Média Médiums

Samuel Morse is well-known today as the inventor of Morse code and of the electro-magnetic telegraph that revolutionized human communications in the mid-19th century. But this inventor was first a painter, art theorist, and one of the first American practitioners and proselytes of photography. Together these activities create a unique constellation, centered on problems of information, its nature and how it can be transmitted. Painting, telegraphy and photography all treat the inscription, recording and the conveyance of traces and signs differently. Their juxtaposition within the practice of Morse, as well as their sometimes contradictory relationships with one another, defined a new space that we continue to inhabit today. Jean-Philippe Antoine teaches aesthetics and the theory of contemporary art at the University of Paris VIII. Recently he published La traversée du XXe siècle. Joseph Beuys, l’image et le souvenir at the Editions du MAMCO/Presses du Réel and participated on The Quilt and the Truck