Shape of Things

Vilem Flusser was born in Prague in 1920. After emigrating to Brazil and then to France, he embarked on an influential career as a lecturer and writer on language, design and communication. He died in 1991.Also available from Reaktion by Vilem Flusser is The Shape of Things: A Philosophy of Design.

There is nothing difficult or obscure about these essays. They are as sharp and lucid as precious stones because they proceed not by argument but poetically, by metaphor, story telling and myth. - Architects Journal Books of the YearIn Flusser, weve found our Wittgenstein. By that I mean, in the ways that 1960s conceptual artists found his Philosophical Investigations as granting them the necessary permission to see the world around them with fresh eyes, Flussers forays into media have framed, theorized, and unpacked the new complexities of our digital world. By empirically questioning received knowledge and recasting it within crisp lines of history and logic, hes made the digital legible in a time when its theorization is occluded and murky to say the least. Like de Koonings famous statement:History does not influence me. I influence it, its taken Flussers analog-based investigations in the 20th century to show how to be in the digitally soaked 21st. - Kenneth Goldsmith, Los Angeles Review of Books

• Introduction by Martin Pawley About the Word Design Form and Material War and the State of Things About Forms and Formulae The Designer's Way of Seeing The Factory The Lever Strikes Back Shelters, Screens and Tents Design: Obstacle for/to the Removal of Obstacles Why Do Typewriters Go 'Click'? The Ethics of Industrial Design? Design as Theology Wittgenstein's Architecture Bare Walls With As Many Holes As a Swiss Cheese The Non-Thing The Non-Thing Carpets Pots Shamans and Dancers with Masks The Submarine Wheels Biographical Note