Focusing on our complex relationship with technology, The machine and the ghost explores our culture's continued fascination with the spectral, the ghostly and the paranormal. Through a series of critical case studies and artists' discussions, this lively new collection examines topics ranging from contemporary art to cultural theory. Produced with renowned specialists within the field, including the artist Susan Hiller and the writer Marina Warner, the book combines the historical with the contemporary in exploring how the visual culture of paranormal phenomena continues to haunt our imaginations. Informed by history and the visual tradition of spiritualism and psychical research, the collection is very much concerned to site that tradition within our contemporary concerns, such as landscape and environment, and recent technological developments. Aimed at a broad academic and cultural audience, the collection will appeal to all academic levels in addition to those interested in art and culture more widely.

Introduction: technologies, spiritualisms, and modernities
1. 'It's organisms that die, not life': Henri Bergson, psychical research, and the contemporary uses of vitalism - Justin Sausman
2. Typewriter, pianola, slate, phonograph: recording technologies and automisation - Aura Satz
3. 'Miraculous constellations in real material': spiritualist phenomena, Dada photomontage and magic - Leigh Wilson
4. Ectoplasm and photography: mediumistic performances for camera - Neil Matheson
5. Invasions and fakes - Susan Hiller in conversation with Alexandra Kokoli
6. Image, technology, enchantment - Marina Warner in conversation with Dan Smith
7. What happens in the gaps - An interview with Suzanne Treister by Roger Luckhurst
8. The ghosts of media past and present: spirit photography and contemporary art - Ben Burbridge
9. From the premodern to the postmodern: mnemotechnics and the ghost of 'the Folk' - Sas Mays
10. Ruskin's haunted nature: art and the spectre of ecological catastrophe - Charlie Gere
Index

Editors

Sas Mays is Senior Lecturer in Cultural and Critical Theory at the University of Westminster, London

Neil Matheson is Senior Lecturer in Theory and Criticism of Photography at the University of Westminster, London