Geert Lovink, Sabine Niederer (eds.): Video Vortex Reader: Responses to Youtube (2008)

“The Video Vortex Reader is the first collection of critical texts to deal with the rapidly emerging world of online video – from its explosive rise in 2005 with YouTube, to its future as a significant form of personal media. After years of talk about digital convergence and crossmedia platforms we now witness the merger of the Internet and television at a pace no-one predicted. These contributions from scholars, artists and curators evolved from the first two Video Vortex conferences in Brussels and Amsterdam in 2007 which focused on responses to YouTube, and address key issues around independent production and distribution of online video content. What does this new distribution platform mean for artists and activists? What are the alternatives?”

Contributors: Tilman Baumgärtel, Jean Burgess, Dominick Chen, Sarah Cook, Sean Cubitt, Stefaan Decostere, Thomas Elsaesser, David Garcia, Alexandra Juhasz, Nelli Kambouri and Pavlos Hatzopoulos, Minke Kampman, Seth Keen, Sarah Késenne, Marsha Kinder, Patricia Lange, Elizabeth Losh, Geert Lovink, Andrew Lowenthal, Lev Manovich, Adrian Miles, Matthew Mitchem, Sabine Niederer, Ana Peraica, Birgit Richard, Keith Sanborn, Florian Schneider, Tom Sherman, Jan Simons, Thomas Thiel, Vera Tollmann, Andreas Treske, Peter Westenberg.

Editorial assistance: Marije van Eck and Margreet Riphagen
Publisher Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, 2008
INC Reader series, 4
Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 2.5 Netherlands License
ISBN 9789078146056
315 pages

Publisher

PDF, PDF (updated on 2017-4-11)

Tatiana Bazzichelli: Networking: The Net as Artwork (2006/2008) [IT, EN]

“A reconstruction of the history of artistic networking in Italy and of the Italian hacker communitiy from the 1980s to date.

Networking means to create nets of relations, where the publisher and the reader, the artist and the audience, act on the same level. The book represents a first tentative reconstruction of the history of artistic networking in Italy, through an analysis of media and art projects which during the past twenty years have given way to a creative, shared and aware use of technologies, from video to computers, contributing to the creation of Italian hacker communities.

The Italian network proposes a form of critical information, diffused through independent and collective projects where the idea of freedom of expression is a central theme. In Italy, thanks to the alternative use of Internet, during the past twenty years a vast national network of people who share political, cultural and artistic views has been formed.

The book describes the evolution of the italian hacktivism and net culture from the Eighties till today. At the same time, it builds a reflection on the new role of the artist and author who become networker, operating in collective nets, reconnecting to Neoavant-garde practices of the 1960s (first and foremost Fluxus), but also Mail art, Neoism and Luther Blissett.

A path which began in BBS, alternative web platforms diffused in Italy through the 1980s even before Internet even existed, and then moved on to Hackmeetings, to Telestreet and networking art of different artists such as 0100101110101101.ORG, [epidemiC], Jaromil, Giacomo Verde, Giovanotti Mondani Meccanici, Correnti Magnetiche, Candida TV, Tommaso Tozzi, Federico Bucalossi, Massimo Contrasto, Mariano Equizzi, Pigreca, Molleindustria, Guerriglia Marketing, Sexyshock, Phag Off and many others.”

Networking. La rete come arte
Preface by Derrick de Kerckhove
Postface by Simonetta Fadda
Publisher Costa & Nolan, Milan, 2006
Creative Commons Attribuzione-Noncommerciale-Condividi allo stesso modo 2.5 Italia
ISBN 8874370474, 9788874370474
333 pages

English edition
Preface by Derrick De Kerckhove
Afterword by Simonetta Fadda
Publisher DARC, Digital Aesthetics Research Center of Aarhus University, 2008
GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3, November 2008
336 pages

Author
Publisher (EN)

Networking. La rete come arte (Italian, 2006, 4 MB, added on 2016-2-19)
Networking. The Net as Artwork (English, 2008, PDF, 3 MB)

Lev Manovich: The Language of New Media (2001–) [EN, IT, ES, PL, SR]

“In this book Lev Manovich offers the first systematic and rigorous theory of new media. He places new media within the histories of visual and media cultures of the last few centuries. He discusses new media’s reliance on conventions of old media, such as the rectangular frame and mobile camera, and shows how new media works create the illusion of reality, address the viewer, and represent space. He also analyzes categories and forms unique to new media, such as interface and database.

Manovich uses concepts from film theory, art history, literary theory, and computer science and also develops new theoretical constructs, such as cultural interface, spatial montage, and cinegratography. The theory and history of cinema play a particularly important role in the book. Among other topics, Manovich discusses parallels between the histories of cinema and of new media, digital cinema, screen and montage in cinema and in new media, and historical ties between avant-garde film and new media.”

Keywords and phrases
3-D computer graphics, telepresence, computer animation, digital compositing, computer games, VRML, digital cinema, Myst, computer space, human-computer interface, photorealism, Jurassic Park, virtual worlds, Aspen Movie Map, computer media, SIGGRAPH, CD-ROM, hypermedia, avant-garde, Movie Camera

Foreword by Mark Tribe
Publisher MIT Press, 2001
Leonardo Books series
ISBN 0262133741, 9780262133746
xiii+354 pages

Reviews

Author (archived)
Author
Publisher

The Language of New Media (English, 2001, 20 MB, updated on 2019-8-23)
Il linguaggio dei nuovi media (Italian, trans. Roberto Merlini, 2002, 39 MB, added on 2019-8-23, via)
El lenguaje de los nuevos medios de comunicación (Spanish, trans. Óscar Fontrodona, 2006, 31 MB, added on 2019-8-23, via)
Język nowych mediów (Polish, trans. Piotr Cypryański, 2006, 52 MB, added on 2019-8-23, via)
Jezik novih medija (Serbian, trans. Aleksandar Luj Todorović, 2015, 10 MB, added on 2019-8-23, via)