Alex Adriaansens on Fri, 29 Jan 1999 15:22:32 +0200


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Syndicate: new book publication S. Zielinski


Audiovisions
Cinema and Television as Entr'actes in History

By Siegfried Zielinski

november 1998, isbn 90 5356 303 2, 16 x 24 cm, hardback, illustrated, ca 275
pages, Fl. 69,95 / 1395 bfr

november 1998, isbn 90 5356 313 x, 16 x 24 cm, paperback, illustrated, ca 275
pages, Fl. 39,50 / 790 bfr

Amsterdam University Press - Prinsengracht 747 -751 - 1017 JX
Amsterdam. Tel: +31-10-4200050 fax: 4203214. email: aup@aup.uva.nl

check: http://www.uva.nl/aup/aup.html


 The production, distribution, and perception of moving images are
undergoing a radical transformation. Ever-faster computers, digital
technology, and microelectronic are joining forces to produce advanced
audiovision -the media vanishing point of the 20th century. Very little
will remain unchanged.

 The classic institutions for the mediation of film - cinema and television
- are revealed to be no more than interludes in the broader history of the
audiovisual media. This book interprets these changes not simply as a
cultural loss but also as a challenge: the new audiovisions have to be
confronted squarely to make strategic intervention possible.

 Audiovisions provides a historical underpinning for this active approach.
Spanning 100 years, from the end of the 19th to the end of the 20th
century, it reconstructs the complex genesis of cinema and television as
historically relative - and thus finite - cultural forms, focussing on the
dynamics and tension in the interaction between the apparatus and its uses.
The book is also a plea for "staying power" in studies of cultural
technology and technological culture of film.

 Essayistic in style, it dispenses with complicated cross references and,
instead, is structured around distinct historical phases. Montages of
images and text provide supplemental information, contrast, and comment.

 Siegfried Zielinski is founding director of the Academy of Media Arts in
Cologne, Germany and Professor of Media and Communication Studies. He is a
member of European Film Academy (EFA), the British Film Institute and the
Magic Lantern Society of Grat Britain.