How to learn new things from an old machine? And how can such learning be a dialogue?
Starting from his recent film project "Mechanisms Common to Disparate Phenomena; #59", Joost Rekveld will talk about his dialogue with several layers of the history of analog electronics related to the work of The Vasulkas and in particular their scan processing series. A deeper layer goes back in the middle of the 20th century to the dawn of electronic analog computing. Deep influence on this film project was an early concept of 'lightning empiricism', related to the real-time conversational interaction between machine and operator and realization that the origins of our technologies are deeply problematic.
 
Joost Rekveld (1970) is an artist who wonders what humans can learn from a dialogue with the machines they have constructed. In a form of media archeology he investigates modes of material engagement with devices from forgotten corners in the history of science and technology. The outcomes of these investigations often take the shape of abstract films that function like alien phenomenologies. The work of the Vašulkas has been a reference for his media-archaeological work of the last decade. Joost Rekveld's work has been shown worldwide, mostly at filmfestivals or other venues for moving image culture. He has been teaching in various capacities on the intersection between interdisplinary arts and the exact sciences since 1996. Since 2017 he has been affiliated to the School of Arts University College Ghent (KASK) as an artistic researcher.

http://www.joostrekveld.net/?p=1931