Deep Time of the Media

Deep Time of the Media takes us on an archaeological quest into the hidden layers ofmedia development -- dynamic moments of intense activity in media design and construction that havebeen largely ignored in the historical-media archaeological record. Siegfried Zielinski argues thatthe history of the media does not proceed predictably from primitive tools to complex machinery; inDeep Time of the Media, he illuminates turning points of media history -- fractures in thepredictable -- that help us see the new in the old.Drawing on original source materials, Zielinskiexplores the technology of devices for hearing and seeing through two thousand years of cultural andtechnological history. He discovers the contributions of "dreamers and modelers" of media worlds,from the ancient Greek philosopher Empedocles and natural philosophers of the Renaissance andBaroque periods to Russian avant-gardists of the early twentieth century. "Media are spaces ofaction for constructed attempts to connect what is separated," Zielinski writes. He describes modelsand machinesthat make this conncection: including a theater of mirrors in sixteenth-century Naples,an automaton for musical composition created by the seventeenth-century Jesuit Athanasius Kircher,and the eighteenth-century electrical tele-writing machine of Joseph Mazzolari, among others.Uncovering these moments in the media-archaeological record, Zielinski says, brings us into a newrelationship with present-day moments; these discoveries in the "deep time" media history shed lighton today's media landscape and may help us map our expedition to the media future.

Siegfried Zielinski, a founder of the new field of media archaeology, is Founding Director of the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne, where he is Professor of Media and Communication Studies and is developing a workshop for a variantology of the media. He has published more than a dozen books and many articles. Deep Time of the Media is the second of his books to appear in English.