Cary Wolfe: Critical Environments: Postmodern Theory and the Pragmatics of the “Outside” (1998)

28 June 2009, dusan

“Unique in its collation of major theorists rarely considered together, Critical Environments incorporates detailed discussions of the work of Richard Rorty, Walter Benn Michaels, Stanley Cavell, Humberto Maturana, Francisco Varela, Niklas Luhmann, Donna Haraway, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Fredric Jameson, and others, and ranges across fields from feminist philosophy of science to the theory of ideology. Offering American readers a comprehensive introduction to systems theory and responding to the widespread charge of relativism leveled against it, Wolfe’s work will enhance and inspire new kinds of critical thought.”

Publisher University of Minnesota Press, 1998
ISBN 0816630194, 9780816630196
175 pages

Keywords and phrases
postmodern, systems theory, Gilles Deleuze, Marxist, Richard Rorty, second-order cybernetics, Niklas Luhmann, autopoiesis, posthumanist, epistemological, poststructuralism, Michel Foucault, Ernesto Laclau, Michael Hardt, Walter Benn Michaels, Stanley Cavell, Fredric Jameson, autopoietic, representationalism, Chantal Mouffe

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2012-7-27)

Margot Lovejoy: Digital Currents: Art in the Electronic Age (2004)

27 June 2009, dusan

Digital Currents explores the growing impact of digital technologies on aesthetic experience and examines the major changes taking place in the role of the artist as social communicator. Just as the rise of photographic techniques in the mid 1800s shattered traditional views about representation, so too have contemporary electronic tools catalyzed new perspectives on art, affecting the way artists see, think, and work, and the ways in which their productions are distributed and communicated.

Margot Lovejoy recounts the early histories of electronic media for art making – video, computer, the internet – in the new edition of this richly illustrated book. She provides a context for the works of major artists in each media, describes their projects, and discusses the issues and theoretical implications of each to create a foundation for understanding this developing field.

Digital Currents fills a major gap in our understanding of the relationship between art and technology, and the exciting new cultural conditions we are experiencing.

Publisher Routledge, 2004
ISBN 0415307805, 9780415307802
342 pages

Keywords and phrases
Bill Viola, Walter Benjamin, Nam June Paik, postmodern, Laurie Anderson, Christa Sommerer, Jenny Holzer, Miroslaw Rogala, virtual reality, Roy Ascott, Joan Jonas, Andy Warhol, Bruce Nauman, Eduardo Kac, Chris Burden, Electronic Arts, John Cage, Vito Acconci, Dara Birnbaum, Kit Galloway

author
publisher
google books

PDF (updated on 2012-8-14)

Sean Cubitt: Timeshift: On Video Culture (1991)

1 May 2009, dusan

“The book argues that video, rather than film or television, has the potential to become a uniquely democratic medium. Through electronic recording: video rental, off-air recordings, music videos, community, campaign or artists’ videos, viewers have found a new set of cultural relations, uses and practices. Testing current semiotic, post-modernist and psychoanalytic approaches in the laboratory of real life viewing, the book presents a perceptive analysis of present day video culture.”

Key terms: video art, postmodern, timeshifting, psychoanalysis, Wapping dispute, solipsism, metaphysics of presence, Bill Viola, Nam June Paik, metonymy, atomised, television, pop video, portapaks, Electronic Arts, Chott El-Djerid, David Byrne, Lacan, diegesis, pop music

Publisher Routledge, 1991
ISBN 0415016789, 9780415016780
206 pages

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2012-7-14)