Lab 3 - Jahrbuch 1996/97 fuer Kunst und Apparate

Edited by the Kunsthochschule fuer Medien Koeln.
Cologne: Walther Koenig, 1997

Reviewed by Andreas Broeckmann


German media theory and history, part II...
The important work that is being done in and around the Kunsthochschule fuer Medien in Cologne/Germany has a similar fate. The art school dedicated to teaching the history, theory and practice of media publishes this yearbook which this year brings together texts by, amongst others, Jaroslav Andel (about Zdenek Pesanek), Nils Roeller (about mathematics and philosophy), Hans Ulrich Reck (about media art theory), Hinderik Emrich (about logocentrism and psychosis), Otto Roessler (about chaos and ethics), the school's director Siegfried Zielinski (about metaphors and machines), by Friedrich Kittler (about hardware) and Miklos Peternak (about the history of the telephone). Only three texts are printed in English (Timothy Druckrey, Myron W. Krueger, Yaroslav A. Khetagurov), which is both understandable - after all, this is a German publication - and a pity, because there are a number of substantial contributions to the history and the theory of media which will not easily be noticed by the international community.

(By the way, this is a well-made, well-designed book with 400 pages and many b/w illustrations. The designers, Uta Kopp and Alexandra Ohlenforst, just recently won a big design prize in New York.)