Workshop: The Housing of Technology in Art

The workshop aims to explore the intersections and tensions between art and technology in the early modern era. It aims to bring together papers that nuance the standard narrative about material culture and adaptive technology to reassess connectedness. The workshop seeks to advance and develop the interdisciplinary scholarship that breaks down the boundaries that separate the sciences and the arts, by demonstrating that early modern transcultural techne opened up new frontiers of practice for both realms of knowledge.

The increased opportunities for travel and the circulation of aesthetic principles from across the globe impacted on early modern conceptualizations of the connections between technology and artistry. Moreover, current trends that seek to reassess connectedness in the early modern world in light of material culture necessitate an increased focus on the processes and rituals by which techno-aesthetic ideas circulated in early modern global trade.