On Ghost Images

Fabulous Machines, Memory Places, Code and Architectural Disappearance in the Age of Total

Mediation

This is a recording. It has been since Georges Mèliés first broadcast of “A Trip to the Moon”

in 1902 until contemporary hashtag mass narratives, tipping our means of making copies in,

and of the world, over our ability to do so with no means whatsoever. Memories and

impressions move from our mind’s eye to the inner retina; we become hooked on media and

dizzyingly forgetful. The possible course of our reality freezes into the definite track of its

representation. Art becomes overexposed and demystified; images hyper-defined data.

Architecture dematerializes; identity is digital; androids dream of electric sheep; and the

Mèliés spaceship ends up in the eye of the man on the moon.

This seminar observes the aforementioned course through 12 narratives (I); it tests it on 12

augmented reality and multimedia spaces (II) and important theoretical essays (III); and, in

the process, discovers a series of Ghost Images that haunt our natural and digital memories,

disturb contemporary form- and image-making and restore to things, against all simulation,

some of their long-lost Aura.

A seminar on foundation texts for architecture & media studies (III). Grading: in-class

participation, presentation, 3 short essays.

(I) The Garden of Forking Paths, Wild Strawberries, The Invention of Morel, Last Year in

Marienbad, A Trip to the Moon, The Picture of Dorian Gray, In Praise of Shadows,

Neuromancer, La Jetée, V, Videodrome, Blade Runner, Ringu, The Matrix, Eternal Sunshine

of a Spotless Mind, etc.

(II) By B.Viola, S.Brakhage, G.Richter, O.Eliasson, Diller&Scofidio, SANAA, Tetsuo Kondo,

Radiohead, Georges Apergis, Y.Obuchi, U.Barth, Aranda & Lasch, Smout Allen, J.Harris, etc.

(III) By Aristotle, H.Adams, W.Benjamin, S.Eisenstein, G.Debord, M.Foucault, J.Baudrillard,

F.Jameson, M.McLuhan, P.Virilio, W.Mitchell, S.Zizek, J.Corner, M.Wigley, J.Gleick etc.