Exploring new Horizons: Early Modern Media Ecology

Outline of the Project

The project Analysis of Early Modern Media Ecology, 1450-1800 calls for a new paradigm of media and cultural history considering various intermingling forms of art, technology, performance, and media practice like theatrical performances, magic lanterns, shadow play, peepboxes, projections etc. It emphasizes the polyphony of media forms, the polyglot character of the spoken languages in Europe, the polycentrism of political spheres, the paranationalism of the spatial order, and the permeabilty and connectivity of knowledge, skills, and practices. With the help of a Neo4j-graph data base, the project is developing a Chrono-Atlas that allows for a throrough analysis of the complex and interwoven networks of events, people, troupes, media practices, and subject matters. During a first experimental phase of the project, we analyzed about twenty sources/books by various nineteenth century scholars of theatre and media history who compiled data for specific regions in Europe, based on magistrate files, personal documents, or playbills and other ephemera. Their lists of historical events allowed us to generate about 4,500 separate entries [at the moment / Augst 2020] in our data base, primarily of events. Connecting these events to visual sources and objects of the TWS will add a material level to these complex networks of early modern media ecology.