Interview with German Media Theorist Vera Tollmann on View from Above

In Sicht von oben, ‘Powers of Ten’ und Bildpolitiken der Vertikalität (Spector Books, Leipzig, 2022) German media theorist and curator Vera Tollmann analyses the power aspects of the technical view from above. The context here is not so much the first manned flight with a balloon in 1783 in Paris but the iconic 1968/77 short film Powers of Ten by Charles and Ray Eames, which can be considered the first virtual camera trip. Her study can be seen as material image analysis along the lines of Friedrich Kittler’s optical media and is strongly informed by the work of Hito Steyerl. Part one deals with the verticality of the image regime, while part two focuses on the vertical aspect and part three theorizes scale and scalability.