Forensic media : reconstructing accidents in accelerated modernity / Greg Siegel.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Siegel, Greg, 1968- author.

Series:

Sign, storage, transmission

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Disasters--Press coverage.

Disasters.

Transportation accidents--Investigation.

Transportation accidents.

Forensic sciences.

Physical Description:

xi, 260 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Other Title:

Reconstructing accidents in accelerated modernity

Place of Publication:

Durham : Duke University Press, [2014]

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 connections between media, technology, and modernity. Book jacket.

Contents:

Engineering detectives

Tracings

Black boxes

Tests and split seconds.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 237-250) and index.

ISBN:

9780822357391

0822357399

9780822357537

0822357534

OCLC:

873985153