ABSTRACT
This chapter first establishes the fundamental definitions necessary to the construction of the approach: technique and technology, machine and dispositif. It discusses Foucault, Simondon, Crary, and Albera/Tortajada in the process. It then argues that there is a fundamental link between machines, images, and movement within the history of culture. It analyses the apparatuses invented by Filippo Brunelleschi during the Renaissance, before exploring the depiction of machines from the Renaissance to industrial drawing. Given these relations, this chapter argues that machines should be considered as archives, materializing the history of performance gestures, and of the system they have been a part of. A detailed analysis of the camera obscura and its historical variants, connecting the histories of art, of spectacles and of science, exemplifies the approach.
