Vito Campanelli: Web Aesthetics: How Digital Media Affect Culture and Society (2010)
Filed under book | Tags: · aesthetics, computing, digital media, internet, media, media culture, memes, networks, new media, remix, spam, subjectivity, technology, theory, virus, web
“We live in a world of rapidly evolving digital networks, but within the domain of media theory, which studies the influence of these cultural forms, the implications of aesthetical philosophy have been sorely neglected. Vito Campanelli explores network forms through the prism of aesthetics and thus presents an open invitation to transcend the inherent limitations of the current debate about digital culture.
The web is the medium that stands between the new media and society and, more than any other, is stimulating the worldwide dissemination of ideas and behaviour, framing aesthetic forms and moulding contemporary culture and society.
Campanelli observes a few important phenomena of today, such as social networks, peer-to-peer networks and ‘remix culture’, and reduces them to their historical premises, thus laying the foundations for an organic aesthetic theory of digital media.”
Publisher NAi Publishers, Rotterdam; in association with the Institute of Network Cultures at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam, University of Applied Sciences, October 2010
Studies in Network Cultures series
ISBN 9056627708, 9789056627706
276 pages
Reviews: Greg J Smith (Rhizome, 2011), Alessandro Ludovico (Neural, 2011), Regine Debatty (We Make Money Not Art, 2011).
Book website
Interview with the author (Geert Lovink)
Interview with the author (Pasquale Napolitano, Digicult)
PDF, PDF (25 MB, updated on 2019-3-24)
Comments (7)McKenzie Wark: A Hacker Manifesto (2004–) [EN, DE, FR, CR, ES]
Filed under book | Tags: · commons, copyright, floss, free software, gift economy, hacker ethic, hacking, intellectual property
A double is haunting the world–the double of abstraction, the virtual reality of information, programming or poetry, math or music, curves or colorings upon which the fortunes of states and armies, companies and communities now depend. The bold aim of this book is to make manifest the origins, purpose, and interests of the emerging class responsible for making this new world–for producing the new concepts, new perceptions, and new sensations out of the stuff of raw data.
A Hacker Manifesto deftly defines the fraught territory between the ever more strident demands by drug and media companies for protection of their patents and copyrights and the pervasive popular culture of file sharing and pirating. This vexed ground, the realm of so-called “intellectual property,” gives rise to a whole new kind of class conflict, one that pits the creators of information–the hacker class of researchers and authors, artists and biologists, chemists and musicians, philosophers and programmers–against a possessing class who would monopolize what the hacker produces.
Drawing in equal measure on Guy Debord and Gilles Deleuze, A Hacker Manifesto offers a systematic restatement of Marxist thought for the age of cyberspace and globalization. In the widespread revolt against commodified information, McKenzie Wark sees a utopian promise, beyond the property form, and a new progressive class, the hacker class, who voice a shared interest in a new information commons.
Publisher Harvard University Press, 2004
ISBN 0674015436, 9780674015432
208 pages
Review: Hua Hsu (Village Voice, 2004).
A Hacker Manifesto (English, 2004, updated on 2014-9-12)
Hacker-Manifest (German, trans. Dietmar Zimmer, 2005, added on 2018-7-13)
Un manifeste hacker (French, trans. Club Post-1984 Mary Shelley & Cie Hacker band, 2006, added on 2018-7-13)
Hakerski manifest (Croatian, trans. Tomislav Medak, 2006)
Un manifiesto hacker (Spanish, trans. Laura Manero, 2006, added on 2018-7-13)
Manifiesto hacker (Spanish, trans. of a shorter essay, undated, v4, added on 2014-3-6)
McKenzie Wark: The Beach Beneath the Street: The Everyday Life and Glorious Times of the Situationist International (2011)
Filed under book | Tags: · 1950s, 1960s, architecture, everyday, life, philosophy, politics, situationists, spectacle, theory
“Over fifty years after the Situationist International appeared, its legacy continues to inspire activists, artists and theorists around the world. Such a legend has accrued to this movement that the story of the SI now demands to be told in a contemporary voice capable of putting it into the context of twenty-first-century struggles.
McKenzie Wark delves into the Situationists’ unacknowledged diversity, revealing a world as rich in practice as it is in theory. Tracing the group’s development from the bohemian Paris of the ’50s to the explosive days of May ’68, Wark’s take on the Situationists is biographically and historically rich, presenting the group as an ensemble creation, rather than the brainchild and dominion of its most famous member, Guy Debord. Roaming through Europe and the lives of those who made up the movement—including Constant, Asger Jorn, Michèle Bernstein, Alex Trocchi and Jacqueline De Jong—Wark uncovers an international movement riven with conflicting passions.
Accessible to those who have only just discovered the Situationists and filled with new insights, The Beach Beneath the Street rereads the group’s history in the light of our contemporary experience of communications, architecture, and everyday life. The Situationists tried to escape the world of twentieth-century spectacle and failed in the attempt. Wark argues that they may still help us to escape the twenty-first century, while we still can …”
Publisher Verso, London, 2011
ISBN 1844677206, 9781844677207
224 pages
Reviews: Christopher Collier (Mute), Anthony Hayes (Marx&Philosophy), Ian Birchall (Review31), Brettany Shannon (Society&Space), Ben Brucato (Humanity&Society), Karl Whitney (3AM), Vince Carducci (PopMatters), Andrew McCann (Sydney Review of Books), Gary Pearce (Steep Stairs), Jonathan Derbyshire (The Guardian), Andrew Blake (The Independent), Edwin Heathcote (Financial Times).
PDF (updated on 2019-2-9)
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