monochrom, 3-10 (1994-1998) [German]

The mouthpiece of an international art-technology-philosophy collective founded in 1993, with its headquarters at Museumsquartier in Vienna.

Editor-in-chief: Johannes Grenzfurthner
Publisher Monochrom, Vienna
ISSN 1024-6738

Authors
Monochrom on Wikipedia

PDF (No. 3: media dings, 1994/95, 68 pp)
PDF (No. 4-5: media art damage, 1995/96, 104 pp)
PDF (No. 6-7: 100% error free high-density druckwerk, 1997, 112 pp)
PDF (No. 8-10: gebenedeit unter den illustrierten, 1998, 180 pp)

Later issues

Alexander R. Galloway: The Interface Effect (2012)

“Interfaces are back, or perhaps they never left. The familiar Socratic conceit from the Phaedrus, of communication as the process of writing directly on the soul of the other, has returned to center stage in today’s discussions of culture and media. Indeed Western thought has long construed media as a grand choice between two kinds of interfaces. Following the optimistic path, media seamlessly interface self and other in a transparent and immediate connection. But, following the pessimistic path, media are the obstacles to direct communion, disintegrating self and other into misunderstanding and contradiction. In other words, media interfaces are either clear or complicated, either beautiful or deceptive, either already known or endlessly interpretable.

Recognizing the limits of either path, Galloway charts an alternative course by considering the interface as an autonomous zone of aesthetic activity, guided by its own logic and its own ends: the interface effect. Rather than praising user-friendly interfaces that work well, or castigating those that work poorly, this book considers the unworkable nature of all interfaces, from windows and doors to screens and keyboards. Considered allegorically, such thresholds do not so much tell the story of their own operations but beckon outward into the realm of social and political life, and in so doing ask a question to which the political interpretation of interfaces is the only coherent answer.

Grounded in philosophy and cultural theory and driven by close readings of video games, software, television, painting, and other images, Galloway seeks to explain the logic of digital culture through an analysis of its most emblematic and ubiquitous manifestation – the interface.”

Publisher Polity, 2012
ISBN 0745662528, 9780745662527
170 pages

Review: McKenzie Wark (Public Seminar, 2015).

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2021-12-16)

Friedrich A. Kittler: Discourse Networks 1800/1900 (1985–) [German, English]

“This is a highly original book about the connections between historical moment, social structure, technology, communication systems, and what is said and thought using these systems–notably literature. Friedrich Kittler focuses on the differences between ‘discourse networks’ in 1800 and in 1900, in the process developing a new analysis of the shift from romanticism to modernism. The artful structure of the book begins with Goethe’s Faust and ends with Valéry’s Faust. In the 1800 section, the author discusses how language was learned, the emergence of the modern university, the associated beginning of the interpretation of contemporary literature, and the canonization of literature. Among the writers and works Kittler analyzes in addition to Goethe’s Faust are Schlegel, Hegel, E.T.A. Hoffman’s The Golden Pot, and Goethe’s Tasso. The 1900 section argues that the new discourse network in which literature is situated in the modern period is characterized by new technological media–film, the photograph, and the typewritten page–and the crisis that these caused for literary production. Along the way, the author discusses the work of Nietzsche, Gertrude Stein, Mallarmé, Bram Stroker, the Surrealists, Rilke, Kafka, and Freud, among others.”

Aufschreibesysteme 1800/1900
First published in 1985
Third, completely revised edition
Publisher Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Munich, 1995
ISBN 3770528816, 9783770528813
524 pages

Discourse Networks, 1800/1900
Translated by Michael Metteer, with Chris Cullens
Foreword by David E. Wellbery
Publisher Stanford University Press, 1990
ISBN 9780804720991
496 pages

Reviews: Franz Futterknecht and David Wellbery (Poetics Today, 1987, EN), Robert C. Holub (German Quarterly, 1987, EN), Thomas Sebastian (MLN, 1990, EN).

Wikipedia (DE)
Publisher (DE)
Publisher (EN)

Aufschreibesysteme 1800/1900 (German, 3rd ed., 1985/1995, removed on 2024-2-6 upon request from Brill)
Discourse Networks, 1800/1900 (English, 1990, updated to the full book on 2014-1-30 via poshumano, updated to single-page OCR’d version on 2014-1-31 via Marcell Mars)

Online version of Index of persons (at Monoskop wiki)