Beryl Graham
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- August 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780262033534
- eISBN:
- 9780262269742
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262033534.003.0006
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This chapter examines the histories of digital art works and their place within physical spaces and the Internet to offer new perspectives on their meaning and identify the challenges they present ...
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This chapter examines the histories of digital art works and their place within physical spaces and the Internet to offer new perspectives on their meaning and identify the challenges they present for conventional practices of curatorship and documentation. It looks at the history and politics of art communities in networked and real-world locations to highlight collaborative art creation and creative content creation as well as education, accessibility, and usability. The chapter also explores current working categories for classifying digital art in physical installations and how these definitions influence the way art is shown in museums. It argues that digital art as a relatively new medium is disrupting “safe” categories and illustrates the negative implications of its particularly fluid characteristics for arts institutions. The chapter offers a new working definition of digital art to analyze the particular challenges involved in the collection, documentation, and conservation of new media art in institutions.Less
This chapter examines the histories of digital art works and their place within physical spaces and the Internet to offer new perspectives on their meaning and identify the challenges they present for conventional practices of curatorship and documentation. It looks at the history and politics of art communities in networked and real-world locations to highlight collaborative art creation and creative content creation as well as education, accessibility, and usability. The chapter also explores current working categories for classifying digital art in physical installations and how these definitions influence the way art is shown in museums. It argues that digital art as a relatively new medium is disrupting “safe” categories and illustrates the negative implications of its particularly fluid characteristics for arts institutions. The chapter offers a new working definition of digital art to analyze the particular challenges involved in the collection, documentation, and conservation of new media art in institutions.
Roberto Simanowski
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816667376
- eISBN:
- 9781452946788
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816667376.001.0001
- Subject:
- Art, Art Theory and Criticism
In a world increasingly dominated by the digital, the critical response to digital art generally ranges from hype to counter hype. Popular writing about specific artworks seldom goes beyond promoting ...
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In a world increasingly dominated by the digital, the critical response to digital art generally ranges from hype to counter hype. Popular writing about specific artworks seldom goes beyond promoting a given piece and explaining how it operates, while scholars and critics remain unsure about how to interpret and evaluate them. This book aims to demonstrate how such critical work can be done. This book offers close readings of varied examples from genres of digital art such as kinetic concrete poetry, computer-generated text, interactive installation, mapping art, and information sculpture. For instance, the book deciphers the complex meaning of words that not only form an image on a screen but also react to the viewer’s behavior; images that are progressively destroyed by the human gaze; text machines generating nonsense sentences out of a Kafka story; and a light show above Mexico City’s historic square, created by Internet users all over the world. The book combines these illuminating explanations with a theoretical discussion that employs art philosophy and history to achieve a deeper understanding of each particular example of digital art and, ultimately, of the genre as a whole.Less
In a world increasingly dominated by the digital, the critical response to digital art generally ranges from hype to counter hype. Popular writing about specific artworks seldom goes beyond promoting a given piece and explaining how it operates, while scholars and critics remain unsure about how to interpret and evaluate them. This book aims to demonstrate how such critical work can be done. This book offers close readings of varied examples from genres of digital art such as kinetic concrete poetry, computer-generated text, interactive installation, mapping art, and information sculpture. For instance, the book deciphers the complex meaning of words that not only form an image on a screen but also react to the viewer’s behavior; images that are progressively destroyed by the human gaze; text machines generating nonsense sentences out of a Kafka story; and a light show above Mexico City’s historic square, created by Internet users all over the world. The book combines these illuminating explanations with a theoretical discussion that employs art philosophy and history to achieve a deeper understanding of each particular example of digital art and, ultimately, of the genre as a whole.
Gary O. Larson
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780262034654
- eISBN:
- 9780262336871
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262034654.003.0030
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Technology and Society
This chapter examines various approaches to ensuring a place for nonprofit culture online, drawing from the various noncommercial networking projects discussed elsewhere in the anthology, as well as ...
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This chapter examines various approaches to ensuring a place for nonprofit culture online, drawing from the various noncommercial networking projects discussed elsewhere in the anthology, as well as the 1990’s National Information Infrastructure policy debates in the U.S. and subsequent private-sector efforts. It discusses the key elements required for a broadly collaborative effort to (1) identify, cultivate, and promote the digital art resources that already exist; (2) develop new online projects; and (3) weave these resources together in a fashion that allows both online and offline arts activities to receive the serious attention to study they deserve. In addition to enhanced public sector leadership and expanded private sector support, the chapter calls for a more systematic application of curatorial expertise to the online sector, along with substantial grassroots participation in identifying the most reliable cultural resources that are too often lost in the vast expanses of the commercialized Internet today.Less
This chapter examines various approaches to ensuring a place for nonprofit culture online, drawing from the various noncommercial networking projects discussed elsewhere in the anthology, as well as the 1990’s National Information Infrastructure policy debates in the U.S. and subsequent private-sector efforts. It discusses the key elements required for a broadly collaborative effort to (1) identify, cultivate, and promote the digital art resources that already exist; (2) develop new online projects; and (3) weave these resources together in a fashion that allows both online and offline arts activities to receive the serious attention to study they deserve. In addition to enhanced public sector leadership and expanded private sector support, the chapter calls for a more systematic application of curatorial expertise to the online sector, along with substantial grassroots participation in identifying the most reliable cultural resources that are too often lost in the vast expanses of the commercialized Internet today.
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226253022
- eISBN:
- 9780226253053
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226253053.003.0006
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This chapter covers black visuality with regards to technology studies, media theory, and contemporary digital art. Fatimah Tuggar's Fusion Cuisine revealed links among historical and present notions ...
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This chapter covers black visuality with regards to technology studies, media theory, and contemporary digital art. Fatimah Tuggar's Fusion Cuisine revealed links among historical and present notions of technological progress, racialized and gendered subjectivity, and globalization. Fusion Cuisine was her example of digital video and photomontage art that uses contemporary technology to comment upon the history of technological development. Her art was recognized for its playfulness and humor, crucial elements in both Robo Makes Dinner and The Lady and the Maid. Through the interactivity of Changing Space and Transient Transfer, Tuggar's work assumed decentered viewing positions and active audiences who do not necessarily share geographic, racial, gender, or temporal sameness. Her digital video pieces and photomontages generally touched the crisis of representing transnational subjectivities in an increasingly globalized and technologized world.Less
This chapter covers black visuality with regards to technology studies, media theory, and contemporary digital art. Fatimah Tuggar's Fusion Cuisine revealed links among historical and present notions of technological progress, racialized and gendered subjectivity, and globalization. Fusion Cuisine was her example of digital video and photomontage art that uses contemporary technology to comment upon the history of technological development. Her art was recognized for its playfulness and humor, crucial elements in both Robo Makes Dinner and The Lady and the Maid. Through the interactivity of Changing Space and Transient Transfer, Tuggar's work assumed decentered viewing positions and active audiences who do not necessarily share geographic, racial, gender, or temporal sameness. Her digital video pieces and photomontages generally touched the crisis of representing transnational subjectivities in an increasingly globalized and technologized world.
Roberto Simanowski
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816667376
- eISBN:
- 9781452946788
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816667376.003.0008
- Subject:
- Art, Art Theory and Criticism
This chapter assesses the problem of meaning in relation to aesthetic theories of presence and event. It supports narcissistic erotics of interpretation and considers ironic and multiple-perspective ...
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This chapter assesses the problem of meaning in relation to aesthetic theories of presence and event. It supports narcissistic erotics of interpretation and considers ironic and multiple-perspective readings as appropriate methods of criticism. It raises the question of the extent of familiarity critics need for coding; the effect of the specificities of the code on close readings produced from complementary humanities perspective; and the impact of understanding art based on the paradigm of programming on the experience of art. It also examines the issue of digital art and the avant-garde.Less
This chapter assesses the problem of meaning in relation to aesthetic theories of presence and event. It supports narcissistic erotics of interpretation and considers ironic and multiple-perspective readings as appropriate methods of criticism. It raises the question of the extent of familiarity critics need for coding; the effect of the specificities of the code on close readings produced from complementary humanities perspective; and the impact of understanding art based on the paradigm of programming on the experience of art. It also examines the issue of digital art and the avant-garde.
Roberto Simanowski
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816667376
- eISBN:
- 9781452946788
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816667376.003.0002
- Subject:
- Art, Art Theory and Criticism
This chapter provides a definition of digital literature and describes its characteristics. It evaluates the distinction between digital literature and digital art. It considers the role of the ...
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This chapter provides a definition of digital literature and describes its characteristics. It evaluates the distinction between digital literature and digital art. It considers the role of the author in text production by narrative machines and bacteria. It also raises the question of literature versus installation, stating that the phenomenon of digital aesthetics is full of borderline cases.Less
This chapter provides a definition of digital literature and describes its characteristics. It evaluates the distinction between digital literature and digital art. It considers the role of the author in text production by narrative machines and bacteria. It also raises the question of literature versus installation, stating that the phenomenon of digital aesthetics is full of borderline cases.
Johanna Drucker
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226165073
- eISBN:
- 9780226165097
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226165097.003.0011
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This chapter suggests that discussion of new media should be considered in its relation to aesthetics. This would bring digital art into dialogue with other artistic practices that are part of a ...
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This chapter suggests that discussion of new media should be considered in its relation to aesthetics. This would bring digital art into dialogue with other artistic practices that are part of a contemporary landscape of imaginative and creative work and would put the fate of aesthetics in an era of new media under consideration. This chapter also criticizes the notion of the so-called hybrid aesthetics and generative aesthetics as problematic and proposes a speculative aesthetics that is grounded in the language of computational method.Less
This chapter suggests that discussion of new media should be considered in its relation to aesthetics. This would bring digital art into dialogue with other artistic practices that are part of a contemporary landscape of imaginative and creative work and would put the fate of aesthetics in an era of new media under consideration. This chapter also criticizes the notion of the so-called hybrid aesthetics and generative aesthetics as problematic and proposes a speculative aesthetics that is grounded in the language of computational method.
Larissa Hjorth, Sarah Pink, Kristen Sharp, and Linda Williams
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780262034562
- eISBN:
- 9780262334013
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262034562.003.0004
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
In Chapter 4 we consider how mobile media require us to rethink the types of media and capital flows that take place in the Asia-Pacific region and what these movements say about cultural ...
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In Chapter 4 we consider how mobile media require us to rethink the types of media and capital flows that take place in the Asia-Pacific region and what these movements say about cultural geographies. As noted earlier, the rise of mobile media has become synonymous with screen culture in the region. Mobile media have also played a key role in amplifying, as well as disrupting, media capital flows. In this chapter we address the tensions between amateur and professional art in relation to media technologies and how they impact upon perceptions of the environment. We finish by reflecting upon the ubiquitous role of camera phones in these contemporary visualization cultures.Less
In Chapter 4 we consider how mobile media require us to rethink the types of media and capital flows that take place in the Asia-Pacific region and what these movements say about cultural geographies. As noted earlier, the rise of mobile media has become synonymous with screen culture in the region. Mobile media have also played a key role in amplifying, as well as disrupting, media capital flows. In this chapter we address the tensions between amateur and professional art in relation to media technologies and how they impact upon perceptions of the environment. We finish by reflecting upon the ubiquitous role of camera phones in these contemporary visualization cultures.
Jennifer Parker
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- October 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780199393749
- eISBN:
- 9780199393770
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199393749.003.0012
- Subject:
- Music, Theory, Analysis, Composition, Performing Practice/Studies
Globalization and the growth of digital technologies accelerate and expand the reach of artists’ work for public consumption beyond the traditional confines of art museums and galleries. This ...
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Globalization and the growth of digital technologies accelerate and expand the reach of artists’ work for public consumption beyond the traditional confines of art museums and galleries. This increasingly means the global public now has access to art that encourages viewer interactivity and participation in new and unprecedented ways. This chapter takes a moment to step back and remember arts research and community participation without the Internet and the World Wide Web. It puts into perspective how artists today have transitioned to digital life, thus diversifying the art world as digital art citizens participating in culture by sharing data and engaging the Internet as a means of publishing arts research directly to the public, for the public.Less
Globalization and the growth of digital technologies accelerate and expand the reach of artists’ work for public consumption beyond the traditional confines of art museums and galleries. This increasingly means the global public now has access to art that encourages viewer interactivity and participation in new and unprecedented ways. This chapter takes a moment to step back and remember arts research and community participation without the Internet and the World Wide Web. It puts into perspective how artists today have transitioned to digital life, thus diversifying the art world as digital art citizens participating in culture by sharing data and engaging the Internet as a means of publishing arts research directly to the public, for the public.
Sarah Cook
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- August 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780262033534
- eISBN:
- 9780262269742
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262033534.003.0007
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This chapter examines digital art practices online, namely net.art, net-art, and art on the Internet. It provides definitions and examples, as well as established criteria, and considers the question ...
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This chapter examines digital art practices online, namely net.art, net-art, and art on the Internet. It provides definitions and examples, as well as established criteria, and considers the question of the necessity for collaborative art creation in an online environment. In particular, the chapter looks at cultural heritage institutions and new media art as well as the inherent multiplicity of agendas and structures prevalent on the Web, and also explores how the shifting politics and economics of the Internet affect the creative process of content creation online. Finally, it examines how artists use the Web as a way to engage with, and even sometimes create, offline communities as much as, if not more so, than online communities.Less
This chapter examines digital art practices online, namely net.art, net-art, and art on the Internet. It provides definitions and examples, as well as established criteria, and considers the question of the necessity for collaborative art creation in an online environment. In particular, the chapter looks at cultural heritage institutions and new media art as well as the inherent multiplicity of agendas and structures prevalent on the Web, and also explores how the shifting politics and economics of the Internet affect the creative process of content creation online. Finally, it examines how artists use the Web as a way to engage with, and even sometimes create, offline communities as much as, if not more so, than online communities.
Marcel O’Gorman
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816695706
- eISBN:
- 9781452950662
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816695706.003.0010
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Technology and Society
This chapter outlines the author’s concept of “applied media theory,” which is a method of humanities research rooted in the research/creation practices typical of professional artists. Applied media ...
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This chapter outlines the author’s concept of “applied media theory,” which is a method of humanities research rooted in the research/creation practices typical of professional artists. Applied media theory requires scholars to embrace the materiality and finitude of objects, transforming them into objects-to-think-with designed to shape contemporary technoculture.Less
This chapter outlines the author’s concept of “applied media theory,” which is a method of humanities research rooted in the research/creation practices typical of professional artists. Applied media theory requires scholars to embrace the materiality and finitude of objects, transforming them into objects-to-think-with designed to shape contemporary technoculture.
John Cayley
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474440387
- eISBN:
- 9781474481236
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474440387.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter examines recent digital language art through the prism of Johanna Drucker's recent work, combined with a Derridean exploration of 'grammalepsy'. Reading is renegotiated through ...
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This chapter examines recent digital language art through the prism of Johanna Drucker's recent work, combined with a Derridean exploration of 'grammalepsy'. Reading is renegotiated through 'grammaleptic' reading, which is explored in the chapter in relation to reading experimental digital language art. Analyzing contemporary works by Samantha Gorman, Danny Canizzaro, and Dave Jhave Johnston, the chapter yields and understanding of the importance of 'grammaleptic' reading to encountering such works, and to inhabiting a landscape of emerging digital language art.Less
This chapter examines recent digital language art through the prism of Johanna Drucker's recent work, combined with a Derridean exploration of 'grammalepsy'. Reading is renegotiated through 'grammaleptic' reading, which is explored in the chapter in relation to reading experimental digital language art. Analyzing contemporary works by Samantha Gorman, Danny Canizzaro, and Dave Jhave Johnston, the chapter yields and understanding of the importance of 'grammaleptic' reading to encountering such works, and to inhabiting a landscape of emerging digital language art.
Thomas Nail
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- June 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190924034
- eISBN:
- 9780190924065
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190924034.003.0017
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
simply valorize the digital or even the generative The generative arts have invented a new artistic pedesis and laid the ground for a new materialist aesthetics of the image. The chapter discusses ...
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simply valorize the digital or even the generative The generative arts have invented a new artistic pedesis and laid the ground for a new materialist aesthetics of the image. The chapter discusses the various forms that the generative arts have taken, including the ordered and disordered. In particular, disordered forms of contemporary images discussed here are the visual arts, literary, plastic, and sonic forms. The argument is not that the generative arts are the only or best forms of art. Their function has been to blaze a trail that shows us what all the arts have already been doing, to one degree or another. The challenge now is to unfold the consequences of this discovery in the arts, to draw our attention to what the contemporary image shows us about the image more generally and what it is capable of today.Less
simply valorize the digital or even the generative The generative arts have invented a new artistic pedesis and laid the ground for a new materialist aesthetics of the image. The chapter discusses the various forms that the generative arts have taken, including the ordered and disordered. In particular, disordered forms of contemporary images discussed here are the visual arts, literary, plastic, and sonic forms. The argument is not that the generative arts are the only or best forms of art. Their function has been to blaze a trail that shows us what all the arts have already been doing, to one degree or another. The challenge now is to unfold the consequences of this discovery in the arts, to draw our attention to what the contemporary image shows us about the image more generally and what it is capable of today.
Luciano Floridi
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199641321
- eISBN:
- 9780191760938
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199641321.003.0008
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
In this chapter, I argue that the infosphere is an increasingly poietically enabling environment, which both enhances and requires the development of an information ethics understood as a ...
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In this chapter, I argue that the infosphere is an increasingly poietically enabling environment, which both enhances and requires the development of an information ethics understood as a ‘constructionist ethics’ for morally responsible agents. Human agents, both as individuals and as multiagent systems belong to the class of responsible moral agents, so a constructionist ethics concerns them primarily and directly; not only them, however, because if there are any other kinds of responsible agents, the same constructionist ethics will concern them too. Only agents who are indifferent to the world—such as Aristotle’s unmoved mover or Spinoza’s natura naturans—are at most accountable, though not responsible, for what happens to it and hence fail to be addressed by a construction IE.Less
In this chapter, I argue that the infosphere is an increasingly poietically enabling environment, which both enhances and requires the development of an information ethics understood as a ‘constructionist ethics’ for morally responsible agents. Human agents, both as individuals and as multiagent systems belong to the class of responsible moral agents, so a constructionist ethics concerns them primarily and directly; not only them, however, because if there are any other kinds of responsible agents, the same constructionist ethics will concern them too. Only agents who are indifferent to the world—such as Aristotle’s unmoved mover or Spinoza’s natura naturans—are at most accountable, though not responsible, for what happens to it and hence fail to be addressed by a construction IE.
Thomas Nail
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- June 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190924034
- eISBN:
- 9780190924065
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190924034.003.0016
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
This chapter looks at the material and kinetic structure of the electromagnetic field itself and considers the way in which it has hybridized contemporary aesthetics.
This chapter looks at the material and kinetic structure of the electromagnetic field itself and considers the way in which it has hybridized contemporary aesthetics.
Robin Fiddian (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780853235668
- eISBN:
- 9781846313851
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/UPO9781846313851
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Latin American Studies
This collection of critical essays investigates an emergent and increasingly important field of cultural production in Latin America: cyberliterature and cyberculture in their varying manifestations, ...
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This collection of critical essays investigates an emergent and increasingly important field of cultural production in Latin America: cyberliterature and cyberculture in their varying manifestations, including blogs and hypertext narratives, collective novels and e-mags, digital art and short Net-films. It provides a sustained academic focus on this area of cultural production, and investigates the ways in which cyberliterature and cyberculture in the broadest sense are providing new configurations of subjects, narrative voices and even political agency, for Latin Americans. The volume is divided into two main sections. The first comprises eight chapters on the broad area of cyberculture and identity formation/preservation, including the development of different types of cybercommunity in Latin America. While many of the chapters applaud the creative potential of these new virtual communities, identities and cultural products to create networks across boundaries and offer new contestatory strategies, they also consider whether such phenomena may risk reinforcing existing social inequalities or perpetuate conservatism. The second section comprises six chapters and an afterword which deal with the nature of cyberliterature in all its many forms, from the (cyber)cultural legacies of writers such as Julio Cortázar and Jorge Luis Borges, to traditional print literature from the region that reflects on the subject of new technology, to weblogs and hypertext and hypermedia fiction proper.Less
This collection of critical essays investigates an emergent and increasingly important field of cultural production in Latin America: cyberliterature and cyberculture in their varying manifestations, including blogs and hypertext narratives, collective novels and e-mags, digital art and short Net-films. It provides a sustained academic focus on this area of cultural production, and investigates the ways in which cyberliterature and cyberculture in the broadest sense are providing new configurations of subjects, narrative voices and even political agency, for Latin Americans. The volume is divided into two main sections. The first comprises eight chapters on the broad area of cyberculture and identity formation/preservation, including the development of different types of cybercommunity in Latin America. While many of the chapters applaud the creative potential of these new virtual communities, identities and cultural products to create networks across boundaries and offer new contestatory strategies, they also consider whether such phenomena may risk reinforcing existing social inequalities or perpetuate conservatism. The second section comprises six chapters and an afterword which deal with the nature of cyberliterature in all its many forms, from the (cyber)cultural legacies of writers such as Julio Cortázar and Jorge Luis Borges, to traditional print literature from the region that reflects on the subject of new technology, to weblogs and hypertext and hypermedia fiction proper.
Marcel O'Gorman
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816695706
- eISBN:
- 9781452950662
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816695706.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Technology and Society
In Necromedia, media activist Marcel O’Gorman takes aim at “the collusion of death and technology,” drawing on a broad arsenal that ranges from posthumanist philosophy and social psychology to ...
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In Necromedia, media activist Marcel O’Gorman takes aim at “the collusion of death and technology,” drawing on a broad arsenal that ranges from posthumanist philosophy and social psychology to digital art and handmade “objects-to-think-with.” O’Gorman mixes philosophical speculation with artistic creation, personal memoir, and existential dread. He is not so much arguing against technoculture as documenting a struggle to embrace the technical essence of human being without permitting technology worshippers to have the last word on what it means to be human. Inspired in part by the work of cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker, O’Gorman begins by suggesting that technology provides humans with a cultural hero system built on the denial of death and a false promise of immortality. This theory adds an existential zest to the book, allowing the author to devise a creative diagnosis of what Bernard Stiegler has called the malaise of contemporary technoculture and also to contribute a potential therapy—one that requires embracing human finitude, infusing care into the process of technological production, and recognizing the vulnerability of all things, human and nonhuman. With this goal in mind, Necromedia prescribes new research practices in the humanities that involve both written work and the creation of objects-to-think-with that are designed to infiltrate and shape the technoculture that surrounds us.Less
In Necromedia, media activist Marcel O’Gorman takes aim at “the collusion of death and technology,” drawing on a broad arsenal that ranges from posthumanist philosophy and social psychology to digital art and handmade “objects-to-think-with.” O’Gorman mixes philosophical speculation with artistic creation, personal memoir, and existential dread. He is not so much arguing against technoculture as documenting a struggle to embrace the technical essence of human being without permitting technology worshippers to have the last word on what it means to be human. Inspired in part by the work of cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker, O’Gorman begins by suggesting that technology provides humans with a cultural hero system built on the denial of death and a false promise of immortality. This theory adds an existential zest to the book, allowing the author to devise a creative diagnosis of what Bernard Stiegler has called the malaise of contemporary technoculture and also to contribute a potential therapy—one that requires embracing human finitude, infusing care into the process of technological production, and recognizing the vulnerability of all things, human and nonhuman. With this goal in mind, Necromedia prescribes new research practices in the humanities that involve both written work and the creation of objects-to-think-with that are designed to infiltrate and shape the technoculture that surrounds us.
Claire Taylor and Thea Pitman (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781846310614
- eISBN:
- 9781846313462
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/UPO9781846313462
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Latin American Studies
This book investigates an emergent and increasingly important field of cultural production in Latin America: cyberliterature and cyberculture in their varying manifestations, including blogs and ...
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This book investigates an emergent and increasingly important field of cultural production in Latin America: cyberliterature and cyberculture in their varying manifestations, including blogs and hypertext narratives, collective novels and e-mags, digital art and short Net-films. It provides a sustained academic focus on this area of cultural production, and investigates the ways in which cyberliterature and cyberculture in the broadest sense are providing new configurations of subjects, narrative voices and even political agency, for Latin Americans. The volume is divided into two main sections. The first comprises eight chapters on the broad area of cyberculture and identity formation/preservation including the development of different types of cybercommunity in Latin America. While many of the chapters applaud the creative potential of these new virtual communities, identities and cultural products to create networks across boundaries and offer new contestatory strategies, they also consider whether such phenomena may risk reinforcing existing social inequalities or perpetuate conservatism. The second section comprises six chapters and an afterword that deal with the nature of cyberliterature in all its many forms, from the (cyber)cultural legacies of writers such as Julio Cortázar and Jorge Luis Borges, to traditional print literature from the region that reflects on the subject of new technology, to weblogs and hypertext and hypermedia fiction proper.Less
This book investigates an emergent and increasingly important field of cultural production in Latin America: cyberliterature and cyberculture in their varying manifestations, including blogs and hypertext narratives, collective novels and e-mags, digital art and short Net-films. It provides a sustained academic focus on this area of cultural production, and investigates the ways in which cyberliterature and cyberculture in the broadest sense are providing new configurations of subjects, narrative voices and even political agency, for Latin Americans. The volume is divided into two main sections. The first comprises eight chapters on the broad area of cyberculture and identity formation/preservation including the development of different types of cybercommunity in Latin America. While many of the chapters applaud the creative potential of these new virtual communities, identities and cultural products to create networks across boundaries and offer new contestatory strategies, they also consider whether such phenomena may risk reinforcing existing social inequalities or perpetuate conservatism. The second section comprises six chapters and an afterword that deal with the nature of cyberliterature in all its many forms, from the (cyber)cultural legacies of writers such as Julio Cortázar and Jorge Luis Borges, to traditional print literature from the region that reflects on the subject of new technology, to weblogs and hypertext and hypermedia fiction proper.
Marissa K. López
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781479807727
- eISBN:
- 9781479877676
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479807727.003.0005
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
Chapter 4 opens with a discussion of the mass graves of unidentified immigrants discovered in South Texas in 2014. How, confronted with these decayed, dismembered border bodies, can literature and ...
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Chapter 4 opens with a discussion of the mass graves of unidentified immigrants discovered in South Texas in 2014. How, confronted with these decayed, dismembered border bodies, can literature and art move us beyond horror into a more just tomorrow? To answer, the author turns to two Chicanx science fiction novels: Morales’s The Rag Doll Plagues (1992) and Pita and Sánchez’s Lunar Braceros (2009). Morales’s novel begins in colonial Mexico with a tale of La Mona, an unidentified plague similar to AIDS, and ends in a Los Angeles of the future, now known as LAMEX, beset by a similar disease curable only by the infusion of blood from “pure” Mexicans and threatened by waves of trash, which have taken on the characteristics of an animated organism, rolling in from the Pacific. Lunar Braceros, about nuclear waste workers of the future living on the moon, presents trash as a similarly transformative threat. Both novels offer conflicted visions of the human body as simultaneously of and apart from the land, a vulnerable but powerful catalyzing agent for change. The author frames this chapter with analyses of works in Mexican Canadian digital installation artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s Relational Architecture series.Less
Chapter 4 opens with a discussion of the mass graves of unidentified immigrants discovered in South Texas in 2014. How, confronted with these decayed, dismembered border bodies, can literature and art move us beyond horror into a more just tomorrow? To answer, the author turns to two Chicanx science fiction novels: Morales’s The Rag Doll Plagues (1992) and Pita and Sánchez’s Lunar Braceros (2009). Morales’s novel begins in colonial Mexico with a tale of La Mona, an unidentified plague similar to AIDS, and ends in a Los Angeles of the future, now known as LAMEX, beset by a similar disease curable only by the infusion of blood from “pure” Mexicans and threatened by waves of trash, which have taken on the characteristics of an animated organism, rolling in from the Pacific. Lunar Braceros, about nuclear waste workers of the future living on the moon, presents trash as a similarly transformative threat. Both novels offer conflicted visions of the human body as simultaneously of and apart from the land, a vulnerable but powerful catalyzing agent for change. The author frames this chapter with analyses of works in Mexican Canadian digital installation artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s Relational Architecture series.
Kenneth B. McAlpine
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- November 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780190496098
- eISBN:
- 9780190496135
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190496098.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western, Popular
This book explores the development of and the social, cultural, and historical context of chiptune, a form of electronic music that emerged from the first generation of video game consoles and home ...
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This book explores the development of and the social, cultural, and historical context of chiptune, a form of electronic music that emerged from the first generation of video game consoles and home computers in the 1980s. Through a combination of musical and procedural analysis and practitioner interviews, the book explores the role the technical constraints of early video game hardware played in shaping the sound of 8-bit video game music and the inventive approaches to coding and composition musicians used to circumvent them. It examines the sounds, culture, and personalities behind the music and shows how chiptune links as closely to the music of Bach as to the aggressive posturing of punk or the driving electronic sounds of house. The book begins by looking at chiptune’s roots in video game music and discusses how, as the sound chips that gave rise to its distinctive voice were superseded by more sophisticated hardware, chiptune moved underground to become an important part of the demoscene, a networked community of digital artists. It discusses chiptune’s reemergence in the late 1990s as a new wave of young musicians rediscovered these obsolete machines and began to use them as quirky and characterful musical instruments, in the process taking chiptune from the desktop and placing it centre stage. The book concludes by contemplating what lies ahead; as more people incorporate the chiptune sound into their work, will it ever hit the mainstream or will it remain firmly countercultural as part of the digital underground?Less
This book explores the development of and the social, cultural, and historical context of chiptune, a form of electronic music that emerged from the first generation of video game consoles and home computers in the 1980s. Through a combination of musical and procedural analysis and practitioner interviews, the book explores the role the technical constraints of early video game hardware played in shaping the sound of 8-bit video game music and the inventive approaches to coding and composition musicians used to circumvent them. It examines the sounds, culture, and personalities behind the music and shows how chiptune links as closely to the music of Bach as to the aggressive posturing of punk or the driving electronic sounds of house. The book begins by looking at chiptune’s roots in video game music and discusses how, as the sound chips that gave rise to its distinctive voice were superseded by more sophisticated hardware, chiptune moved underground to become an important part of the demoscene, a networked community of digital artists. It discusses chiptune’s reemergence in the late 1990s as a new wave of young musicians rediscovered these obsolete machines and began to use them as quirky and characterful musical instruments, in the process taking chiptune from the desktop and placing it centre stage. The book concludes by contemplating what lies ahead; as more people incorporate the chiptune sound into their work, will it ever hit the mainstream or will it remain firmly countercultural as part of the digital underground?