Study, Analysis and Design of Media Devices: Artistic and Recreational Applications

Design and refurbishment of media devices for artistic and recreational use.

Assessment and analysis of media devices, taking into account their technical and historical aspects and their reception by users.

Promotion of the use and applications of media devices through original apparatus and replicas.

Media devices are understood to mean means of reproducing still and moving images. The offering specialises in pre-photographic optical devices: camera obscuras, camera lucidas, optical boxes — including the Polyorama Panoptique — and viewers.

• The technologies we offer are related to artistic production or historical devices associated with the visualisation and/or reproduction of images. Companies involved in the creation of artistic devices or in historical dissemination may therefore be interested in producing our replicas and variations, as well as our inventions — to date, the “Selective-Focus Diorama Viewer”, national patent number 201100414.

Although media archaeology is becoming an established methodology for studying the history of media of representation and communication, particularly in relation to cinema, we have the advantage of having worked on this concept since 2011, both theoretically and practically, within the UMH research group “Media Archaeology and Artistic Practice”.

In practical terms, we have developed a catalogue of replicas, variations and inventions of pre-photographic optical devices.

On the theoretical side, the book “The Return of the New: Media Archaeology and Artistic Practice”, bringing together texts produced by group members over recent years, is in the final stages of editing by Abada publishing house.

As a result, the group has proven experience in both theoretical and practical approaches to media archaeology.

Plans have been produced for replicas of various models of portable and field camera obscuras, as well as an optical viewer, specifically a Polyorama Panoptique. In addition, the group’s own invention, the “Selective-Focus Diorama Viewer”, has been developed.

• Sculpture
• Painting
• Drawing and printmaking
• Decorative arts
• Photography

• National patent: “Selective-Focus Diorama Viewer”. Number: 201100414. Date the application was accepted for processing by the Spanish Patent and Trademark Office: 8 April 2011. Organisation: Miguel Hernández University of Elche. Inventors: José Vicente Martín Martínez, Inocencio Galindo Mateo and Iván Albalate Gauchía. Status: Granted on 16 June 2014. Published in the Official Industrial Property Gazette on 24 June 2014.

José Vicente Martín Martínez – Art