# Siegfried Zielinski [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siegfried_Zielinski) (1951– ) ## Description German media theorist and founder of "variantology," an anti-teleological approach to media history that searches for deep-time, non-linear genealogies of technical seeing and hearing rather than a progressive lineage culminating in the present. ## Key Tags #theorist #media-archaeology ## Essential Works - [Deep Time of the Media](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siegfried_Zielinski) (2002, English trans. 2006) - his central variantological study, tracing alternative genealogies of seeing and hearing by technical means - Variantology (2005- , edited book series) - ongoing multi-volume project mapping deep-time media genealogies ## Details Trained in media studies and worked as a documentary filmmaker before turning to media theory. "Variantology" rejects the idea of a single progressive history of media — mechanical to electronic to digital — in favor of tracing many parallel, discontinuous "deep time" genealogies of technical seeing, hearing, and calculating, often recovered from marginal or forgotten inventors and traditions. Founded and directs the [[Vilém Flusser Archive]] at the Berlin University of the Arts. ### Concepts and Theories - [[Media Archaeology]] - founding figure of media archaeology, alongside Friedrich Kittler and Erkki Huhtamo, via his "variantology" method ### Creative and Technical Practices %% none yet %% ### Collaborators - [[Erkki Huhtamo]] - parallel figure in the founding of media archaeology as a field of study ### Institutional Affiliations and Associated Movements - Berlin University of the Arts - founded and directed the Vilém Flusser Archive ## References ### Primary Sources Bibliography Zielinski, Siegfried. *Deep Time of the Media: Toward an Archaeology of Hearing and Seeing by Technical Means*. Translated by Gloria Custance, MIT Press, 2006. ### Secondary Sources Bibliography %% none yet %%