The Obscene Device. Archaeology of Immersive Pornographies
Roberto Malaspina
research: Seminar
The Obscene Device. Archaeology of Immersive Pornographies
Roberto Malaspina
The recent re-emergence of virtual reality technologies has opened up new paradigms and opportunities for the pornographic industry. However, this is not the first time in media history that a wearable device and an environmental image have been exploited by the erotic-pornographic image. This seminar will therefore focus on an archaeology of immersive porn by attempting to codify the main roles of 19th century stereoscopic devices in the invention of the pornographic genre.
Through the analysis of the material conformation of the devices, the postures required by the technologies, the main diffusion and censorship of pornographic stereographs, the seminar will show that it is possible to find an alternative genealogy of the pornographic genre, parallel to the cinematographic one. In fact, the characteristics of stereoscopy and its physiological functioning seem to allow a kind of contract with pornographic material based on an infusion of haptic life to the erotic bodies, proposing a quasi-inter-subjective relationship with such image-entities.
Finally, the seminar will focus on the cultural and gendered positioning of the stereoscopic observer. Responding to the need for a study that does not abstract the perceiving subject, the research focuses on the subversive forms of female spectatorship in the second half of the 19th century, constructing the identity of an “unforeseen female observer” and her erotic and scopic movements in the atmosphere of pornographic an-icons.
Biography
Roberto Malaspina
Roberto Paolo Malaspina graduated (BA) in 2016 at the University of Florence in History and Conservation of Cultural Heritages with a thesis on the relationship between museology and New Media. In 2019 he concluded his MA degree in Visual Arts at the University of Bologna, with a dissertation on the theoretical identity of postmodern architecture. During his studies, he worked as curator for Narkissos, an independent gallery based in Bologna, where he further researched on the interrelation between body, technology and feminisms. Between 2019 and 2020 he attended CAMPO, course for curators of the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo. He is currently a PhD student at the University of Milan – Department of Philosophy and Human Science – where he conducts a research on the relationship between embodied perception and New Media in the fruition of pornographic moving images.
research: seminar
The Obscene Device. Archaeology of Immersive Pornographies
Roberto Malaspina
The recent re-emergence of virtual reality technologies has opened up new paradigms and opportunities for the pornographic industry. However, this is not the first time in media history that a wearable device and an environmental image have been exploited by the erotic-pornographic image. This seminar will therefore focus on an archaeology of immersive porn by attempting to codify the main roles of 19th century stereoscopic devices in the invention of the pornographic genre.
Through the analysis of the material conformation of the devices, the postures required by the technologies, the main diffusion and censorship of pornographic stereographs, the seminar will show that it is possible to find an alternative genealogy of the pornographic genre, parallel to the cinematographic one. In fact, the characteristics of stereoscopy and its physiological functioning seem to allow a kind of contract with pornographic material based on an infusion of haptic life to the erotic bodies, proposing a quasi-inter-subjective relationship with such image-entities.
Finally, the seminar will focus on the cultural and gendered positioning of the stereoscopic observer. Responding to the need for a study that does not abstract the perceiving subject, the research focuses on the subversive forms of female spectatorship in the second half of the 19th century, constructing the identity of an “unforeseen female observer” and her erotic and scopic movements in the atmosphere of pornographic an-icons.