Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination [Hardcover]

Matthew G. Kirschenbaum (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0262113112 | ISBN-13: 978-0262113113 | Publication Date: December 7, 2007

"At last in Kirschenbaum's Mechanisms we have our tactical plan for thinking inside the black box of digital media, for moving past 'screen studies' to a new take on electronic media informed by deep understanding of technological practices of inscription and storage. Kirschenbaum introduces a fresh and enlightening dichotomy, that of the interplay of formal and forensic inscription. This dichotomy becomes the raw material for cutting the key to a new critical apparatus for unlocking studies of digital media."--Henry Lowood, Curator for History of Science & Technology Collections, Germanic Collections, and Film & Media Collections, Stanford University Libraries

(Henry Lowood )

Editorial Reviews

Review

A new "textual studies" and archival approach to the investigation of works of new media and electronic literature that applies techniques of computer forensics to conduct media-specific readings of William Gibson's electronic poem "Agrippa," Michael Joyce's Afternoon, and the interactive game Mystery House.

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.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (December 7, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262113112
• ISBN-13: 978-0262113113
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #519,351 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mechanisms is a Gamechanger, July 18, 2008

By 

N. Kelber "LitGrad Student" (Chicago, Il) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination (Hardcover)

Mechanisms is an excellent introduction into the forensics of computer inscription. Whereas a great deal of digital humanities research has focused upon using computers to study codexes, Kirschenbaum's book seeks to closely examine the "born-digital" world of text. The book offers a forensic perspective into hard drives, file systems, and computer history. How does one examine the laptop of Salman Rushdie? What information is contained within a hard drive using tools like hex editors? Is it appropriate to access information that may be private or sensitive? Mechanisms offers new perspectives in analyzing the "born-digital" but also propels the fields of bibliography and textual criticism into the digital age. This is a must-read for anyone interested in the digital humanities field.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars New media via storage forensics, December 11, 2011

By 

M. Nelson - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination (Hardcover)

Kirschenbaum takes a surprising approach to studying works of new-media art and literature: a "forensic" method that looks at the way the works are stored on and interact with physical storage devices: tapes, floppy disks, hard drives, etc. Forensics in this new media-studies sense draws on a mixture of literary textual analysis and computer forensics. A main thesis is that the storage mechanisms matter when looking at new media, and can't be treated as merely ignorable implementation details to be abstracted away from the conceptual plane of 1s and 0s. His goal with this book seems to be to focus on what disks and drives do in new media, since they're ubiquitous and seemingly important devices, yet little studied from anything but a technical perspective.

The first half of the book focuses on Kirschenbaum's intervention in new-media theory, while the second half illustrates and applies his approach by looking in detail at three works (in several stored forms): the 1980 Apple II adventure game "Mystery House", Michael Joyce's 1987 hypertext piece "Afternoon, a story", and William Gibson's 1992 poem "Agrippa". Agrippa in particular serves as a nice motivating example, and is in a sense a literary forerunner of Kirschenbaum's concerns, explicitly playing with ideas of digital and physical storage.

While the book is mainly targeted at new-media scholars, non-academics interested in electronic literature, digital archives, and similar questions should find it fairly readable, especially the second half of the book that focuses on analyzing specific works. The first half may be slow going at times for those unfamiliar with or uninterested in debates within media studies, but even that is not hugely dense or unnecessarily jargon-filled, and an interested layperson should be able to gain something from it. And, Gibson fans will find the most thorough analysis of "Agrippa" available anywhere, based in part on new sources and archival material Kirschenbaum has uncovered.

1 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Moralistic summarizing of the obvious, May 8, 2011

By 

Orson Welles "Hollywood" (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination (Hardcover)

I had high hopes for this book but found it utterly disappointing and returned it to Amazon. The auhtor's feel good account of the hard drive is simple-minded, at best. I recommend that you read Friedrich Kittler's work instead.