From Greek antiquity to the present, from the book to the gramophone, from Gutenberg to Google, our culture is defined by changes in recording, storage, and transmission media. In a six-volume selection of his writings, Peter Weibel presents an encyclopedia that addresses all areas of the media world. The author has conceived this series as following in the tradition of the Enlightenment and the Encyclopedie by Denis Diderot and Jean Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert. After two volumes covering architecture and music, volume 3 and 4 will be published in 2018 addressing the influence of the new media on art and literature. Politics and theory in the context of new media are the topics of volume 5 and 6 that are also in preparation.

From Greek antiquity to the present, from the book to the gramophone, from Gutenberg to Google, our culture is defined by changes in recording, storage, and transmission media. In a six-volume selection of his writings, Peter Weibel presents an encyclopedia that addresses all areas of the media world. The author has conceived this series as following in the tradition of the Enlightenment and the Encyclopedie by Denis Diderot and Jean Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert. Three volumes will be published in September 2014, and the remaining three in spring 2015. Volume one deals with a broad definition of architecture in the context of new media. Volume two is devoted to media-relat ed innovations in the area of music-from automatic methods of composition in the music of Mozart to a theory of molecular music. Volume three addresses the impact of new media on art and discusses how pictures become interactive and viewers become part of the work-how reality replaces representation. The themes of the other three volumes are literature, pol itics, and theory in the context of new media.

We live in an age of omnipresent and calculated images; what opportunity have photographers to approach a historically charged prestigious building without the risk of being instrumentalized? Is it possible that photographs and artistic work in an empty building can say more than that the building is temporarily no longer used for its original purpose? In a cooperation project of the University of Applied Arts Vienna with the Directorate of the Austrian Parliament, students of the Department of Applied Photography and Time-Based Media had the opportunity to investigate the historic building at the Ring shortly after parliament had moved out, and to find answers to these questions.