Charles Olson, Melville-researcher, poet, theorist of the Beat-Generation, politician, expert on Mayan Culture and amateur archaeologist, asks the artists at the Black-Mountain College in 1951 to renew their subjectivity. In Melville’s novel Moby Dick Olson discovers space/time-arts and mediumistic strategies, which allow to float off subjects tied down by industry, consumption and ego-mania. Olson takes on board of his ship the philosophy of mathematics and natural sciences by Hermann Weyl and a type-writer. It serves as recorder and time machine. An alternative use of machines is suggested by Oswald Wiener and Dieter Roth. As Central Europeans they are suspicious of the escape from civilization of the North-American Beat-Generation and use the type-writer as a help in navigating from analog to digital systems. Which art of steering should be recommended at a time of change of the technical-epistemic conditions?, with a wonderful series of small drawings by Dieter Roth, soft cover, 144 pages, 17 x 12 cm, Berlin 2005
