ModLabs

Abstract

This chapter extends from research on the genealogies of modernist laboratories (aesthetic, scientific and corporate) and their relationship to the formation of contemporary digital-humanities and new-media laboratories and collaboratories. The trajectory of this project, broadly conceived, leads from the modular principles of early twentieth-century industrial design and avant-garde aesthetics, to the implementation of modular architecture in the construction of mid-century corporate science labs, to the modularization of markup languages, interoperable digital tools and collaborative and cross-disciplinary lab environments in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. In doing so, Irvine traverses the conjuncture of multiple modularities and disciplinarities—from architecture, art and industrial design to markup languages, source code and digital tools—in the historical contexts of cultural, industrial and postindustrial modernities.