Hannah Higgins: Fluxus Experience (2002)

“In this work, Hannah Higgins explores the influential art movement Fluxus. Daring, disparate, contentious—Fluxus artists worked with minimal and prosaic materials now familiar in post-World War II art. Higgins describes the experience of Fluxus for viewers, even experiences resembling sensory assaults, as affirming transactions between self and world.

Fluxus began in the 1950s with artists from around the world who favored no single style or medium but displayed an inclination to experiment. Two formats are unique to Fluxus: a type of performance art called the Event, and the Fluxkit multiple, a collection of everyday objects or inexpensive printed cards collected in a box that viewers explore privately. Higgins examines these two setups to bring to life the Fluxus experience, how it works, and how and why it’s important. She does so by moving out from the art itself in what she describes as a series of concentric circles: to the artists who create Fluxus, to the creative movements related to Fluxus (and critics’ and curators’ perceptions and reception of them), to the lessons of Fluxus art for pedagogy in general.

Although it was commonly associated with political and cultural activism in the 1960s, Fluxus struggled against being pigeonholed in these too-prescriptive and narrow terms. Higgins, the daughter of the Fluxus artists Alison Knowles and Dick Higgins, makes the most of her personal connection to the movement by sharing her firsthand experience, bringing an astounding immediacy to her writing and a palpable commitment to shedding light on what Fluxus is and why it matters.”

Publisher University of California Press, 2002
ISBN 0520228677, 9780520228672
259 pages

Reviews: Ken Friedman (Design Research, 2003), Jennie Klein (PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, 2004), Roy R. Behrens (Leonardo, 2004), Branislav Jakovljevic (TDR: The Drama Review, 2004), Ágnes Ivacs (Artpool, n.d.).

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2012-7-18)

Zuzana Husárová: Písanie v interaktívnych médiách. Digitálna fikcia (2009) [Slovak]

Predmetom dizertačnej práce je predstavenie a kontextualizácia možností písania v interaktívnych médiách a skúmanie literárneho umenia interaktívnych médií v anglofónnom priestore. Pre dnešnú tvorbu umeleckých diel v interaktívnych médiách je príznačný intermediálny charakter; autori pre predstavenie fiktívneho sveta často prepájajú text, obraz a zvuk do výpovedného celku. Cieľom práce je vyjadriť sa jednak k otázkam, ktoré síce nie sú nové, avšak digitálny formát a priestor internetu im umožnili nadobudnúť nové rozmery a aj k otázkam pre výskum digitálnej fikcie špecifickým. Výskum sa zameriava na digitálnu fikciu – v počítačovom programe napísané digitálne dielo, v ktorom autor ponúka svet fikcie. V práci sú predstavené viaceré aspekty digitálnej fikcie, ktorých kombinácia je indikátorom jej charakteristického postavenia v rámci ostatného digitálneho umenia – fragmentárnosť rozprávania, multilinearita, interaktivita, performativita, dynamika, intermedialita a princípy hry a hravosti. Fenoménmi súčasnosti, ktoré pôsobia aj na tvorbu skúmaných diel a ich čitateľskú popularitu sú estetická atraktivita, ktorú v tomto kontexte prináša predovšetkým využitie diverzity medialít a pokus o vyvolanie čo najintenzívnejšieho zážitku v čo najkratšom čase. Práca pozostáva okrem úvodu, záveru a interlúdia (venovanému kategórii materiality digitálnej fikcie) zo štyroch kľúčových kapitol. V týchto kapitolách sú vedecké prístupy k skúmanej problematike písania v interaktívnych médiách následne využité pri analýze-interpretácii konkrétnych digitálnych fikcií.

Kľúčové slová : digitálna fikcia, interaktívne médiá, fragmentárnosť, multilinearita, interaktivita, performativita, dynamickosť, intermedialita, hra, literárna veda, teória nových médií, teória digitálnej fikcie, hypertext, kybertext, materialita, metamedialita

Dizertačná práca
Ústav svetovej literatúry Slovenskej akadémie vied v Bratislave
Školiteľ: Mgr. Bogumiła Suwara, PhD.
Bratislava: ÚSvL SAV, 2009
Dizajn: Pavlinka Morháčová

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Writing in the interactive media. Digital fiction
The subject of the thesis is to introduce and contextualise the possibilities of writing in the interactive media as well as to study the literary art of interactive media in the Anglophone area. One of the attributes of the contemporary art pieces of interactive media is their intermedial character; the authors often link text, image and sound to introduce the fictional world. The aim of the thesis is on one hand to refer to the questions that are not new but have appeared in new circumstances due to the digital format and internet and on the other hand to refer to the questions typical for the digital fiction research. The research concentrates on the digital fiction – a digital piece written in a computer programme, in which the author offers a fictional world. The thesis addresses several aspects of digital fiction, whose combination indicates its characteristic status within the group of digital art – fragmentarity of narrative, multilinearity, interactivity, performativity, dynamics, intermediality and the principles of game and play. The current phenomena that influence also the creation of the analysed art pieces and their popularity among readers are the aesthetic attraction, in this context brought mainly by the use of media diversity, and the effort to evoke the most intensive experience in the shortest time span. The thesis consists apart from the introduction, conclusion and interludium (dealing with the materiality of digital fiction) of four chapters. The scientific approaches to the problematics of writing in the interactive media are in the second parts of these chapters used in the process of analysis-interpretation of particular digital fiction pieces.

Key words : digital fiction, interactive media, fragmentarity, multilinearity, interactivity, performativity, dynamics, intermediality, play, game, literary science, new media theory, digital fiction theory, hypertext, cybertext, materiality, metamediality

PDF (updated on 2012-5-5)

Gene Youngblood: Expanded Cinema (1970)

“The first book to consider video as an art form, was influential in establishing the field of media arts. In the book he argues that a new, expanded cinema is required for a new consciousness. He describes various types of filmmaking utilising new technology, including film special effects, computer art, video art, multi-media environments and holography.” (Wikipedia)

Part One: The Audience and the Myth of Entertainment
Part Two: Synaesthetic Cinema: The End of Drama
Part Three: Toward Cosmic Consciousness
Part Four: Cybernetic Cinema and Computer Films
Part Five: Television as a Creative Medium
Part Six: Intermedia
Part Seven: Holographic Cinema: A New World

Key words and phrases: Jordan Belson, expanded cinema, Nam June Paik, Buckminster Fuller, Stan VanDerBeek, videotronic, Ronald Nameth, Carolee Schneemann, John McHale, Expo 67, slit-scan, John Cage, light pen, Gene Youngblood, Otto Piene, Beflix, Howard Wise, KQED, Samadhi, WGBH-TV

Introduction by R. Buckminster Fuller
Publisher E.P. Dutton, New York, 1970
SBN 0525101527
432 pages

Reviews: Paul Cowen (Leonardo, 1972), Thomas Beard (Artforum, 2020), Caroline A. Jones (Artforum, 2020).
Analysis: Adam Sindre Johnson (2010, NO).

PDF (45 MB, no OCR, via Internet Archive, added on 2016-3-2)
PDF, PDF, PDF (5 MB, OCR)
PDF chapters