Variantology 3 [Paperback]

For those seeking a refreshing approach to the study of New Media, Dr. Siegfried Zielinksi has long been an important resource. In his two major books, Audiovisions: Cinema and Television as Entr'actes in History (Amsterdam University Press - Film Culture in Transition)and Deep Time of the Media: Toward an Archaeology of Hearing and Seeing by Technical Means (Electronic Culture: History, Theory, and Practice), Zielinski has illustrated a revolutionary an-archaeological approach to understanding the transformation of media and media technologies over time, stressing multiple, overlapping and intertwining historicities.

Over the past four years, Prof. Zielinski has brought together an eccentric and exceptional group of scholars together to attempt to apply this poly-historical approach to media he calls Variantology.
The present volume is the result of the Third Variantology Workshop held at the Cologne University of Media (KHM) in December 2006, which had as it's theme a techno-philosophical history of Chinese thought and art.

The essays by Chinese scholars and noted sinologists, which make up the bulk of the volume., open up valuable new areas of research and inquiry for the western media scholar or practitioner by providing essential guides for understanding the fundamental concepts and cultural context of Chinese knowledge and tradition. As such, the book provides exceptional and privileged access to realms of artistic expression and scientific exploration and thought which are forbiddingly foreign to the uninitiated.

For scholars and practitioners interested in alternative manners of approaching some of the fundamentals of digital media, such as electricity, light and magnetism, the sections by Chinese scholars Dai Nianzu (on electricity and magnetism), Chen Cheng-Yih (on binary systems in Chinese science and philosophy), and Xu Fei (on the history of Chinese acoustics) will prove of excellent reference as introductions to the enormous wealth of historical Chinese resources on the matter.

These carefully translated and annotated texts include excellently reproduced historical images and charts, and provide an invaluable introduction with unaccustomed clarity and directness to Chinese modes
of philosophical principles (such as yin/yang and ki) which are still today all but inaccessible to the western scholar
Essential Chinese texts are also provided in their original language to allow the advanced scholar a direct access to the primary materials.

These contributions by Chinese scholars are supplemented by fascinating texts by western sinologists Francesca Bray (on fertility), Mareille Fritsch (on the tribal representational media form of the paper cut), and Dagmar Schäfer (on resonance).

Historical articles on such subjects as fireworks, wind, moonlight, and typography complete the volume interspersed with data visualization artwork of Ingo Günther. This volume is co-edited by Eckhard Fürlus.

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