Optical Media

This major new book provides a concise history of optical media from Renaissance linear perspective to late twentieth-century computer graphics. Kittler begins by looking at European painting since the Renaissance in order to discern the principles according to which modern optical perception was organized. He also discusses the development of various mechanical devices, such as the camera obscura and the laterna magica, which were closely connected to the printing press and which played a pivotal role in the media war between the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation. 
 After examining this history, Kittler then addresses the ways in which images were first stored and made to move, through the development of photography and film. He discusses the competitive relationship between photography and painting as well as between film and theater, as innovations like the Baroque proscenium or "picture-frame" stage evolved from elements that would later constitute cinema. The central question, however, is the impact of film on the ancient monopoly of writing, as it not only provoked new forms of competition for novelists but also fundamentally altered the status of books. In the final section, Kittler examines the development of electrical telecommunications and electronic image processing from television to computer simulations. In short, this book provides a comprehensive introduction to the history of image production that is indispensable for anyone wishing to understand the prevailing audiovisual conditions of contemporary culture.

Arts & Photography

Kittler, Friedrich

Photography & Video

Polity

The Truth of the Technological World: Essays on the Genealogy of Presence

Friedrich Kittler (1943–2011) combined the study of literature, cinema, technology, and philosophy in a manner sufficiently novel to be recognized as a new field of academic endeavor in his native Germany. "Media studies," as Kittler conceived it, meant reflecting on how books operate as films, poetry as computer science, and music as military equipment. This volume collects writings from all stages of the author's prolific career. Exemplary essays illustrate how matters of form and inscription make heterogeneous source material (e.g., literary classics and computer design) interchangeable on the level of function―with far-reaching consequences for our understanding of the humanities and the "hard sciences." Rich in counterintuitive propositions, sly humor, and vast erudition, Kittler's work both challenges the assumptions of positivistic cultural history and exposes the over-abstraction and language games of philosophers such as Heidegger and Derrida. The twenty-three pieces gathered here document the intellectual itinerary of one of the most original thinkers in recent times―sometimes baffling, often controversial, and always stimulating.

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Stanford University Press

Operation Valhalla: Writings on War, Weapons, and Media (a Cultural Politics book)

Operation Valhalla collects eighteen texts by German media theorist Friedrich Kittler on the close connections between war and media technology. In these essays, public lectures, interviews, literary analyses, and autobiographical musings, Kittler outlines how war has been a central driver of media's evolution, from Prussia's wars against Napoleon to the so-called War on Terror. Covering an eclectic array of topics, he charts the intertwined military and theatrical histories of the searchlight and the stage lamp, traces the microprocessor's genealogy back to the tank, shows how rapid-fire guns brought about new standards for optics and acoustics, and reads Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow to upset established claims about the relationship between war, technology, and history in the twentieth century. Throughout, Operation Valhalla foregrounds the outsize role of war in media history as well as Kittler's importance as a daring and original thinker.

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Duke University Press Books

Draculas Vermächtnis. Technische Schriften.

Reclam, Leipzig

Aufschreibesysteme 1800/1900

Fink Wilhelm GmbH + Co.KG

Contributions by Gertrud Koch, Bruce Mau. Text by Aleida Assman, Jan Assman, Gabriele Brandstetter, Friedrich Kittler, Andra Lepecki, C. Nadia Seremetakis.

ReMembering the Body: Body and Movement in the 20th

Lepecki, André

Brandstetter, Gabriele

Seremetakis, C. Nadia

Assman, Aleida

Assman, Jan

Decorative Arts & Design

Hatje Cantz Publishers

Optische Medien.

Merve Verlag GmbH

Grammophon, Film, Typewriter

Brinkmann U. Bose

Andrej A. Markov.

Kittler, Wolf

Mazin, Viktor

Uspenskij, Vladimir

Kursell, Julia

Berz, Peter

Diaphanes Verlag

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