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This course explores the interfaces between art and technology in France during a 'long' nineteenth century, from the decade preceding the French Revolution to the First World War. Drawing on contemporary debates in media theory, history of technology, communication studies and media archaeology, we will examine the ways in which transformations in technology both affected, and were conditioned by, a wide variety of artistic practices in diverse media. Technological change in the production of images and objects will form a central part of the course, focusing especially on the emergence of 'new' media in printmaking, photography, architecture, and film. However, we will also address the more subtle ways in which technological innovation (not to mention stagnation, obsolescence or even regression) outside the field of art had a bearing on the production of art and the discourses that surrounded it. The materiality of technology, and its significance in the context of practices of consumption, communication, industrialisation, war and colonisation, will be central concerns. Challenging deterministic, triumphalist assumptions about the social and historical function of technology in modernity, particular attention will also be paid to those technologies that did not 'succeed'; the techniques and objects that fell by the wayside, or which were perhaps never meant to endure. This course will take a capacious approach to visual production in this period. While we will consider some well-known works by canonical artists, many others will much be less familiar. Objects and images we will encounter range from paintings, architecture, and sculpture to popular prints, photographs, maps, and newspapers; from ceramics and clothing to monuments, museums, infrastructures, and machines; from scientific and technical images to commercial spaces, world’s fairs, and advertising; from panoramas and novel optical devices, phantasmagoria and automata, to subterranean and underwater fantasies, utopian projects, and flying machines. Although the focus of the course will be on metropolitan France, a key topic will be the impact of colonialism across the ‘francosphere’ during this period. Consequently, we will consider too how events and practices in France intersected with those outside its borders, from the Haitian Revolution to the invasion of Algeria.