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economy history philosophy slow theory

Memetic Turn

[Original German Blog Post] > “The Hanged” from the Tarot Deck of Charles VI., Paris, early 15th century. The symbolism of Tarot – similar to that of alchemy – forms a pre-modern memetic system. Tightly knit into other more or less esoteric programs of meaning, like Qabbalah or astrology, its images are at first illustrative […]

Categories
art economy history literature philosophy slow theory

“So literature collapses before our eyes” –
Non-Commodity Production

Enhancesprivate authorship, the competitive goal-oriented individual Retrievestribal elitism, charmed circle, cf. the “neck verse” Medium:Print ReversesWith flip from manuscript into mass production via print comes the corporate reading public and the historical sense Obsolescesslang, dialects and group identity, separates composition and performance, divorces eye and ear McLuhan’s tetrad-model: four aspects of the effect of media […]

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books history literature

Ovid: Metamorphoses

[Original German Blog Post] Some text are said to have influenced a whole generation; some are even called centennial. But the content of two books have been infusing our so called occidental couture and particularly art and literature over the span of the last two thousand years: this is the bible and Ovid’s Metamorphoses Claude […]

Categories
history slow theory

The Army of Technological Slaves

[Original German Blog Post] “καρπὸν δ᾽ ἔφερε ζείδωρος ἄρουρα αὐτομάτη πολλόν τε καὶ ἄφθονον” Hesiod, Έργα και ημέραι “Machines exist to serve us. There is something to be learned for media makers from the culture of the Hacker: not to surrender to the machines, neither reject them, but to take advantage of the machines, to […]

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architecture books history twitter

Fostering Slowness

The real innovation blogging brought to our media landscape has never been real-time. No, the most important difference between “regular” websites or portals and blogs is their archive and the beautiful possibilities for fostering slowness (philosopher Odo Marquard coined the phrase “Langsamkeitspflege” for a very similar concept). When German blogger and journalist Don Dahlmann wrote […]

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books history philosophy slow theory

What remains of printing

[see german post] Yesterday the printing house in our neigboroughood was getting rid of unuseful things. Lots of printing and typesetting tools, drawers and letter cases were on the street: bulky waste waiting for the garbagemen. Yesterday I already took a big “O” and three small letter cases with me to give them a new […]