Acknowledgments

This book was cowritten by three authors. We would like to acknowledge that, through various channels, Concordia University provided the infrastructural, financial, and administrative support for The Lab Book, which we have attempted to signal by listing Darren Wershler as the first author. That said, the research and writing behind the project has been evenly distributed among all three authors, prompting us to list the second and third authors alphabetically. We would also like to acknowledge that our respective labs and research centers have fundamentally shaped our thinking throughout: the Residual Media Depot in the Milieux Institute at Concordia University; the Media Archaeology Lab at the University of Colorado Boulder; and the Archaeologies of Media and Technology research group at the University of Southampton.

All three authors would like to thank, sincerely, the more than seventy individuals who took the time and energy to be interviewed either by us or by our students. We would also like to thank the University of Minnesota Press for its unwavering support of our project, especially our editor Douglas Armato, as well as Terence Smyre for his hard work in developing a lively online presence for our book on Manifold. Manifold has given us the rare ability to publish nearly final drafts of each of the chapters as well as twenty-eight interviews with lab directors and lab participants around the world on the philosophy, space, infrastructure, and projects of their labs—interviews that heavily influenced the writing of our book. We hope readers of this book will also spend time on the Manifold site: https://manifold.umn.edu/projects/the-lab-book.

Special thanks to Hilary Bergen and Alex Custodio for indispensable aid with the preparation of this manuscript.

Darren would like to thank first and foremost Lori and Jussi, my coauthors, who are wonderful scholars and even better human beings. Writing this book was at times difficult, so endless thanks for your kindness over the years as well as for your intelligence. Thanks to Concordia University for supporting and funding all aspects of the research and production of this project through its University Research Chairs program and through direct funding from the office of André Roy, dean of Arts and Sciences, especially through the International Graduate Summer Schools program, which allowed me to run not only the Residual Media Depot but two sessions of a graduate media archaeology course (summer 2016 and summer 2017) that helped to form the ideas inside this book. Thank you to the students who attended these courses and to the students (especially Nathalie Duponsel, Bojana Krsmanovic, and Nic Watson), guest faculty (Stephanie Boluk, Ann-Louise Davidson, Lori Emerson, Patrick Lemieux, Jussi Parikka), and staff (especially Marc Beaulieu, Bonnie-Jean Campbell, Emilie Champagne, and Harry Smoak) who helped to run them. Thanks also to the students of my 2017 course on the Research Collection and my 2015 Mess and Method (“What Is a Media Lab?” edition) course, who conducted original research and interviews that were formative in our initial thinking around this book. Thanks to the Milieux Institute for providing the research space for the Residual Media Depot, and for all of the activity mentioned above. Milieux is a remarkable place—an assemblage of hybrid labs—and the ongoing generosity and support of its occupants is unmatched. The Media History Research Centre, TAG Lab, and the Milieux Maker Space have been particularly helpful. Knowledge is never produced in isolation. I owe a great deal to my friends and colleagues at Concordia, particularly Charles Acland, Jason Camlot, Ann-Louise Davidson, Jill Didur, Sandra Gabriele, Fenwick McKelvey, Bart Simon, Johanne Sloan, Marc Steinberg, and Haidee Wasson. Thanks also to colleagues around the world who have been supportive of this work in a variety of ways, including (but not limited to) Christian Bök, Johanna Drucker, Raiford Guins, Matt Kirschenbaum, Henry Lowood, Shannon Mattern, Dave Parisi, Jonathan Sterne, and Will Straw. Thanks to my mother, Fran Wershler, for carefully editing and describing the history of Home Economics Extension, which helped to inspire the basic model of this book. Endless love to my boys, Max and Gus, who asked their mom if she married me because I have a secret laboratory. And to Sandra, who is everything.

Lori would like to thank the College of Media, Communication, and Information and the English department at the University of Colorado Boulder for their institutional support of The Lab Book as well as the Media Archaeology Lab—a lab and its denizens that have taught me, in microcosm, everything I know about labs. Likewise, I have been deeply fortunate to work alongside brilliant and hardworking students whose influence is everywhere in this book: Kolby Harvey, Amanda Hurtado, Eric Izant, Laura Hyunjee Kim, Jaime Lee Kirtz, Maya Livio, Tim Roberts, and libi striegl. Maya and libi have been particularly important to my life at CU and life in and around the MAL—I’ve been so fortunate to have them both in my orbit for the past four or five years. To my colleagues at CU Boulder—Mark Amerika, Adam Bradley, Thora Brylowe, Jason Gladstone, Élika Ortega, and Nathan Schneider—I am indebted to all the ways you have directly and indirectly shaped my thinking about labs, space, media, and infrastructure. And to my colleagues spread across the globe—especially Wolfgang Ernst, Dene Grigar, Stefan Höltgen, Matthew Kirschenbaum, and Elizabeth Losh—I continue to be grateful for the work you have done in and around labs as well as the ways you have modeled collaboration, generosity, and successful lab management. To Jussi and Darren, thank you for the countless ways your collaborations have enriched and fundamentally changed, for the better, my intellectual life and my personal life. Finally, my contributions to this book wouldn’t be what they are without Benjamin Robertson’s constant encouragement, patience, kindness, and attentiveness.

Jussi wants to extend his gratitude and warm thanks to institutions and people. Winchester School of Art has supported this research project in many ways both through resources and allowing me to have the time. The Archaeologies of Media and Technology research group, or AMT, which I codirect with Ryan Bishop is one key context for this work. AMT is not a lab, more of an office, or at least that’s the constant pun we use. Das Amt. But we worked extensively on labs, including Ryan’s own book on Cold War and technology labs that emerged parallel to this one you are holding now. A big thanks to Ryan for the many inspiring conversations, panels, and other things we organized. My other affiliation at FAMU, at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, has offered key support as part of the project “Operational Images and Visual Culture: Media Archaeological Investigations” (Czech Science Foundation: 19–26865X). I thank the funding body, FAMU, and the colleagues in our project. Colleagues at other institutions, such as during my visiting professorship at University of Udine in Italy, have been kind and helpful in providing thoughts, questions, suggestions, and more. A special mention goes to the students of my class on media archaeology, where we had the opportunity for many discussions about spaces and practices of media archaeology labs. Over the years, many people have contributed directly or indirectly. Here’s a list of some of you, although I am sure there have been many others who shared ideas and material, thoughts and inspiration—I tried to include as many as I can remember! So, thank you at least to Maria-Luise Angerer, Caroline Bassett, David Berry, Samir Bhowmik, Jane Birkin, Ryan Bishop, Robin Boast, Benjamin Bratton, Kat Braybrooke, Mihaela Brebenel, Rossella Catanese, Daniel Cid, Stephen Cornford, Jordan Crandall, Lily Díaz-Kommonen, Simone Dotto, Ed D’Souza, Tomáš Dvořák, Wolfgang Ernst, Kristoffer Gansing, Seth Giddings, Abelardo Gil-Fournier, Ahmet Gürata, Garnet Hertz, Stefan Höltgen, Elise Hunchuck, Jannice Käll, Tero Karppi, Eric Kluitenberg, Joasia Krysa, Alan Liu, Geert Lovink, Alessandro Ludovico, Sunil Manghani, Shannon Mattern, Jesper Olsson, David Parisi, Eda Sancakdar, Bernhard Siegert, Yigit Soncul, Sandy Stone, Andreas Treske, Anna Tuschling, Pasi Väliaho, Simone Venturini, and Geoffrey Winthrop-Young. A special mention to Darren and Lori for an amazing five years of ideas, chats, Skype calls, meetings, more ideas, and such perfect inspiration and friendship.