Videogames and Art (2007), ed. Andy Clarke, Grethe Mitchell

From Madden NFL 2007 to Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, videogames are firmly enmeshed in modern culture. Acknowledging the increasing cultural impact of this rapidly changing industry, Videogames and Art is one of the first books devoted to the study of videogame art, featuring in-depth essays that offer an unparalleled overview of the field.

The distinguished contributors range broadly over this vast intellectual terrain, positioning videogame art as a crucial interdisciplinary mix of digital technologies and the traditions of pictorial art. They examine machinima and game console artwork, politically oriented videogame art, and the production of digital art; they also interview prominent videogame artists about their work. Rounding out Videogames and Art is a critique of the commercial videogame industry comprising several critical essays on the current quality and originality of videogames.

An essential volume for our digital age, Videogames and Art will be a fascinating read for players, fans, skeptics, and scholars alike.

Published by Intellect Books, 2007
ISBN 1841501425, 9781841501420
283 pages

PDF

Manuel Castells (ed.): The Network Society: A Cross-cultural Perspective (2005)

Manuel Castells – one of the world’s pre-eminent social scientists – has drawn together a stellar group of contributors to explore the patterns and dynamics of the network society in its cultural and institutional diversity. The book analyzes the technological, cultural and institutional transformation of societies around the world in terms of the critical role of electronic communication networks in business, everyday life, public services, social interaction and politics. The contributors demonstrate that the network society is the new form of social organization in the Information age, replacing the Industrial society. The book analyzes processes of technological transformation in interaction with social culture in different cultural and institutional contexts: the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Finland, Russia, China, India, Canada, and Catalonia. The topics examined include business productivity, global financial markets, cultural identity, the uses of the Internet in education and health, the anti-globalization movement, political processes, media and identity, and public policies to guide technological development. Taken together these studies show that the network society adopts very different forms, depending on the cultural and institutional environments in which it evolves.

Published by Edward Elgar, 2005
ISBN 1843765055, 9781843765059
464 pages

More info (wikipedia)
More info (google books)

PDF
Alternative download

Annmarie Chandler, Norie Neumark (eds.): At a Distance: Precursors to Art and Activism on the Internet (2005)

“Networked collaborations of artists did not begin on the Internet. In this multidisciplinary look at the practice of art that takes place across a distance—geographical, temporal, or emotional—theorists and practitioners examine the ways that art, activism, and media fundamentally reconfigured each other in experimental networked projects of the 1970s and 1980s. By providing a context for this work—showing that it was shaped by varying mixes of social relations, cultural strategies, and political and aesthetic concerns—At a Distance effectively refutes the widely accepted idea that networked art is technologically determined. Doing so, it provides the historical grounding needed for a more complete understanding of today’s practices of Internet art and activism and suggests the possibilities inherent in networked practice.

At a Distance traces the history and theory of such experimental art projects as Mail Art, sound and radio art, telematic art, assemblings, and Fluxus. Although the projects differed, a conceptual questioning of the “art object,” combined with a political undermining of dominant art institutional practices, animated most distance art. After a section that sets this work in historical and critical perspective, the book presents artists and others involved in this art ‘re-viewing’ their work—including experiments in ‘mini-FM’, telerobotics, networked psychoanalysis, and interactive book construction. Finally, the book recasts the history of networks from the perspectives of politics, aesthetics, economics, and cross-cultural analysis.”

Publisher MIT Press, 2005
ISBN 0262033283, 9780262033282
xiv+486 pages

Reviews: Publishers Weekly (2005), Vincent Bonin (2005), Graham Meikle (Scan, 2006), Paolo Gerbaudo (Culture Machine, 2006), Joel Slayton (Art Book, 2006), Karrie Karahalios (New Media & Society, 2006), Jennifer Way (RCCS, 2008, with responses from editors).

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (updated on 2019-11-22)