NCCR “Mediality. Historical Perspectives” 2005-2009

In its second phase the NCCR focuses on the historicity of media and mediality. It investigates forms of communication, transfer, and perception before the era of mass-media dominance and modern teleologically and technologically oriented media discourses, whose historical reach goes no further back than the introduction of film, radio, or television. The aim of the NCCR is a historical mediology which particularly examines change in communication practices, new dynamics in medial forms, and reflection on the conditions of communication. Special moments and constellations will be analysed, in which the medial can be grasped and described, as well as longer periods of change.

The task of the historical mediology already in progress is to develop patterns of description that allow us to understand how mediality has formed cultural meaning. The question is not so much what media are, but rather, what in which situations and processes works as a medium, and what are the specific conditions that make the medial possible. Emphasis is put therefore not only on the images that media present of the world, but also on those images of the medial that shape our notions of what media are. The historicity and imagination of the medial, as well as the particular historical dynamics and logics of mediality will be brought to light.