Cultural Techniques: Grids, Filters, Doors, and Other ...

[Pages:274]Cultural Techniques

Grids, Filters, Doors, and Other Articulations of the Real

Bernhard Siegert

Fordham University Press : New York

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Siegert, Bernhard, author. [Essays. Selections. English] Cultural techniques : grids, lters, doors, and other articulations

of the real / Bernhard Siegert ; translated by Geo rey WinthropYoung.--First edition.

pages cm.--(Meaning systems) (IKKM BOOKS ; Volume ) Summary: "This volume designates a shift within posthumanistic media studies, that dissolves the concept of media into a network of operations, that reproduce, process and re ect the distinctions that are fundamental for a given culture, e.g. the anthropological di erence, the distinctions between natural object and cultural sign, noise and information, eye and gaze"--Provided by publisher. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN - - - - (hardback)--ISBN - - - (paper) . Mass media and culture. I. Winthrop-Young, Geo rey,

? translator. II. Title. P .S

. --dc

Printed in the United States of America

First edition

Contents

List of Illustrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ix Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii Translator's Note. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv

Introduction: Cultural Techniques, or, The End of the Intellectual Postwar in German Media Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. Cacography or Communication? Cultural Techniques of Sign-Signal Distinction . . . . . . . . . . .

. Eating Animals--Eating God--Eating Man: Variations on the Last Supper, or, the Cultural Techniques of Communion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. Parl?tres: The Cultural Techniques of Anthropological Di erence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. Medusas of the Western Paci c: The Cultural Techniques of Seafaring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. Pasajeros a Indias: Registers and Biographical Writing as Cultural Techniques of Subject Constitution (Spain, Sixteenth Century) . . . . . . . . .

. (Not) in Place: The Grid, or, Cultural Techniques of Ruling Spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. White Spots and Hearts of Darkness: Drafting, Projecting, and Designing as Cultural Techniques. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. Waterlines: Striated and Smooth Spaces as Techniques of Ship Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. Figures of Self-Reference: A Media Genealogy of the Trompe-l'oeil in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Still Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. Door Logic, or, the Materiality of the Symbolic: From Cultural Techniques to Cybernetic Machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

viii Contents

Illustrations

- Michel Serres' trivalent model of exchange - Roman Jakobson's six basic functions of language - The Pollak / Vir?g telegraph: signal, character set,

and sample telegram - Dieric Bouts, Altarpiece of the Holy Sacrament, ? - Dieric Bouts, central panel of the Altarpiece of the Holy

Sacrament (detail) - Master of Mary of Burgundy, The Miraculous Host of Dijon, c. - Rock drawing of a goatpen, Mafraq, Jordan,

rst millennium B.C.E. - Joseph Wright of Derby, An Experiment on a Bird in the

Air-Pump, - Shield from the Trobriand Islands - Designs on the shield interpreted by Edmund Leach - Casa de la Contrataci?n passenger list, ? - Casa de la Contrataci?n, Seville - Libro registro de pasajeros a Indias, - Certi cate of authenticity, - Achieving perspective without the velum, - Centuriation - Miniature showing uncultivated land between

two centuriated colonies - Plan of Miletus, attributed to Hippodamus - Map of Lima, Peru,

- Foundation charter of San Juan de la Frontera (Argentina),

- Map of Teutenango, Mexico, - Plan of Buenos Aires, - Mathew Carey, "Plat of the Seven Ranges of

Townships . . . ," - Karl B?hrer's "World Format Scholar's Library," - Karl B?hrer's "World Format Large Library." - Le Corbusier, project for Montevideo and Sao Paolo, - Ernst Neufert's railbound slipform house construction

machine, - Leonardo da Vinci, four studies of swirling water, c. - Leonardo, sketches of a female head - Leonardo, study of turbulences produced by di erently

shaped objects - Leonardo, three studies of water swirls emanating from

a concave surface - Leonardo, sketch of water owing from a rectangular

opening into a bowl, / - Kabyle house plan - Ebstorf map, thirteenth century - Ptolemy's third projection method - Parmigianino, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, - Masaccio, The Holy Trinity fresco (detail), ? - Ra ael, gridded design drawing for Holy Family with the

Pomegranate, c. - Workshop of Leonardo, contour cartoon for a portrait

of a woman in pro le - Ra ael, perforated cartoon for The Knight's Dream, c. - Juan de la Cosa, world map, - Fernando Oliveira, drawing of a graminho, c. - Use of the mezzaluna to mark a scale on the graminho - Partison with the aid of the graminho and mezzaluna, or brusca - Mathew Baker, drawing of a master shipwright at work in his

o ce, - Albrecht D?rer, The Draftsman of the Lute,

x Illustrations

- Engraving of King's College Chapel, Cambridge, - Anthony Deane, "The ship's draught completed in every

part," - Marcellin Du Carla, hypothetical contour map, - Set of lines used to record the shape of a pilot boat, c. - Fredrik Henrik af Chapman, drawing of streamlining

around a body in motion, - Norman Bel Geddes, model of streamlined ocean liner, c. - Jan van Kessel, Insects on a Stone Slab, undated - Jan van Kessel, Insects and Fruit, c. - Joris Hoefnagel, Miniature with Snail, c. - Joris Hoefnagel, Still Life with Flowers, a Snail, and Insects, - Joris Hoefnagel, illumination of a page of Mira calligraphiae

monumenta ( ? ) - Joris Hoefnagel, illumination of verso of the page of Mira

calligraphiae monumenta - Page of the Grimani Breviary - Page of the Imhof Prayer Book, - Page with four female saints, from the workshop of the

Master of the L?beck Bible - Master of the Dresden Prayer Book, Virgin and Child

Crowned by an Angel - Vienna Master of Mary of Burgundy, Adoration of the

Magi, c. ? - Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder, Flowers in a Glass

Vase, c. - Lieven van Lathem and Nicolaes Spierinc, Christ Being

Nailed to the Cross, c. ? - Robert Campin, M?rode Triptych, ? - Robert Campin, Annunciation, c. - Robert Campin, M?rode Triptych, central and left panel - Jan Steen, The Morning Toilet, - Van Kennel's revolving door: "Always Closed," - Still from David Cronenberg's Videodrome (Canada, )

Illustrations xi

Acknowledgments

Earlier versions of chapters , , , , , , , and and of the introduction have already appeared in print:

"Cultural Techniques, or, The End of the Intellectual Postwar in German Media Theory," trans. Geo rey Winthrop-Young, Theory, Culture & Society no. ( ): ? .

"Cacography or Communication? Cultural Techniques in German Media Studies," trans. Geo rey Winthrop-Young, Grey Room ( ): ? .

"Tier essen--Gott essen--Mensch essen: Variationen des Abendmahls," in Hendrik Blumentrath et al., eds., Techniken der ?bereinkunft: Zur Medialit?t des Politischen (Berlin: Kadmos, ), ? .

"Parl?tres: Zur kulturtechnischen Gabe und Barre der anthropologischen Di erenz," in Anne von der Heiden and Joseph Vogl, eds., Politische Zoologie (Berlin and Zurich: Diaphanes, ), ? .

"(Nicht) Am Ort: Zum Raster als Kulturtechnik," Thesis ( ), no. (proceedings of the th International Bauhaus-Kolloquium, Medium Architektur: Zur Krise der Vermittlung, Gerd Zimmermann, ed., Weimar, ), : ? .

"Weisse Flecken und nstre Herzen: Von der symbolischen Weltordnung zur Weltentwurfsordnung," in Daniel Gethmann and Susanne Hauser, eds., Kulturtechnik Entwerfen: Praktiken, Konzepte und Medien in Architektur und Design Science (Bielefeld: Transkript, ), ? .

"Wasserlinien: Der gekerbte und der glatte Raum als Agenten der Konstruktion," in Jutta Voorhoeve, ed., Welten scha en: Zeichnen und Schreiben als Verfahren der Konstruktion (Z?rich: Diaphanes, ), ? .

"Latenz der dritten Dimension: Eine Medientheorie des Trompe-l'Oeils in der Vorgeschichte des niederl?ndischen Stillebens," in Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht and Florian Klinger, eds., "Latenz": Blinde Passagiere in den

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