Readings
Required Readings:
Lunenfeld, Peter. Snap to Grid: A User's Guide to Digital Arts, Media, and Cultures, Boston, The MIT Press, 2000. Not a techniques book! The first part of the book, "Cultures," examines the interactions and economics of new art and business, and how each contributes to the development and implementation of new technologies and creates a need for what Lunenfeld calls "real-time theory." Next, in "Media," is a brief discussion of the confluence of new or reinvigorated art forms. The book thoroughly explains and illustrates the state of the art in hypertext, digital photography, the Web, virtual reality, and hybrid architecture. Finally, "Makers" profiles the theory and works of six artists emblematic of the changes seen in recent years. Individuals such as filmmaker Hollis Frampton, video artist Diana Thater, and installation artist Jennifer Steinkamp show us the new world we're creating using the tools of its creation.
Hypertext: The Alphanumeric Phoenix
Digital Photography: The Dubitative Image
Pablo Picasso, les Demoiselles d'Avignon
Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty
The Reconfigured Eye by William J. Mitchell
icon, symbol, index
http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Campus/5325/doisneau.html
http://www.zonezero.com/exposiciones/fotografos/witkin/jpwdefault.html
George Legrady, Slippery Traces
Virilio, Paul. The Information Bomb, New York: Verso, 2000. French cultural historian and urban planner, Virilio abstractly discusses the shattering of our contemporary spacio-temporal framework. His cyber-skepticism is a refreshing antidote to the 'global village' mantra of Net guru.
Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." In Illuminations. New York: Schocken, 1969. Walter Benjamin is easily one of the great German prose writers of our century, despite being almost impossible to classify. His subject matter is frequently literary, but he always transcends his subject matter to touch upon issues in philosophy, art, history, Marxism, and Western culture, illuminating (no pun intended) all he discusses. His essays on Proust and Kafka are priceless, and his essays on "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" and the theses on the philosophy of history, are classic.
Suggested Readings:
Turkle, Sherry. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, 1998. A balanced and nuanced look at some of the ways that cyberculture helps us comment upon real life. Instead of giving in to any one theory on construction of identity, Turkle looks at the way various netizens have used the Internet, and especially MUDs (Multi-User Dimensions), to learn more about the possibilities available in apprehending the world. One of the most interesting sections deals with gender, a topic prone to rash and partisan pronouncements. Taking as her motto William James's maxim "Philosophy is the art of imagining alternatives," Turkle shows how playing with gender in cyberspace can shape a person's real-life understanding of gender. Especially telling are the examples of the man who finds it easier to be assertive when playing a woman, because he believes male assertiveness is now frowned upon while female assertiveness is considered hip, and the woman who has the opposite response, believing that it is easier to be aggressive when she plays a male, because as a woman she would be considered "bitchy." Without taking sides, Turkle points out how both have expanded their emotional range. Other topics, such as artificial life, receive an equally calm and sage response, and the first-person accounts from many Internet users provide compelling reading and good source material for readers to draw their own conclusions.
Pesce, Mark. The Playful World: How Technology is Transforming Our Imagination, New York: Balantine, 2000. Are Furbies avatars of future pets? Mark Pesce, Chair of USC's Interactive Media Program and creator of VRML, thinks that technological development and recreational activity inform each other and are converging into a strange, new immersive environment. The Playful World: Interactive Toys and the Future of Imagination is a thoughtful peek into the guts of such toys as LEGO's Mindstorms and Sony's PlayStation2; by extrapolation, Pesce sees them driving research in nanotechnology and virtual reality, but he nobly refuses to succumb to the temptation to make precise predictions.
Kandinsky, Wassily. Concerning the Spiritual in Art. "The Sounds of
Color," New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1977. Kandinsky
spent a lifetime painting in search of the spiritual. His body of work was his
philosophical opus. Kandinsky believed that art had a duty to be spiritual in
nature, an expression of "inner need," as he came to call it. He called
"art for art's sake" a "vain squandering of artistic power."
This book was both his call to artists to meet their obligation to humanity
and his attempt to define and explain color and form in its relation to expressing
the message of the soul. A classic about color and form as spiritual symbols.
Borges, Jorge Luis, "The Circular Ruins", Fictiones, 1989. Borges wrote not with an ideological agenda, but with a kind of radical philosophical playfulness. Labyrinths, libraries, lotteries, doubles, dreams, mirrors, heresiarchs: these are the tokens with which he plays his ontological games. In the end, ideas themselves are less important to him than their aesthetic and imaginative possibilities. Like the idealist philosophers of Tlön, Borges does not "seek for the truth or even for verisimilitude, but rather for the astounding"; for him as for them, "metaphysics is a branch of fantastic literature." --Mary Park
Mitchell, William J. The Reconfigured Eye. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT
Press, 1992. A systematic,
critical analysis of the digital imaging revolution in photography.
He describes the technology of the digital image in detail, and looks
closely at how it is changing the way we explore ideas, at its aesthetic potential,
and at the ethical questions it raises.
Baudrillard, Jean. Simulations, New York, Semiotext(e), Inc.,Columbia University, 1983. What is real? What is a commodity? Why are some things valuable? Things have no value outside of their relationship to other things... and sometimes, relationships and ideas are the only real commodity, hollow fronts for a system with no foundation in the real world at all. Could you have science without testing things against what is real? Can you simply study unreal things forever, producing paper after paper, all logically consistent but studying something that ultimately doesn't exist?
Fernandez, Maria. Art Journal. “Postcolonial Media Theory”, New York: College Art Association, 1999. A fresh look at contemporary cultural theory with a call for awareness to our universal utopian ideas concerning electronic media which the author questions as possibly similar to earlier colonialisms.
Kelly, Kevin & Adam Heilbrun. “Virtual Reality: An Interview with Jaron Lanier”, The Whole Earth Catalog. Cali.: 1993. Reality Check with Jaron Lanier, 1995
Crary, Jonathan. Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in
the Nineteenth Century. Mass,: MIT Press, Cambridge, 1990. Provides
a dramatically new perspective on the visual culture of the nineteenth century,
reassessing problems of both visual modernism and social modernity. This analysis
of the historical formation of the observer is a compelling account of the prehistory
of `the society of the spectacle.'
Morse, Margret. Virtualities : Television, Media Art, and Cyberculture (Theories
of Contemporary Culture) Indiana Univ Pr; ISBN: 0253211778 The
explosive development of the media in this century has resulted in abstract
relations with machines and/or physically removed strangers. This phenomenon
characterizes ever-larger areas of work and private life. The more abstract,
and removed, information has become from everyday life, the less "real"
the experience. Margaret Morse offers new ways of thinking about the possibilities
and limits of "virtual practices".
Stone, Allucquere, Rosanne. The War of Desire and Technology at the Close
of the Mechanical Age. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1995. A
series of intellectual provocations and accounts of the modern interface of
technology and desire--from busy cyberlabs to the electronic solitude of the
Internet, from phone sex to "virtual cross-dressers." Stone examines
the impact of cybertechnologies on the construction of identity.
General Technique
Spalter, Ann Morgan. The Computer in the Visual Arts.
Addison Wesley Longman, Inc., 1999. Covers
the historical evolution of the computer as it relates to the creation of artwork.
Author Anne Morgan Spalter interviews contemporary artists for insights into
their favorite techniques and approaches to planning, developing, and outputting
their artwork. Guidance on the technical, practical, and theoretical aspects
of design and production.
Jennifer Niederst,
Richard Koman Ed. Web
Design in a Nutshell : A Desktop Quick Reference, 1999. Encompasses every aspect of designing Web pages; furnishes
quick and easy access to a vast array of technologies and techniques needed
for effective Web design; and covers such topics as HTML, graphics, multimedia
and interactivity, JavaScript much more.
"Photoshop 6.0 Classroom in a Book, Special Web Edition" by Adobe Creative Team
"Dreamweaver 5: Hands-On-Training" by Lynda Weinman
"Web Style Guide: Basic Design Principles for Creating Web Sites" by Patrick J. Lynch and Sarah Horton
"Flash Web Design: The Art of Motion Graphics" by Hillman Curtis