Kittler - John, Tomer, Chris

Kittler states that the gramophone was able to record undifferentiated sounds, without the need of editing. He links reality with the composition, the actual sound waves that are captured by recording, and then he goes on to write about film, that “Instead of recording physical waves, generally speaking, film only stores their chemical effects on its negatives.” He also argues that the dominance of printed words was being questioned in the later nineteenth century even before phonography, photography, and cinematography. At the same time, Kittler argues, the cultural view of writing changed drastically due to the increasing use of the typewriter. What Kittler meant was that because of all these gadgets, we were loosing sight of reality and that what ever was being produced was not real at all, just some form of translation.

Now, as we fast forward to the present, what Kittler mentioned still applies to the modern ways of recording audio, video or images. Instead of having data chemically shaped onto film, everything is made out of 1’s and 0’s. At least that’s what Kittler implies. The fact that we have hardware and that nearly all the media that is produced, is just being translated to us by these computers that store nothing but binary. He means to say that everything has come to that. It’s some code that is being translated to us through means of speakers or monitors and that there is nothing real about that. There is no true depth to it.

Just a century ago, media was all analog but now it’s all digitally reproducible. To what extent will this form of data storage be developed? And if it keeps progressing the way technology is now, does it mean that one day even organic dna, like food and maybe even humans, will be broken down to be stored or transmitted digitally?