George Stiny, James Gips: Algorithmic Aesthetics: Computer Models for Criticism and Design in the Arts (1978)

“Can a computer appreciate a work of art? Can a computer create a new work of art? What does it mean for an object to be a work of art? How are objects understood as works of art? Dozens of ways of understanding art have been proposed. Is there one true way to understand works of art? If not, what do the different ways of understanding art have in common? How might they be implemented in a computer? Does this “computer” or “algorithmic” approach have any contributions to make to the field of art and aesthetics?

The book was written between 1974 and 1976 in Los Angeles. We had no access to a computer so we employed a typist to translate our hand written pages into typed manuscript.”

Publisher University of California Press, 1978
ISBN 0520034678
220 pages

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Kazys Varnelis (ed.): Networked Publics (2008)

Digital media and network technologies are now part of everyday life. The Internet has become the backbone of communication, commerce, and media; the ubiquitous mobile phone connects us with others as it removes us from any stable sense of location. Networked Publics examines the ways that the social and cultural shifts created by these technologies have transformed our relationships to (and definitions of) place, culture, politics, and infrastructure.

Four chapters—each by an interdisciplinary team of scholars using collaborative software—provide a synoptic overview along with illustrative case studies. The chapter on place describes how digital networks enable us to be present in physical and networked places simultaneously (on the phone while on the road; on the Web while at a café)—often at the expense of non-digital commitments. The chapter on culture explores the growth of amateur-produced and -remixed content online and the impact of these practices on the music, anime, advertising, and news industries. The chapter on politics examines the new networked modes of bottom-up political expression and mobilization, and the difficulty in channeling online political discourse into productive political deliberation. And finally, the chapter on infrastructure notes the tension between openness and control in the flow of information, as seen in the current controversy over net neutrality. An introduction by anthropologist Mizuko Ito and a conclusion by architecture theorist Kazys Varnelis frame the chapters, giving overviews of the radical nature of these transformations.

Contributors: Walter Baer, François Bar, Anne Friedberg, Shahram Ghandeharizadeh, Mizuko Ito, Mark E. Kann, Merlyna Lim, Fernando Ordonez, Todd Richmond, Adrienne Russell, Marc Tuters, Kazys Varnelis.

Publisher MIT Press, 2008
ISBN 0262220857, 9780262220859
176 pages

author (includes a research blog and lecture videos)
publisher
google books

PDF (updated on 2012-8-7)

Tia DeNora: Music in Everyday Life (2000)

The power of music to influence mood, create scenes, routines and occasions is widely recognised and this is reflected in a strand of social theory from Plato to Adorno that portrays music as an influence on character, social structure and action. There have, however, been few attempts to specify this power empirically and to provide theoretically grounded accounts of music’s structuring properties in everyday experience. Music in Everyday Life uses a series of ethnographic studies – an aerobics class, karaoke evenings, music therapy sessions and the use of background music in the retail sector – as well as in-depth interviews to show how music is a constitutive feature of human agency. Drawing together concepts from psychology, sociology and socio-linguistics it develops a theory of music’s active role in the construction of personal and social life and highlights the aesthetic dimension of social order and organisation in late modern societies.

• The first book to show how music is used in daily life as a structuring device • Novel in its application of recent perspectives from the sociology of technology and material culture • Develops recent concern with the aesthetic dimension of social action

Publisher Cambridge University Press, 2000
ISBN 052162732X, 9780521627320
181 pages

publisher
google books

PDF (updated on 2012-8-23)