23:Eng Interview 4 — Nigh Magazine

I believe there is much to be gained from knowing the past, but what was it that you were looking for when you first began this research/reflection? And what are your personal interpretations and conclusions from this research?

In the beginning, I was looking at old electronic instruments mainly to understand how they were built. Since electronics from the 1960’s built for audio frequencies are generally far less complicated than modern electronics built for gigahertz frequencies, I found them a good place to start building up my knowledge base about how to make things. Eventually, I became just as interested in why these instruments were built as in how they were built. I think that is the real core of media archaeology: to look not just at the engineering side but at the cultural side as well, and figure out what cutting edge technologies of other eras represented to people since that helps us understand what kind of utopian ideas we project onto technologies of our own era.