Van Gogh TV's »Piazza Virtuale«

Van Gogh TV's »Piazza Virtuale«
Author: Tilman Baumgärtel
Publisher: transcript Verlag
Total Pages: 235
Release: 2021-11-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3839460662

Piazza virtuale by the group of artists known as Van Gogh TV was not only the biggest art project ever to appear on television, but from a contemporary point of view the project was also a forerunner of today's social media. The ground-breaking event that took place during the 100 days of documenta IX in 1992 was an early experiment with entirely user-created content. This is the first book-length study of this largely forgotten experiment: It documents the radicality of Piazza virtuale's approach, the novel programme ideas and the technical innovations. It also allows, via QR codes, direct access to videos from the show, which until now have been inaccessible.

(Re-)Imagining New Media

(Re-)Imagining New Media
Author: Christoph Ernst
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 173
Release: 2021-05-31
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 3658328991

The late 20th century was a formative phase in the history of digital media culture. The introduction of "new media" was associated with promises for the future that still resonate today. This book brings together contributions that discuss key aspects of the "imaginaries" surrounding new media in this epoch. The focus is on the works of the media artist group Van Gogh-TV, especially the historically very important interactive television project "Piazza virtuale" (1992).

Media Futures

Media Futures
Author: Christoph Ernst
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 128
Release: 2021-10-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3030804887

This book deals with the connection between media and the future. It is about the imagination of futuristic media and what this says about the present, but it also shows how media are imagined as means to control the future. The book begins by describing different theories of the evolution of media and by exploring how this evolution is tied to expectations regarding the future. The authors discuss the theories of imagination and how the imagination of media futures operates. To do so, they analyse four concrete examples: the imaginations once related to interactive television and how they were performed in an important piece of media art; those on “ubiquitous computing,” which remain present today; those on three-dimensional, especially holographic, displays that are prevalent everywhere in cinema, and lastly the contemporary imaginations on quantum computing and how they have been enacted in science fiction. The book appeals to readers interested in the question of how our present imagines its technological futures.

Art vs. TV

Art vs. TV
Author: Francesco Spampinato
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 535
Release: 2021-12-02
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1501370561

While highlighting the prevailing role of television in Western societies, Art vs. TV maps and condenses a comprehensive history of the relationships of art and television. With a particular focus on the link between reality and representation, Francesco Spampinato analyzes video art works, installations, performances, interventions and television programs made by contemporary artists as forms of resistance to and appropriation and parody of mainstream television. The artists discussed belong to different generations: those that emerged in the 1960s in association with art movements such as Pop Art, Fluxus and Happening; and those appearing on the scene in the 1980s, whose work aimed at deconstructing media representation in line with postmodernist theories; to those arriving in the 2000s, an era in which, through reality shows and the Internet, anybody could potentially become a media personality; and finally those active in the 2010s, whose work reflects on how old media like television has definitively vaporized through the electronic highways of cyberspace. These works and phenomena elicit a tension between art and television, exposing an incongruence; an impossibility not only to converge but at the very least to open up a dialogical exchange.

Telepresence & Bio Art

Telepresence & Bio Art
Author: Eduardo Kac
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 342
Release: 2005
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780472068104

"Eduardo Kac's work represents a turning point. What it questions is our current attitudes to creativity, taking that word in its most fundamental sense." -Edward Lucie-Smith, author of Visual Arts in the 20th Century "His works introduce a vital new meaning into what had been known as the creative process while at the same time investing the notion of the artist-inventor with an original social and ethical responsibility." -Frank Popper, author of Origins and Development of Kinetic Art "Kac's radical approach to the creation and presentation of the body as a wet host for artificial memory and 'site-specific' work raises a variety of important questions that range from the status of memory in digital culture to the ethical dilemmas we are facing in the age of bioengineering and tracking technology." -Christiane Paul, Whitney Museum of Art For nearly two decades Eduardo Kac has been at the cutting edge of media art, first inventing early online artworks for the web and continuously developing new art forms that involve telecommunications and robotics as a new platform for art. Interest in telepresence, also known as telerobotics, exploded in the 1990s, and remains an important development in media art. Since that time, Kac has increasingly moved into the fields of biology and biotechnology. Telepresence and Bio Art is the first book to document the evolution of bio art and the aesthetic development of Kac, the creator of the "artist's gene" as well as the controversial glow-in-the-dark, genetically engineered rabbit Alba. Kac covers a broad range of topics within media art, including telecommunications media, interactive systems and the Internet, telematics and robotics, and the contact between electronic art and biotechnology. Addressing emerging and complex topics, this book will be essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary art.

Understanding Community Media

Understanding Community Media
Author: Kevin Howley
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Total Pages: 425
Release: 2009-09-11
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1483342859

A text that reveals the value and significance of community media in an era of global communication With contributions from an international team of well-known experts, media activists, and promising young scholars, this comprehensive volume examines community-based media from theoretical, empirical, and practical perspectives. More than 30 original essays provide an incisive and timely analysis of the relationships between media and society, technology and culture, and communication and community. Key Features Provides vivid examples of community and alternative media initiatives from around the world Explores a wide range of media institutions, forms, and practices—community radio, participatory video, street newspapers, Independent Media Centers, and community informatics Offers cutting-edge analysis of community and alternative media with original essays from new, emerging, and established voices in the field Takes a multidimensional approach to community media studies by highlighting the social, economic, cultural, and political significance of alternative, independent, and community-oriented media organizations Enters the ongoing debates regarding the theory and practice of community media in a comprehensive and engaging fashion Intended Audience This core text is designed for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses such as Community Media, Alternative Media, Media & Social Change, Communication & Culture, and Participatory Communication in the departments of communication, media studies, sociology, and cultural studies.

Mute Magazine - Vol 2 #9

Mute Magazine - Vol 2 #9
Author: Mute
Publisher: Mute Publishing Ltd
Total Pages: 108
Release: 2008-07
Genre: Art
ISBN: 190649617X

Quarterly, critical and cheap, "Mute" is a jumble of all that's still grunting in the inter-finessing hyper-barrios of culture, politics, and technology 2.0.

The Art and Science of Interface and Interaction Design (Vol. 1)

The Art and Science of Interface and Interaction Design (Vol. 1)
Author: Christa Sommerer
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2008-09-08
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 3540798706

Artists and creators in interactive art and interaction design have long been conducting research on human-machine interaction. Through artistic, conceptual, social and critical projects, they have shown how interactive digital processes are essential elements for their artistic creations. Resulting prototypes have often reached beyond the art arena into areas such as mobile computing, intelligent ambiences, intelligent architecture, fashionable technologies, ubiquitous computing and pervasive gaming. Many of the early artist-developed interactive technologies have influenced new design practices, products and services of today's media society. This book brings together key theoreticians and practitioners of this field. It shows how historically relevant the issues of interaction and interface design are, as they can be analyzed not only from an engineering point of view but from a social, artistic and conceptual, and even commercial angle as well.

Christa Sommerer & Laurent Mignonneau

Christa Sommerer & Laurent Mignonneau
Author: Karin Ohlenschlager
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 379
Release: 2023-02-07
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0262048159

“More than a cabinet of curiosities, more than a terrarium, more than an aquarium”: a captivating look at thirty years of artistic work by the Austrian-French artist duo Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau. Working at the intersection of natural science, technology, and art, Austrian-French artist duo Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau pioneered the “Art of Interface”—innovative technical interfaces that enable physical interaction between simulative visual worlds and the world of natural sensory organs. Early on, the pair used algorithms to represent not only forms of the living but also their evolution and growth. Edited by Karin Ohlenschläger, Peter Weibel, and Alfred Weidinger, this publication in the Leonardo book series brings together key works of the artists since the early 1990s in pictures and text contextualized by renowned international authors: Reinhard Kannonier, Ryszard W. Kluszczyński, Birgit Mersmann, Tomoe Moriyama, Karin Ohlenschläger, Ingeborg Reichle, and Siegfried Zielinski. In the artists’ installations, which are possible only through interactions with the viewer, devices designed by the artist couple produce novel virtual realities and immersive environments. In “Portrait on the Fly,” for instance, a viewer stands in front of an interactive plasma screen, behind which a swarm of thousands of flies is moving. Gradually, the flies settle on the shadowed areas of the projection, thereby collectively reproducing the person’s likeness. Works such as these, now almost classics of digital art, open a new horizon in which artworks can function as living systems. As Peter Weibel writes, their work is “more than a cabinet of curiosities, more than a terrarium, more than an aquarium; it shows mythical creatures, artificial creatures, [and] a so far unseen panorama of imagination and technical ingenuity.”

Video Conferencing

Video Conferencing
Author: Axel Volmar
Publisher: transcript Verlag
Total Pages: 375
Release: 2023-11-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3839462282

The COVID-19 pandemic has reorganized existing methods of exchange, turning comparatively marginal technologies into the new normal. Multipoint videoconferencing in particular has become a favored means for web-based forms of remote communication and collaboration without physical copresence. Taking the recent mainstreaming of videoconferencing as its point of departure, this anthology examines the complex mediality of this new form of social interaction. Connecting theoretical reflection with material case studies, the contributors question practices, politics and aesthetics of videoconferencing and the specific meanings it acquires in different historical, cultural and social contexts.