Friedrich Kittler: The Truth of the Technological World: Essays on the Genealogy of Presence (2013–) [DE, EN]
Filed under book | Tags: · antiquity, computing, cybernetics, film, information theory, literary theory, literature, media, media technology, media theory, noise, philosophy, psychoanalysis, software, sound recording, technology, telegraphy, theory, typewriter, war, writing
“Few German scholars in the past 50 years have had such a lasting impact on the cultural situation of our time, including its academic institutions, as Friedrich Kittler. It is in large part due to his writings that the radio, the gramophone, and the computer are not just objects of cultural fascination, but also of philosophical reflection.
This volume contains a collection of essays written by Kittler over the course of 40 years which serve as a testament to the enormous breadth, intensity, and the singular creativity of his thought.”
German edition
Edited and with an Afterword by Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht
Publisher Suhrkamp, Berlin, 2013
ISBN 9783518732984
432 pages
English edition
Translated by Erik Butler
Publisher Stanford University Press, 2014
ISBN 9780804792622
400 pages
Reviews: Oliver Jahraus (zfm, 2014), Stavros Arabatzis (Weimarer Beiträge, 2014).
Publisher (DE)
Publisher (EN)
Worldcat (DE)
Worldcat (EN)
Die Wahrheit der technischen Welt (German, EPUB, updated on 2019-11-2)
The Truth of the Technological World (English, updated on 2019-11-2)
Friedrich Kittler: Short Cuts (2002) [German]
Filed under book | Tags: · computing, film, literary theory, literature, machine, media, media theory, military, music, surveillance, technology
A collection of essays and interviews.
Dass er seit eineinhalb Jahrzehnten den Geisteswissenschaften ihren Computer-Analphabetismus vorbuchstabiert, hat Friedrich Kittler vor allen akademischen Ehren den Titel des “Enfant incompatible der Humanities” eingebracht. Aus dem Inhalt: Interviews mit Alexander Kluge, Über Michel Foucault, Computeranalphabetismus, Das Jahrhundert der Landvermesser, Der Kopf schrumpft, Der Schleier des Luftkrieges, Gespräch mit Paul Virilio, Die Zukunft auf Siliziumbasis, Interview mit Peter Weibel, Jeder kennt den CIA, Krieg im Schaltkreis, Medien und Drogen in Pynchons Zweitem Weltkrieg, Memories are made of you, Provisorische Maschinen, provisorische Moral, Rock Musik: Ein Missbrauch von Heeresgerät.
Edited by Peter Gente and Martin Weinmann
Publisher Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt am Main, 2002
Short Cuts series, 6
ISBN 3861504243, 9783861504245
288 pages
Kittler’s bibliography at Monoskop wiki
Comment (1)Craig Dworkin: No Medium (2013)
Filed under book | Tags: · architecture, art, art theory, attention, body, book, conceptual art, dada, film, fluxus, literature, media, music, painting, paper, phonograph, sculpture, sex, silence, temporality, time, translation, typography
“In No Medium, Craig Dworkin looks at works that are blank, erased, clear, or silent, writing critically and substantively about works for which there would seem to be not only nothing to see but nothing to say. Examined closely, these ostensibly contentless works of art, literature, and music point to a new understanding of media and the limits of the artistic object.
Dworkin considers works predicated on blank sheets of paper, from a fictional collection of poems in Jean Cocteau’s Orphée to the actual publication of a ream of typing paper as a book of poetry; he compares Robert Rauschenberg’s Erased De Kooning Drawing to the artist Nick Thurston’s erased copy of Maurice Blanchot’s The Space of Literature (in which only Thurston’s marginalia were visible); and he scrutinizes the sexual politics of photographic representation and the implications of obscured or obliterated subjects of photographs. Reexamining the famous case of John Cage’s 4’33”, Dworkin links Cage’s composition to Rauschenberg’s White Paintings, Ken Friedman’s Zen for Record (and Nam June Paik’s Zen for Film), and other works, offering also a “guide to further listening” that surveys more than 100 scores and recordings of “silent” music.
Dworkin argues that we should understand media not as blank, base things but as social events, and that there is no medium, understood in isolation, but only and always a plurality of media: interpretive activities taking place in socially inscribed space.”
Publisher MIT Press, 2013
ISBN 0262018705, 9780262018708
219 pages
Interview with the author (Critical Margins)
Author’s lecture at Penn Poetry & Poetics (video, 19 min)
Reviews: Johanna Drucker (Los Angeles Review of Books), Michael Leong (Hyperallergic).
Commentary: Richard Marshall (3:AM Magazine).