Thomas Y Levin
Biographic Data
| ID | 358325 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Thomas Y Levin |
| GIVEN NAMES | Thomas Y |
| FAMILY NAME | Levin |
| SIGNATURE | LEVIN T Y |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 129 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1981 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media
A Note on the Texts * Editors' Introduction I. The Production, Reproduction, and Reception of the Work of Art * The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility: Second Version * Theory of Distraction * To the Planetarium * Garlanded Entrance * The Rigorous Study of Art * Imperial Panorama * The Telephone * The Author as Producer * Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth Century * Eduard Fuchs, Collector and Historian * Review of Ster…
Tones from out of Nowhere
July 01 2003 “Tones from out of Nowhere”: Rudolph Pfenninger and the Archaeology of Synthetic Sound Thomas Y. Levin Thomas Y. Levin Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Thomas Y. Levin Online ISSN: 1536-0105 Print ISSN: 1526-3819 © 2003 Grey Room, Inc. and Massachusetts Institute of Technology2003 Grey Room (2003) (12): 32–79. https://doi.org/10.1162/152638103322446460 Cite Icon Cite Pe…
Iconology at the Movies
Iconology at the Movies: Panofsky’s Film Theory Thomas Y. Levin (bio) In the New York Herald Tribune of November 16, 1936, below the involuntarily ironic headline “FILMS ARE TREATED AS REAL ART BY LECTURER AT METROPOLITAN,” one could read at some length about how “For the first time in the history of the Metropolitan Museum of Art the motion picture was considered as an art during a lecture there yesterday afternoon by Dr. Erwin Patofsky [sic], m…
Photography
Siegfried Kracauer
The English-Language Reception of Kracauer's Work
The following preliminary survey of the English-language secondary literature on the work of Kracauer is divided into three sections: A) reviews of Kracauer's books, B) obituaries, and C) more general essays on Kracauer. It is meant to supplement my bibliography of primary texts entitled Siegfried Kracauer in English: A Bibliography (New German Critique 41 [Spring-Summer 1987]: 140-50). For a more detailed, international, and indexed overview of …
For the Record
Fresh scholarship has finally begun to displace the longstanding misreading of Adorno in the Anglo-American reception of the Frankfurt School.' Adorno's position on popular culture most often presented in the context of the polemical exchanges with Walter Benjaminhas generally been characterized as a myopic mandarinism blind to the utopian and progressive dimensions of mass media such as film. This black-and-white juxtaposition of Adorno and Benj…
The Curves of the Needle
Talking machines and phonograph records seem to have suffered the same historical fate as that which once befell photographs: the transition from artisanal to industrial production transforms not only the technology of distribution but also that which is distributed. As the recordings become more perfect in terms of plasticity and volume, the subtlety of color and the authenticity of vocal sound declines as if the singer were being distanced more…
Opera and the Long-Playing Record
In the history of music it is not all that rare for technological inventions to gain significance only long after their inception. This was the fate of the valve horn with the chromatic scale, which did not become fully utilized until Wagner. The saxophone, a connecting link between woodwind and brass instruments, was already hesitantly used by Bizet,' but only entered the domain of serious music by means of a detour through jazz. A similar devel…
The Form of the Phonograph Record
laid upon the platter. It is covered with curves, a delicately scribbled, utterly illegible writing, which here and there forms more plastic figures for reasons that remain obscure to the layman upon listening; structured like a spiral, it ends somewhere in the vicinity of the title label, to which it is sometimes connected by a lead-out groove so that the needle can comfortably finish its trajectory. In terms of its form, this is all that it wil…
Walter Benjamin and the Theory of Art History
Walter Benjamin's influence on the theory and practice of art history in the English-speaking world has grown substantially in recent years, largely as a result of the increasing availability of his work in translation. But because the art-historical reception of Benjamin has focused primarily on the essays dealing with photography and film, it has largely failed to recognize that Benjamin's texts on the theory of mimesis, on the epistemology of …
Rigorous Study of Art
A bit further on one reads: In order to be more certain of attaining this goal, the first, historical, section has been furnished with a second, systematic, section as a counterpart.2 This arrangement is all the more indicative because it reveals not only the aims but also the limits of an endeavor which was so epoch-making in its time. And, in fact, Wolfflin did not succeed in his attempt to use formal analysis (which he placed at the center of …
Cult of Distraction
The large picture houses in Berlin are palaces of distraction; to call them movie theaters (Kinos) would be disrespectful. The latter are still abundant only in Old-Berlin and in the suburbs where they serve neighborhood audiences, and even there they are declining in number. Much more than such movie houses or even the ordinary theaters, it is the picture palaces, those optical fairylands, which are shaping the face of Berlin. The UFA palaces ab…
Phenomenology of Film
Nationalities of Language
In 1965 the prescience of Nietzsche's observations was dramatically confirmed by a series of radio lectures organized by the Hessische Rundfunk on the topic is German? Adorno's contribution, broadcast on May 9th of that year with the name of the series as its title, follows Nietzsche's lead in its refusal of nationalist generalizations and its shift of emphasis to the very question itself. Indeed, when Adorno's essay is republished in 1969 in Sti…
On the Question
What is German? I am unable to answer this question immediately. First it is necessary to reflect on the question itself since it is burdened by those smug definitions which assume as the specifically German not what actually is German but rather what one wishes it were. The ideal suffers at the expense of the idealization. The very form of the question already desecrates the irreparable experiences of the last decades. It presupposes an autonomo…
The Entwinement of Myth and Enlightenment
On Film and the Public Sphere
Transparencies on Film
The Entwinement of Myth and Enlightenment
Photography
For the Record
Fresh scholarship has finally begun to displace the longstanding misreading of Adorno in the Anglo-American reception of the Frankfurt School.' Adorno's position on popular culture most often presented in the context of the polemical exchanges with Walter Benjaminhas generally been characterized as a myopic mandarinism blind to the utopian and progressive dimensions of mass media such as film. This black-and-white juxtaposition of Adorno and Benj…
The Form of the Phonograph Record
laid upon the platter. It is covered with curves, a delicately scribbled, utterly illegible writing, which here and there forms more plastic figures for reasons that remain obscure to the layman upon listening; structured like a spiral, it ends somewhere in the vicinity of the title label, to which it is sometimes connected by a lead-out groove so that the needle can comfortably finish its trajectory. In terms of its form, this is all that it wil…
The Curves of the Needle
Talking machines and phonograph records seem to have suffered the same historical fate as that which once befell photographs: the transition from artisanal to industrial production transforms not only the technology of distribution but also that which is distributed. As the recordings become more perfect in terms of plasticity and volume, the subtlety of color and the authenticity of vocal sound declines as if the singer were being distanced more…
Tones from out of Nowhere
July 01 2003 “Tones from out of Nowhere”: Rudolph Pfenninger and the Archaeology of Synthetic Sound Thomas Y. Levin Thomas Y. Levin Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Thomas Y. Levin Online ISSN: 1536-0105 Print ISSN: 1526-3819 © 2003 Grey Room, Inc. and Massachusetts Institute of Technology2003 Grey Room (2003) (12): 32–79. https://doi.org/10.1162/152638103322446460 Cite Icon Cite Pe…
Opera and the Long-Playing Record
In the history of music it is not all that rare for technological inventions to gain significance only long after their inception. This was the fate of the valve horn with the chromatic scale, which did not become fully utilized until Wagner. The saxophone, a connecting link between woodwind and brass instruments, was already hesitantly used by Bizet,' but only entered the domain of serious music by means of a detour through jazz. A similar devel…
Walter Benjamin and the Theory of Art History
Walter Benjamin's influence on the theory and practice of art history in the English-speaking world has grown substantially in recent years, largely as a result of the increasing availability of his work in translation. But because the art-historical reception of Benjamin has focused primarily on the essays dealing with photography and film, it has largely failed to recognize that Benjamin's texts on the theory of mimesis, on the epistemology of …
Cult of Distraction
The large picture houses in Berlin are palaces of distraction; to call them movie theaters (Kinos) would be disrespectful. The latter are still abundant only in Old-Berlin and in the suburbs where they serve neighborhood audiences, and even there they are declining in number. Much more than such movie houses or even the ordinary theaters, it is the picture palaces, those optical fairylands, which are shaping the face of Berlin. The UFA palaces ab…
On the Question
What is German? I am unable to answer this question immediately. First it is necessary to reflect on the question itself since it is burdened by those smug definitions which assume as the specifically German not what actually is German but rather what one wishes it were. The ideal suffers at the expense of the idealization. The very form of the question already desecrates the irreparable experiences of the last decades. It presupposes an autonomo…
On Film and the Public Sphere
Rigorous Study of Art
A bit further on one reads: In order to be more certain of attaining this goal, the first, historical, section has been furnished with a second, systematic, section as a counterpart.2 This arrangement is all the more indicative because it reveals not only the aims but also the limits of an endeavor which was so epoch-making in its time. And, in fact, Wolfflin did not succeed in his attempt to use formal analysis (which he placed at the center of …
Transparencies on Film
Nationalities of Language
In 1965 the prescience of Nietzsche's observations was dramatically confirmed by a series of radio lectures organized by the Hessische Rundfunk on the topic is German? Adorno's contribution, broadcast on May 9th of that year with the name of the series as its title, follows Nietzsche's lead in its refusal of nationalist generalizations and its shift of emphasis to the very question itself. Indeed, when Adorno's essay is republished in 1969 in Sti…
On Film and the Public Sphere
Transparencies on Film
The Entwinement of Myth and Enlightenment
Nationalities of Language
In 1965 the prescience of Nietzsche's observations was dramatically confirmed by a series of radio lectures organized by the Hessische Rundfunk on the topic is German? Adorno's contribution, broadcast on May 9th of that year with the name of the series as its title, follows Nietzsche's lead in its refusal of nationalist generalizations and its shift of emphasis to the very question itself. Indeed, when Adorno's essay is republished in 1969 in Sti…
On the Question
What is German? I am unable to answer this question immediately. First it is necessary to reflect on the question itself since it is burdened by those smug definitions which assume as the specifically German not what actually is German but rather what one wishes it were. The ideal suffers at the expense of the idealization. The very form of the question already desecrates the irreparable experiences of the last decades. It presupposes an autonomo…
Cult of Distraction
The large picture houses in Berlin are palaces of distraction; to call them movie theaters (Kinos) would be disrespectful. The latter are still abundant only in Old-Berlin and in the suburbs where they serve neighborhood audiences, and even there they are declining in number. Much more than such movie houses or even the ordinary theaters, it is the picture palaces, those optical fairylands, which are shaping the face of Berlin. The UFA palaces ab…
Phenomenology of Film
Walter Benjamin and the Theory of Art History
Walter Benjamin's influence on the theory and practice of art history in the English-speaking world has grown substantially in recent years, largely as a result of the increasing availability of his work in translation. But because the art-historical reception of Benjamin has focused primarily on the essays dealing with photography and film, it has largely failed to recognize that Benjamin's texts on the theory of mimesis, on the epistemology of …
Rigorous Study of Art
A bit further on one reads: In order to be more certain of attaining this goal, the first, historical, section has been furnished with a second, systematic, section as a counterpart.2 This arrangement is all the more indicative because it reveals not only the aims but also the limits of an endeavor which was so epoch-making in its time. And, in fact, Wolfflin did not succeed in his attempt to use formal analysis (which he placed at the center of …
For the Record
Fresh scholarship has finally begun to displace the longstanding misreading of Adorno in the Anglo-American reception of the Frankfurt School.' Adorno's position on popular culture most often presented in the context of the polemical exchanges with Walter Benjaminhas generally been characterized as a myopic mandarinism blind to the utopian and progressive dimensions of mass media such as film. This black-and-white juxtaposition of Adorno and Benj…
The Curves of the Needle
Talking machines and phonograph records seem to have suffered the same historical fate as that which once befell photographs: the transition from artisanal to industrial production transforms not only the technology of distribution but also that which is distributed. As the recordings become more perfect in terms of plasticity and volume, the subtlety of color and the authenticity of vocal sound declines as if the singer were being distanced more…
Opera and the Long-Playing Record
In the history of music it is not all that rare for technological inventions to gain significance only long after their inception. This was the fate of the valve horn with the chromatic scale, which did not become fully utilized until Wagner. The saxophone, a connecting link between woodwind and brass instruments, was already hesitantly used by Bizet,' but only entered the domain of serious music by means of a detour through jazz. A similar devel…
The Form of the Phonograph Record
laid upon the platter. It is covered with curves, a delicately scribbled, utterly illegible writing, which here and there forms more plastic figures for reasons that remain obscure to the layman upon listening; structured like a spiral, it ends somewhere in the vicinity of the title label, to which it is sometimes connected by a lead-out groove so that the needle can comfortably finish its trajectory. In terms of its form, this is all that it wil…
Siegfried Kracauer
The English-Language Reception of Kracauer's Work
The following preliminary survey of the English-language secondary literature on the work of Kracauer is divided into three sections: A) reviews of Kracauer's books, B) obituaries, and C) more general essays on Kracauer. It is meant to supplement my bibliography of primary texts entitled Siegfried Kracauer in English: A Bibliography (New German Critique 41 [Spring-Summer 1987]: 140-50). For a more detailed, international, and indexed overview of …
Photography
Iconology at the Movies
Iconology at the Movies: Panofsky’s Film Theory Thomas Y. Levin (bio) In the New York Herald Tribune of November 16, 1936, below the involuntarily ironic headline “FILMS ARE TREATED AS REAL ART BY LECTURER AT METROPOLITAN,” one could read at some length about how “For the first time in the history of the Metropolitan Museum of Art the motion picture was considered as an art during a lecture there yesterday afternoon by Dr. Erwin Patofsky [sic], m…
Tones from out of Nowhere
July 01 2003 “Tones from out of Nowhere”: Rudolph Pfenninger and the Archaeology of Synthetic Sound Thomas Y. Levin Thomas Y. Levin Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Thomas Y. Levin Online ISSN: 1536-0105 Print ISSN: 1526-3819 © 2003 Grey Room, Inc. and Massachusetts Institute of Technology2003 Grey Room (2003) (12): 32–79. https://doi.org/10.1162/152638103322446460 Cite Icon Cite Pe…
The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media
A Note on the Texts * Editors' Introduction I. The Production, Reproduction, and Reception of the Work of Art * The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility: Second Version * Theory of Distraction * To the Planetarium * Garlanded Entrance * The Rigorous Study of Art * Imperial Panorama * The Telephone * The Author as Producer * Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth Century * Eduard Fuchs, Collector and Historian * Review of Ster…
Art (12 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Epistemology (5 works) · Computer Science (4 works) · Aesthetics (3 works) · Art history (3 works) · Art, Politics, and Modernism (3 works) · Cinema and Media Studies (3 works) · Diverse Musicological Studies (3 works) · Linguistics (3 works)