Forensic media: reconstructing accidents in accelerated modernity
by Siegel, Greg
In Forensic Media, Greg Siegel considers how photographic, electronic, and digital media have been used to record and reconstruct accidents, particularly high-speed crashes and catastrophes. Focusing in turn on the birth of the field of forensic engineering, Charles Babbage's invention of a "self-registering apparatus" for railroad trains, flight-data and cockpit voice recorders ("black boxes"), the science of automobile crash-testing, and various accident-reconstruction techniques and technolo…
Read More ↓Title Statements
- Full title :Forensic media : reconstructing accidents in accelerated modernity / Greg Siegel.
Summary
In Forensic Media, Greg Siegel considers how photographic, electronic, and digital media have been used to record and reconstruct accidents, particularly high-speed crashes and catastrophes. Focusing in turn on the birth of the field of forensic engineering, Charles Babbage's invention of a "self-registering apparatus" for railroad trains, flight-data and cockpit voice recorders ("black boxes"), the science of automobile crash-testing, and various accident-reconstruction techniques and technologies, Siegel shows how "forensic media" work to transmute disruptive chance occurrences into reassuring narratives of causal succession. Through historical and philosophical analyses, he demonstrates that forensic media are as much technologies of cultural imagination as they are instruments of scientific inscription, as imbued with ideological fantasies as they are compelled by institutional rationales. By rethinking the historical links and cultural relays between accidents and forensics, Siegel sheds new light on the corresponding connection between media, technology, and modernity. -- from back cover.
Read More ↓Edition Statements
- Publication Date:2014
Publication Statements
- Publisher(s):Duke University Press
- Place of Publication:Durham
- Language:eng
- Publication Date:2014
The Physical Object
- Description:xi, 260 pages : : illustrations ; : 24 cm.
Edition Identifiers
- ISBN:9780822357391, 0822357399, 9780822357537, 0822357534
- oclc:ocn873985153
- LC Classification:TA219
- Dewey Decimal:363.12/065
Table of Contents
Engineering detectives -- Tracings -- Black boxes -- Tests and split seconds.
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