Intersubjectivity: media metaphors, play & provocation

6th international Vilém Flusser symposium
& event series

march 15-19 1997 budapest hungary



Sigfried Zielinski
lecturer

Born 1951.
Studied theatre, philology, philosophy, linguistics and political science in Marburg, the Free University (FU) and Technical University (TU) in Berlin, M.A. in 1979, Ph.D. in 1985, B.Ed. in 1989.
Media specialist in the 80s at the Technical University of Berlin. Developed programme in media studies and media consultancy. Professor from 1990-93 for audiovisual studies at the University of Salzburg, developed the teaching and research department, "Audiovisionen". Numerous books on the history, theory and practice of cinema, television and video, including: Veit Harlan 1981, Zur Geschichte des Videorecorders 1986, Audiovisionen - Kino und Fernsehen als Zwischenspiele in der Geschichte 1989.
Since 1979, film and video projects, installations, exhibitions, including Responses to Holocaust in Western Germany, 100 - Kurzfilme zur Archeologie der Audiovision, Museum Hermeticum.
Siegfried Zielinski has been professor for communications and media studies since 1993 and, since September of 1994, Founding Principal of the Academy of Media Arts Cologne.


"Art and Apparatus - Dramatizing the Interface"
lecture for the Symposium - abstract

In the world of metaphors in and around the net, the relation to life has become remarkable central. Biology as a discipline has occupied a leading role. If we look towards the autonomy of the ethics and aesthetics of the interface/Schnittstelle, which is derived from the other/otherness, we have to meet both critically and with alternative models: life as a leading metaphor, as well as the reduced and flat-dimensional concept of biology/evolution in the tradition of Darwinism or neo-Darwinism.
The world of machines and programs has been designed and calculated according to a plan. It is based on numbers and on the logical and systematic relations between numbers.
In this sense, it is a coherent and consistent world. The world of the living is not based on such a reliable scheme. The main difference is that it is principally irreversible. Because of outside interference and inherent fluctuations, the many diverse physiological rhythms that are linked in a complex organism never lead back to their original starting point. Organic systems fluctuate near stationary states.
Machines and programs cannot have a state.

Intersubjectivity: media metaphors, play & provocation
Advisory Committee:
László Beke, director, Műcsarnok;
Wolfgang Meissner, director, Goethe-Institut Budapest;
Matthias Müller-Wieferig, Goethe-Institut Budapest;
Miklós Peternák, chair of the board, C3;
Zoltán Sebôk, theoretician; J.A.Tillmann, theoretician;
Organizers:Suzanne Mészöly, programdirector C3
Ágnes Veronika Kovács , program coordinator C3
Adele Eisenstein, program coordinátor C3
See the Goethe-Institute website on the Flusser Symposium: http://www.goethe.de/ms/bud/depsymp.htm

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