To understand the intersections of contemporary visual culture and media, we need to understand past media and older cultural formations. These teach us not only the historical origins of our present but help us learn how change is produced, experienced and negotiated. This module will consider how both old and new media shape contemporary everyday life, and how physical media technologies underpin our visual culture. We will look at why some media become obsolete, how we respond to newness (including through nostalgia) and how thinking about culture can enable us to challenge straightforward ideas of technological and social progress. We will introduce you to key theoretical and historiographic approaches, which might vary by year but could include ‘media archaeology’ and contemporary cultural theory. On this module, ‘media’ extends, beyond what we might normally consider “the media”, to include neglected and ‘grey’ media associated with everyday experience (databases, telephony, fax, photocopying, photobooths, etc), while ‘culture’ includes ordinary behaviour, habits and experiences as well as artefacts, images and texts. We’ll look at moments of apparent dramatic change in visual culture: perhaps the recent impact of AI and the invention of photography for instance, as well as hardly noticed, subtle transformations. What myths accompany the arrival of the new? How does the old go out of fashion? How do new technologies bring new aesthetics and styles? What drives social, cultural and media changes?