Seminar Change of Media (SoSe 2008), Persons, DatabaseGroup
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Vilém Flusser
Born in Prague in 1920, Vilém Flusser began his studies in philosophy at Prague University in 1939. He emigrated to London in 1940, and to São Paulo in 1941, where he continued and completed his education. Parallel to his philosophical and scientific activities, he was manager of a factory for electronic transformers, continuing in that position until 1961. Beside other books he wrote “Die Schrift – Hat Schreiben Zukunft?”. In this book he clarifies what a important role the linear, alphanumeric code plays for cultural changes in the western culture and what we are leaving behind when we stop writing. Vilém Flusser died in a car accident near the Czech border in November 1991. [1]
Henri Marie La Fontaine
Henri Marie La Fontaine (April 22, 1854-May 14, 1943) was born in Brussels. A professor of international law, a senator in the Belgian legislature for thirty-six years, a renowned bibliographer, a man of wide-ranging cultural achievements, he was noted, most of all, for his fervent and total internationalism. In 1913 La Fontaine got the Nobel Peace Price and in 1895, in collaboration with Paul Otlet, he established the Mundaneum. Henri La Fontaine lived to see his native Belgium invaded once again but not to see it liberated, for he died in 1943. [2]
Johannes Gutenberg
Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg was born in the German city of Mainz, the youngest son of the upper-class merchant Friele Gensfleisch zur Laden, and his second wife Else Wyrich, who was the daughter of a shopkeeper. Gutenberg's year of birth is not known; it was certainly between 1394 and 1404, most likely around 1400. He was a German goldsmith and printer who is credited with inventing movable type printing in Europe around 1439, and mechanical printing globally Book Printing). His major work, the Gutenberg Bible (also known as the 42-line Bible), has been acclaimed for its high aesthetic and technical quality. Gutenberg died on 3 February 1468 in Mainz. [3]
George Landow
George Landow is Professor of English and Art History at Brown University. He is one of the leading authorities on Victorian literature, art, and culture, as well as a pioneer in criticism and theory of Electronic literature, hypertext and hypermedia. Landow is a well-known author, researcher and one of the most important thinkers concerning Hypermedia and Hypertext in academia. His most important works highlight the epistemological modifications which result from the migration between systems of “closed” authorial publication (such as books), to the “open” systems, such as the hypertext and hypermedia. He also developed the four steps that, in his opinion, are necessary to call a hypertext a network. [4]
Niklas Luhmann
Biographie
- born december 1927 in Lüneburg (Germany)
- studies of law at the University of Freiburg
- from 1951/52 composition of his slip box (Luhmannscher Zettelkasten)
- '60/'61 research fellowship at Harvard University
- studies of administrative sciences and sociology
- from '62 employment at Verwaltungshochschule Speyer
- from '65 sociology-research-employment in Dortmund
- '66 conferral of a doctorate and postdoctoral lecture within 5 months in sociology at the University of Münster
- from '68 professor for sociology at the University of Bielefeld
- † 1998 in Oerlinghausen near Bielefeld (Germany)
Lev Manovich
Lev Manovich was born in Moscow. He studied fine arts, architecture and computer science. Now he is Professor of Visual Arts, University of California, San Diego, U.S. where he teaches new media art and theory. Manovich has been working with computer media as an artist, computer animator, designer, and programmer since 1984. His art projects include little movies, the first digital film project designed for the Web (1994), Freud-Lissitzky Navigator, a conceptual software for navigating twentieth century history, and Anna and Andy, a streaming novel (2000). His works has been included in many key international exhbitions of new media art. In his essay "Database as a symbolic form" a restructuring of the classical semiotic model of a syntagm intersected by the paradigmatic dimension in favor of a paradigm intersected with the syntagmatic dimension canbe seen. [6]
Ted Nelson
Theodor Holm Nelson (born 1937) is an American sociologist, philosopher, and pioneer of information technology. He started one of the most famous attempts at creating a hypertext system, Project Xanadu, in 1960 and it still is not finished. Ted Nelson envisaged a docuverse where all writing is permanently available, accumulating links and cross references as time goes on. Furthermore Nelson is credited with coming up with the term hypertext itself, first seen in print in 1965. The main thrust of his work has been to make computers easily accessible to ordinary people. His motto is: A user interface should be so simple that a beginner in an emergency can understand it within ten seconds. [7]
Paul Otlet
Paul Otlet, born in 1868, did not set foot in a schoolroom until age 12. His mother died when he was 3; his father was a successful entrepreneur who made a fortune selling trams all over the world. The senior Otlet kept his son out of school, out of a conviction that classrooms stifled children’s natural abilities. Left at home with his tutors and with few friends, the young Otlet lived the life of a solitary bookworm. When he finally entered secondary school, he made straight for the library. “I could lock myself into the library and peruse the catalog, which for me was a miracle,” he later wrote. Soon after entering school, Otlet took on the role of school librarian. Together with Henri La Fontaine Paul founded the Mundaneum. [8]
Gene Youngblood
Gene Youngblood (born in 1942) is a theorist of media arts and politics, and a scholar in the history and theory of alternative cinemas. His Expanded Cinema (1970), the first book to consider video as an art form, was influential in establishing the field of media arts. He is also widely known as a pioneering voice in the media democracy movement, and has been teaching, writing and lecturing on media democracy and alternative cinemas for thirty-seven years. Currently he is Professor of Critical Studies in the Department of Moving Image Arts at the College of Santa Fe. He sees ”metamedia” as a tool for “renaissance amateurs” who no longer work in the avant garde but radiate a positive attitude as part of the “electronic community. [9]
References
- ↑ http://www.flusser.net/labor/lab_vf.shtml (07.07.2008); http://www.european-photography.com/labor/lab_vf_edi.shtml (07.07.2008)
- ↑ http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1913/fontaine-bio.html (06.07.2008)
- ↑ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Gutenberg (17.06.2008)
- ↑ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Landow_(professor)
- ↑ http://www.uni-weimar.de/medien/kulturtechniken/lehre/ss2005/material/kranz_luhmann.pdf (23.05.2008)
- ↑ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manovich (26.06.2008); http://switch.sjsu.edu/web/v5n3/J-1.html (26.06.2008)
- ↑ http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/0,1000000091,2079676,00.htm; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson
- ↑ http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/17/science/17mund.html?pagewanted=2 (06.07.2008)
- ↑ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Youngblood; http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=235
