Amalia E. Gnanadesikan: The Writing Revolution: Cuneiform to the Internet (2008)

In a world of rapid technological advancements, it can be easy to forget that writing is the original Information Technology, created to transcend the limitations of human memory and to defy time and space. The Writing Revolution picks apart the development of this communication tool to show how it has conquered the world.

* Explores how writing has liberated the world, making possible everything from complex bureaucracy, literature, and science, to instruction manuals and love letters
* Draws on an engaging range of examples, from the first cuneiform clay tablet, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and Japanese syllabaries, to the printing press and the text messaging
* Weaves together ideas from a number of fields, including history, cultural studies and archaeology, as well as linguistics and literature, to create an interdisciplinary volume
* Traces the origins of each of the world’s major written traditions, along with their applications, adaptations, and cultural influences

Publisher Wiley-Blackwell, 2008
ISBN 1405154063, 9781405154062
Length 328 pages

More info (google books)

PDF

Michael Nyman: Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond, 2nd ed. (1974/1999)

“Michael Nyman’s book is a first-hand account of experimental music from 1950 to 1970. First published in 1974, it has remained the classic text on a significant form of music making and composing which developed alongside, and partly in opposition to, the post-war modernist tradition of composers such as Boulez, Berio, or Stockhausen. The experimentalist par excellence was John Cage whose legendary 4’ 33’’ consists of four minutes and thirty three seconds of silence to be performed on any instrument. Such pieces have a conceptual rather than purely musical starting point and radically challenge conventional notions of the musical work. Nyman’s book traces the revolutionary attitudes that were developed towards concepts of time, space, sound, and composer/performer responsibility. It was within the experimental tradition that the seeds of musical minimalism were sown and the book contains reference to the early works of Reich, Riley, Young, and Glass.”

Second edition
Foreword by Brian Eno
Publisher Cambridge University Press, 1999
ISBN 0521653835, 9780521653831
196 pages

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2012-11-4)

Jack Ox, Jeremy Hight, Erik Champion (eds.): LEA Special Issue: Creative Data (2009)

The Creative Data special issue features papers and artworks that deal with the emerging practice of data visualization as an immersive experience. Data has long been the property and domain of screen-based collection, archiving, processing and interaction. The emergence of new processes, functionality and ways of interacting with information is opening up several new areas of great possibility in which the data allows newfound thematic and engaging forms of immersion, as well as innovative and perception-reshaping interaction. Consider a simple analogy; to swim in a pool is to understand three-dimensionality, interaction, spatial relationships and a macro-micro view, as well as contextual and embodied interaction. Can we swim with data? How do we build, debate and discuss the future and shape of immersivity in its relation to data? Can the representation of data as an immersive environment be considered a creative accomplishment or support creativity in action or as spectacle? How does this change the way we collect and archive information? How does it relate to our ways of interacting with information in study and analysis? How can this enhance or fuse key aspects of image projection, virtual reality, augmented reality, new media and even locative media?

The essays, interviews, reports and other forms of writing look at spatialization and layering of information, a greater sense of immersion, new forms of visualization and depth of field, precedents, future applications and connotations, our relationship to immersion and information inherently as how this applies to this new area.

Guest Editors: Jack Ox, Jeremy Hight, and Erik Champion
Leonardo Electronic Almanac
Vol 16 Issue 6 – 7

More info and download (PDF per article)