Eric Kluitenberg (ed.): Book of Imaginary Media: Excavating the Dream of the Ultimate Communication Medium (2006)

“Where people fail our machines will succeed – it seems to be one of the most stubborn myths in Western society. We are incessantly being bombarded with films, books, street advertising and commercials about new gadgets, new media and new futures that seem suspiciously similar to all that precedes. Imagine the power … of the umpteenth gadget. Imagine … that technology can go where no human has ever gone before, that technology can succeed where no human has succeeded – not only in space or in nature, but also in the interpersonal, specifically in communication with the other.

This book investigates those technological myths and the dream of the ultimate communication medium from multiple perspectives. Building on insights provided by media archeology, Siegfried Zielinski, Bruce Sterling, Erkki Huhtamo and Timothy Druckrey spin a web of connections between the wonderful fantasy machines of Athanasius Kircher, the mania of stereoscopy, ‘dead’ media and archeological media art. Edwin Carels and Zoe Beloff descend into the cinematographic caverns of spiritualism and the iconography of death, while Eric Kluitenberg and John Akomfrah lift the lid on the imaginary connection machines and the ‘mothership connection’.”

Publisher NAi, Rotterdam, with De Balie, Amsterdam, 2006
ISBN 9789056625399, 905662539X
296 pages
via Media Archaeology Reconfigured

Reviews: Arjen Mulder (Open!, 2007), Erik van Bemmelen (Masters of Media, 2010).

Event
Publisher (archived)
WorldCat

PDF (16 MB)

Siegfried Zielinski: Variations on Media Thinking (2019)

“Expanding on Siegfried Zielinski’s inquiry into ‘deep time’ of the media, the essays in Variations on Media Thinking further the eminent media theorist’s unique method of expanded hermeneutics, which means for him interpreting technical artifacts as essential parts of our cultural lives. Covering such topics as the televisualized Holocaust, the ubiquity of media today, the Internet, the genealogy of sound art, and history’s first hacker movement, these essays further diversify Zielinski’s insight into the hidden layers of media development, which he first articulated in his pioneering work Deep Time of the Media.

Including many previously untranslated and scarce essays, these ‘written time machines’ open new lines of investigation for cultural scholars. From the automata of the Arabic-Islamic Renaissance (800–1200) to the largest and loudest techno-event ever, known as The Symphony of Sirens—which transformed Baku in 1922 into an immense music box of modern noise—Variations on Media Thinking covers Zielinski’s inquiries since 1975. Richly illustrated and full of provocation, brilliant insight, and fascinating research, this volume is perfect for students of media archaeology, philosophy, and technology, as well as any adventurous, rigorous thinkers engaged with culture and media.”

Publisher University of Minnesota Press, 2019
Posthumanities series, 52
ISBN 9781517907075, 1517907071
xxv+428 pages

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (71 MB)

Annet Dekker (ed.): Lost and Living (in) Archives: Collectively Shaping New Memories (2017)

“Archives are collections of records that are preserved for historical, cultural and evidentiary purposes. As such, archives are considered as sites of a past, places that contain traces of a collective memory of a nation, a people or a group. Digital archives have changed from stable entities into flexible systems, at times referred to with the term ‘Living Archives’. In which ways has this change affected our relationship to the past? Will the erased, forgotten and neglected be redeemed, and new memories be allowed? Will the fictional versus factual mode of archiving offer the democracy that the public domain implies, or is it another way for public instruments of power to operate? Lost and Living (in) Archives shows that archives are not simply a recording, a reflection, or an image of an event, but that they shape the event itself and thus influence the past, present and future.

Contributors: Babak Afrassiabi, Dušan Barok, Tina Bastajian, Nanna Bonde Thylstrup, Özge Çelikaslan, Annet Dekker, Olia Lialina, Manu Luksch, Nicolas Malevé, Aymeric Mansoux, Michael Murtaugh, Josien Pieterse, Ellef Prestsæter, Robert Sakrowski, Stef Scagliola, Katrina Sluis, Femke Snelting, Igor Štromajer, Nasrin Tabatabai.”

Publisher Pia Pol, Valiz, Amsterdam, 2017
Making Public series
Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0 NL License
ISBN 9789492095268, 9492095262
285 pages

Reviews: Alessandro Ludovico (Neural, 2018), Natacha Yahi (Critique d’art, 2019, EN/FR).

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (16 MB)