Question: Could you introduce yourself and tell us a little about what are you working on at the moment, your projects or research?
Answer (0'45'')

Question: It is interesting how you connect new media art with an archaeological point of view. How do you develop this aspect of media art?
Answer (2'12'')

Question: Do you consider Michel Foucault to be one of the main references in the emerging Archaeology of Media?
Answer (1'47'')

Question: Media Art is looking back to history in search of the roots from the past. In that sense, what is the connection between the Media Art field and Archaeology?
Answer (1'39'')

Question: How would you analyse the possible archaeology of interaction in art?
Answer (1'22'')

Question: In your research, you put together the algorists, the pioneers of computer art and the software art that is emerging now to configure an archaeological critique on the use of code. How do you relate this with this year's Ars Electronica's theme?
Answer (1'19'')

Question: In your speech, you propose two key issues, one that addresses programming and the other human computer interaction and the efforts to make things simpler for people to use. What do you think about these two sides?
Answer (1'38'')

Question: As you said before, we could see the interface as a kind of mask that is hiding the inside, the main thing. What do you think about this?
Answer (1'56'')

Erkii Huhtamo is a Media Historian related to the group of investigators and researchers exploring Media Art history from an archaeological point of view. In this conversation, Huhtamo talks about the concept of Media Archaeology, mainly focusing on the idea of bringing simplicity to the interaction, as he says, to bring the present Media Culture and the media forms of the past into a kind of truthful interaction. This archaeological point of view also looks at the media systems, material and technology, but always from a cultural, social and ideological point of view.

Erkki Huhtamo is working as associate professor in the department of Design Media Art at the University of California , Los Angeles (UCLA). He is a Media Historian, researcher, writer and curator. Some of his books in Finnish are The Archaeology of Virtuality (1995), The Archaeology of the Moving Image (1996) and Phantasmagoria (2000).

Interviewed by Pau Alsina, Professor of Humanities Studies (UOC), at Ars Electronica 2003.

code, software, interface, archaeology, media art

Erkki Huhtamo's life
Ars Electronica 2003
An Exhibition about the early history of the moving image culture. Curate by Erkki Huhtamo
Interview with Erkki Huhtamo, at Kiasma magazine