Variantology 2: On Deep Time Relations of Arts, Sciences and Technologies

by Siegfried Zielinski (Editor), David Link (Editor), Eckhard Fuerlus (Editor)

What does a thirteenth-century Majorcan missionary have to do with logical machines? Were the astrolabes of the late Middle Ages really only used to calculate the orbits of stars and planets, or were they philosophical instruments? Was the first avant garde in Russia more interested in Jesuit affect theory or H.G. Wells's time machine? Where do radar angels live? These excursions into the relationships between the arts, the sciences and technology lead neither to a revised history of art nor to a revised history of the media; they question our understanding of what we have defined as art and what we have seen as the media.

350 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2007

About the author

Siegfried Zielinski is a German media theorist. He held the chair for Media Theory: Archaeology and Variantology of the Media at Berlin University of the Arts (UdK), he is Michel Foucault Professor for Techno-Culture and Media Archaeology at the European Graduate School in Saas Fee, and he is director of the International Vilém-Flusser-Archive at the Berlin University of the Arts. In 2016 until March 2018, he succeeded Peter Sloterdijk as head of the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design (HfG Karlsruhe).