Abstract

This chapter presents a media-archaeological approach to the study of religion and technology in order to reformulate religious practices in technological terms. The chapter focuses on the historical development of mechanical clocks, from their origins in the monasteries of mediaeval Christian Europe to the oscillating time-keeping mechanisms that lie at the basis of modern computers. The author argues that, despite the original religious and cultural goals that fostered the development of mechanical time-keeping, the history of the oscillating clock reveals a non-cultural, techno-poetical element at work, as demonstrated in the chapter’s analysis of one of the clock’s key mechanisms: the anchor escapement. Once set in motion, the anchor mechanism of the oscillating clock operated according to its own its technical logic, resulting in the generation of time-based media processes that challenge our very conceptions of historical narrative and the place of religion therein.

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