William Fox Talbot in 1837. He sets about applying all the key differences of new media that Manovich proposes to the old media of photography a century earlier. For instance, the correspondence around an interest in mathematics and friendship between Babbage and Talbot disputes Manovich's thesis of a lack of interaction between these histories. In this way, Batchen describes photography in binary terms, of the presence and absence of light, and on/off tonal patterning - and as such representing numerical repetitions of units to make up a whole image (Batchen, in Kimbell, 2004: 29). Indeed, it involves 'a kind of abstraction of visual data; it's a fledgling form of information culture' made more explicit by his 1839 proposal to replace the use of sunlight by electricity: 'a making visible of electricity' (Batchen, in Kimbell, 2004: 31). Talbot proposed that rather than the long exposure times using sunlight, images would be instantaneous using the spark of electricity. Batchen sees this thinking as prefiguring the industrial production of lace by machines using Jacquard punch cards to send instructions to the loom, and replacing the hand-made market and further reflecting changing labour practices. Indeed the lace that Fox Talbot uses for his image has been proven to be machine-made (mentioned in Batchen, in Kimbell, 2004: 33). It is also well established that Babbage used Jacquard cards too in the development of his computing Analytical Engine. The presentation of the picture by Fox Talbot can thus be seen to be a knowing reference. Furthermore, Ada Lovelace describes the Analytical Engine in these terms: it 'weaves algebraic patterns just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves' (quoted in (Batchen, in Kimbell, 2004: 33), famously combining poetry and mathematics as befits her status as the daughter of Lord Byron and follower of Babbage. 

There is perhaps a more obvious oversight in the work of Manovich in disregarding the invention and widespread use of the electric telegraph simultaneous to the early computer and photo-media. In effect, early facsimile machines could make copies across vast distances using electricity by 1838. More famously, Samuel Morse declares: 'if... the presence of electricity can be made visible... I see no reason why intelligence might not be instantaneously transmitted by electricity to any distance' (quoted in Batchen, in Kimbell, 2004: 40). He achieved this by translating the code of the English alphabet into the numerical code of dots, dashes and spaces derived from breaks in the flow of electricity. By 1867, Jean Lenoir had achieved this with images by translating the presence and absence of light into binary data. These few examples simply prove the longer and more significant history of new media. Batchen sees this as emphasising not simply the language of new media but the reception and production of meanings derived from that language when deployed in a social and political context (in Kimbell, 2004: 44). He is deploying an 'archaeology' that is not linear, and drawing upon the work of Foucault, rejects any simple rendering of old and new media. Added to that are the dynamics of historical work itself that would do well to make reference to the historical materialist thinking of Benjamin. 

The complex geneology for the use of new technologies in arts practice is described by Charlie Gere in his 'When New Media was New' (in Kimbell, 2004: 46-63). In this he weaves together the parallels of information theory and artistic experimentation - from John Cage and Fluxus, to E.A.T. Experiments in Art & Technology and Jack Burnham's interest in Art, Technology and Science to Roy Ascott's futurism.