Offering an overview of modern visual culture, this book explores the relationship between technology, society and identity which underpins contemporary "media culture". The author examines: the history of visual culture from Lumiere to virtual reality by way of photography, cinema and television; the social and political transformations over the last 150 years; the relationship between "image" and "reality"; and changing relationships of time and space, particularly related to colonialism, globalization, the modercity and cyberspace in the home.
Scott McQuire completed his PhD in the Politics Department at the University of Melbourne in 1995. He has a strong interest in interdisciplinary research and has lectured in disciplines including politics, sociology, cinema studies, art and architecture, and media and communication. Scott has held a number of research fellowships including a visiting fellowship at the Department of Film, Theatre and Television, UCLA (1998), an ARC Australian Postdoctoral Fellowship (1999-2000), and a visiting fellowship at the Celeste Bartos International Film Study Center, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2000). He returned to the University of Melbourne to help establish the Media and Communication Programme in 2001. He is an active researcher who has been a Chief Investigator on six Australian Research Council funded projects. He has also received funding from the Australia Council for the Arts, and has undertaken research consultancies for the Communications Law Centre, the Australian Film Commission and the Australian Key Centre for Media and Cultural Policy.
Introduction The Origin of the Image: The Image of the Origin PART ONE: THE RUINS OF REPRESENTATION Photomimesis The Geometric Universe Writing with Light The Mechanical Eye of Reason Promiscuous Meanings The Mobile Frame Flickering in Eclipses The Ends of Representation PART TWO: PHOTOMNEMONICS The Eye of the Camera Faces Backwards The Law of Progress The Crisis of Memory Amnesic Cultures Eternity's Hostage The Camera and the Archive Intolerable Memories Biodegradable Histories PART THREE: THE NEW PLASTICITY OF SPACE AND TIME Pure Speed From Transport to Teleport Reconstructing `the World' The Myth of the Centre In the Neon Forest Interzones Unstable Architectures Telepresence and the Government of Time
`McQuire has produced a comprehensive and lucidly written account of the camera-driven transformations across the period we may now retrospectively call "modernity"' - Victor Burgin, Unviersity of California, Santa Cruz `Visions of Modernity offers an admirable overview of modern visual culture. But, more than this, it takes us through a wide range of debates in cultural theory. McQuire has produced an encompassing, and very impressive work of intellectual synthesis' - Kevin Robins, University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne
