Excerpt from catalogue

The exhibition Ghost in the Machine was initiated as one of the final activities taking place within the framework of the interdisciplinary research project “Media Aesthetics – Materiality, Practise, Experience” (2003-2008). Located at The Department of Media and Communications at the University of Oslo and engaging researchers from media studies, art history, and literature, the main research question asked in this project was “how and why does the medium matter?”

An important backdrop for the “Media Aesthetics” project was the observation that a new media situation is emergent. Technically, digitalization has transformed old media and paved the way for so-called new media. Empirically, artists have for a long time incorporated and examined elements and technologies from commercial and mass media in their works, just as the media sphere has undergone an increasing aestheticization. Theoretically, the disciplinary boundaries between media studies and art history have become increasingly blurred. With reference to this situation the aim of the “Media Aesthetics” project has been to generate interdisciplinary theoretical and analytical reflection around contemporary forms of mediation, and through this to contribute to develop media aesthetics as a research field.

The exhibition Ghost in the machine can be seen as one attempt to engage directly with the research question posed in the «Media Aesthetics» project: all the works included in the exhibition present their individual answer to the question of how and why the medium matters. Based on this background, Ghost in the machine has evolved into a semi-autonomous project that ultimately was realised as a collaboration between research fellow and curator Susanne Ø. Sæther and curator Elisabeth Byre. The exhibition suggests using the metaphor of the ghostly as a tool for thinking through how modern media shape the living environment that surrounds us, and our place in it.

• By Susanne Ø. Sæther and Elisabeth Byre