Martin Burckhardt (Author)

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Martin Burckhardt (born July 28, 1957 in Fulda ) is a German author and cultural theorist.

A photograph of the author Martin Burckhardt

Life

Burckhardt grew up in a small town in East Westphalia . After high school and community service, he studied German , theater studies and history in Cologne. After completing his studies, he began writing, initially primarily in the field of radio and sound art . In cooperation with the audio artist Hans Peter Kuhn , and later with the musician Johannes Schmoelling , various experimental audio pieces were created, which traded as radio plays , but above all explored the transition zone between noise, music and language. The early examination of the nascent computer world, which he was able to convey through directing and working in the recording studio, aroused his interest in questions of artificial intelligence , but above all the cultural and historical significance of the computer. It was in this context that his first theoretical works were created ( Digital Metaphysics , 1988; Die Universale Maschine , 1990). Together with the journalist and editor Wolfgang Bauernfeind , he held a seminar at the Hochschule der Künste, Berlin , between 1988 and 1994 , where a radio play was worked out with the teachers of the drama class, and later also the sound engineers. At the same time, other radio plays and radio plays were created, especially the multi-hour audio cycle The History of Things (together with Johannes Schmoelling).

Create

During this time it was important to deal with the history of psychoanalysis and its relationship to digital culture on the one hand, and on the other hand with the basics of the alphabet.

In 1995, he and his younger brother Wolfram founded the Kulturverlag Kadmos , which published various works on the early history of the computer, but also on media issues, including by Charles Babbage , Ada Lovelace , Pierre Klossowski , Guy Lenôtre (pseudonym of Théodore Gosselin ), Daniel Paul Schreber , Alfred Kallir and Nikolaus von Oresme .

From 1995 - in connection with the discussion about the "Metamorphoses" book - there was increased teaching, first at the Humboldt University (cultural studies), then at the FU Berlin (theater studies). In addition, various essays were written in magazines (Lettre International, Arch +) as well as the preparation of a new book that told of the “spirit of the machine” (1999).

From 1998 to 2000 he was in charge of Interface V for the Hamburg cultural authority, a symposium and an exhibition on computer culture.

From 2000 onwards he was increasingly concerned with questions of programming and game design , not only in theoretical but also in practical terms. This newly added field of work was reflected for the first time in 2008/2009 as part of the “USER exhibition” in the Center for Art and Media with the work The Virtual Museum .

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In 1994 the monograph Metamorphoses of Space and Time was published. A story of perception . Here the story of the universal machine , from the automatic gear mechanism of the Middle Ages to the computer, was told as a gradual shift in mentality. With the publication of the book, work began on a new book that backdated the question of the genealogy of the machine even further and linked it to the alphabet, gnosis and the dogma of the immaculate conception: The Artificial Mother (Lettre International, 1994).

In 2005 he wrote the story Brandlhuber. A fiction in which he ascribed all imaginable things to the architect Arno Brandlhuber , in order to later use this text as Brandlhuber to open his retrospective at deSingel in Antwerp and then to transform himself back into Burckhardt - a game with a real avatar .

In addition to editing activities ( Charles Fourier , Joseph de Maistre ) and various teaching commitments (aesthetics and architecture at the Art Academy in Nuremberg, media history at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and the University of Art and Design in Zurich, HTW Berlin, cultural journalism at the UdK) further audio pieces, essays, and occasional translations.

With the shame of the philosophers , the project on the genealogy of the machine was continued and concluded with volume 68. The History of a Cultural Revolution .

The little book, The Little Story of Big Thoughts, was a cheerful summary of the long-term cultural-historical project tailored to a broad audience.

In 2010 he founded the company Ludic Philosophy , which published the transmediale browser game TwinKomplex in 2011 . With a cast of actors (including Irm Hermann , Christian Brückner , Gerd Wameling ), film sequences were created which, with a quasi-documentary finish, were incorporated into a framework around a “decentralized information agency”. In the following years he devoted himself to programming questions that resulted in various works, most recently a " feature machine" for the rbb (a tool that recombines audio pieces).

In 2014 the book Digital Renaissance was published by Metrolit-Verlag . Manifesto for a new world . The work is not only intended as a contribution to the current political situation, but was also written in the form of social writing .

The Roman Score was published in 2015 . We are creating paradise on earth , a dystopia that will be settled in 2039 and that will continue foreseeable social and technological developments.

In 2018, Matthes & Seitz published the philosophy of the machine , in which Burckhardt continues his thoughts on the genealogy of the machine in philosophical terms.

Burckhardt's books have been translated into several languages.

Between 2016 and 2017, Burckhardt wrote a 13-part series on pioneers of computer culture for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . This gave rise to the book A Brief History of Digitization , which was published by Penguin in 2018 .

Fonts

Audio pieces (selection)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Lissek: feature talks - martin Burckhardt
  2. ↑ Digital Metaphysics - in Merkur 4/1988 In: martin-burckhardt.de (PDF; 60 kB). Retrieved August 10, 2019.
  3. ↑ The dream machines are dead! Long live the dream machines (PDF; 72 kB) ( Memento from March 12, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ List of all articles at Lettre International In: lettre.de. Retrieved August 10, 2019.
  5. ^ Interface 1-5 , Hans Bredow Institute ( Memento from March 12, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ Aesthetics of Whole Body Signs. In: FAZ. Retrieved June 4, 2009 .
  7. ↑ Metamorphoses of Space and Time - A History of Perception . In: martin-burckhardt.de. Retrieved April 26, 2020.
  8. ↑ Brandlhuber. A fiction . In: martin-burckhardt.de. Retrieved April 26, 2020.
  9. ↑ Shame of the Philosophers . In: martin-burckhardt.de. Retrieved April 26, 2020.
  10. ↑ 68. The History of a Cultural Revolution . In: martin-burckhardt.de. Retrieved April 26, 2020.
  11. ↑ The Little Story of Big Thoughts . In: martin-burckhardt.de. Retrieved April 26, 2020.
  12. ↑ Twin complex . In: martin-burckhardt. Retrieved April 26, 2020.
  13. ↑ Digital Renaissance. Manifesto for a new world . In: martin-burckhardt. Retrieved April 26, 2020.
  14. ↑ Score. We create paradise on earth . In: martin-burckhardt.de. Retrieved April 26, 2020.
  15. ↑ Philosophy of the machine . In: martin-burckhardt.de. Retrieved April 26, 2020.
  16. ↑ A brief history of digitization . In: martin-burckhardt.de. Retrieved April 26, 2020.
personal data
SURNAME Burckhardt, Martin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German author and cultural theorist
DATE OF BIRTH July 28, 1957
PLACE OF BIRTH Fulda