CAMBRIDGE, MA (April 6, 2009)— "Cambridge Talks III: Mediated Space," a two-day annual symposium on critical themes in architectural discourse and urban studies. The event is organized by the PhD Program in Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
On April 23, the film A Media Archaeology of Boston, will be screened 7:00-9:00 pm at Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, 24 Quincy Street, Cambridge. The sound, film and video exhibition presents an excavation of this city’s spaces through a montage of short films, photographs, diagrams, and experimental soundscapes recorded on-location in the larger metropolitan area, exploring different modes of urban representation across history and various media. This unique and engaging installation will appeal to those interested in architecture, film, media, and history, as well as anyone who enjoys exploring the way we perceive our city.
Some of the highlights of the program include an early cinema travelogue filmed from a moving streetcar in 1905, an experimental documentary on urban renewal in the South End, government-filmed footage of the old Charlestown Navy Yard, 1970s television ads for local businesses, a MoMA-funded cinematic interpretation of Le Corbusier's Carpenter Center in the 1960s, and field recordings of contemporary Boston soundscapes. The program will be moderated by co-curators Jesse Shapins and Olga Touloumi, PhD students at the Graduate School of Design, and will feature brief presentations by select faculty and guest speakers. The event, which is co-presented by the PhD Program at the Graduate School of Design and the Film Study Center at Harvard University, is free and open to the public. A reception in the Sert Gallery will follow the screening.
On April 24, the panel discussion Mediated Space, will be held 10:00am to 6:00 pm in Gund Hall at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge. With media technologies embedded ever-deeper into architecture, the city and everyday life, a rigorous historiography of media’s relationship to space has become a burning issue. Under the radar of the dominant discourses on media that are fueled by technological fetishism and determinism, an innovative and rapidly evolving body of scholarship has evolved. The work of these scholars has crossed disciplinary boundaries to situate architecture and urbanism within new histories of spatial perception and kineaesthetics, the contingencies of the human sensorium, 19th-century optical devices and early cinema, sound technologies, and an expanded conception of cartography. Cambridge Talks III aims to channel this interdisciplinary momentum by providing a forum for the presentation and debate of vital new work.
Register by emailing name and affiliation to info@cambridgetalks.org
For further information: www.cambridgetalks.org
contact:
(617) 496-0823
djohanse@gsd.harvard.edu
www.gsd.harvard.edu
