Table Of ContentA Companion to
Digital Art
WILEY BLACKWELL COMPANIONS TO ART HISTORY
These invigorating reference volumes chart the influence of key ideas, discourses, and
theories on art, and the way that it is taught, thought of, and talked about throughout
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the scholarship governing the field and pointing toward future trends and across
disciplines, the Blackwell Companions to Art History series provides a magisterial, state‐
of‐the‐art synthesis of art history.
1 A Companion to Contemporary Art since 1945
edited by Amelia Jones
2 A Companion to Medieval Art
edited by Conrad Rudolph
3 A Companion to Asian Art and Architecture
edited by Rebecca M. Brown and Deborah S. Hutton
4 A Companion to Renaissance and Baroque Art
edited by Babette Bohn and James M. Saslow
5 A Companion to British Art: 1600 to the Present
edited by Dana Arnold and David Peters Corbett
6 A Companion to Modern African Art
edited by Gitti Salami and Monica Blackmun Visonà
7 A Companion to Chinese Art
edited by Martin J. Powers and Katherine R. Tsiang
8 A Companion to American Art
edited by John Davis, Jennifer A. Greenhill and Jason D. LaFountain
9 A Companion to Digital Art
edited by Christiane Paul
10 A Companion to Public Art
edited by Cher Krause Knight and Harriet F. Senie
A Companion to
Digital Art
Edited by
Christiane Paul
This edition first published 2016
© 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc, except Chapter 9 © Max Bense
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Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data
Names: Paul, Christiane, editor.
Title: A companion to digital art / Edited by Christiane Paul.
Description: Hoboken : John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015039613 (print) | LCCN 2015040809 (ebook) | ISBN 9781118475201 (cloth) |
ISBN 9781118475188 (Adobe PDF) | ISBN 9781118475218 (ePub)
Subjects: LCSH: Computer art.
Classification: LCC N7433.8 .C615 2016 (print) | LCC N7433.8 (ebook) | DDC 776–dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015039613
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover image: Scott Snibbe, Deep Walls, interactive video installation, San Francisco Museum of
Modern Art, 2002. Reproduced by permission of Scott Snibbe.
Set in 10/12pt Galliard by SPi Global, Pondicherry, India
1 2016
Contents
List of Figures viii
Notes on Contributors xi
Acknowledgments xix
Introduction: From Digital to Post‐Digital—Evolutions of an Art Form 1
Christiane Paul
Part I Histories of Digital Art 21
1 The Complex and Multifarious Expressions of Digital Art and
Its Impact on Archives and Humanities 23
Oliver Grau
2 International Networks of Early Digital Arts 46
Darko Fritz
3 Art in the Rear‐View Mirror: The Media‐Archaeological Tradition in Art 69
Erkki Huhtamo
4 Proto‐Media Art: Revisiting Japanese Postwar Avant‐garde Art 111
Machiko Kusahara
5 Generative Art Theory 146
Philip Galanter
6 Digital Art at the Interface of Technology and Feminism 181
Jennifer Way
7 The Hauntology of the Digital Image 203
Charlie Gere
vi ◼ ◼ ◼ contents
8 Participatory Art: Histories and Experiences of Display 226
Rudolf Frieling
Part II Aesthetics of Digital Art 247
9 Small Abstract Aesthetics 249
Max Bense
10 Aesthetics of the Digital 265
Sean Cubitt
11 Computational Aesthetics 281
M. Beatrice Fazi and Matthew Fuller
12 Participatory Platforms and the Emergence of Art 297
Olga Goriunova
13 Interactive Art: Interventions in/to Process 310
Nathaniel Stern
14 The Cultural Work of Public Interactives 330
Anne Balsamo
Part III Network Cultures: The Politics of Digital Art 353
15 Shockwaves in the New World Order of Information
and Communication 355
Armin Medosch
16 Critical Intelligence in Art and Digital Media 384
Konrad Becker
17 The Silver Age of Social Media: Nettime.org and the Avant‐Garde
of the ’90s 400
McKenzie Wark
18 Art in the Corporatized Sphere: The Impact of Commercial
Social Media on Online Artistic Practice 413
Kyle Chayka
19 Artistic Visualization 426
Lev Manovich
20 Critical Play: The Productive Paradox 445
Mary Flanagan
contents ◼ ◼ ◼ vii
Part IV Digital Art and the Institution 461
21 Contemporary Art and New Media: Digital Divide or
Hybrid Discourse? 463
Edward A. Shanken
22 One of Us!: On the Coupling of New Media Art and Art Institutions 482
Richard Rinehart
23 The Digital Arts In and Out of the Institution—Where to Now? 494
Sarah Cook with Aneta Krzemień Barkley
24 The Nuts and Bolts of Handling Digital Art 516
Ben Fino‐Radin
25 Trusting Amateurs with Our Future 537
Jon Ippolito
26 Enabling the Future, or How to Survive FOREVER 553
Annet Dekker
27 Exhibition Histories and Futures: The Importance of Participation
and Audiences 575
Beryl Graham
Index 597
List of Figures
1.1 Archive of Digital Art (ADA). Screenshot. 32
1.2 Göttweig Print Collection Online. Screenshot. 34
2.1 Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) at the annual
meeting of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers (IEEE), March 20–24, 1967, Coliseum and
Hilton Hotel, New York. Artists Tom Gormley and Hans
Haacke are talking to an engineer. 49
2.2 Jonathan Benthall from the Computer Arts Society, London,
at the symposium at tendencies 4 “Computers and Visual Research,”
RANS Moša Pijade, Zagreb, 1969. 57
3.1 Toshio Iwai portrait. 89
3.2 Toshio Iwai, Piano – As Image Media, 1995, installation shot. 91
3.3 Paul DeMarinis, Firebirds, 2004, installation shot. 97
4.1 Katsuhiro Yamaguchi, Vitrine Blueplanet, 1955. 119
4.2 Atsuko Tanaka, Work (Bell), 1955/2005. 123
5.1 Order/disorder relationships for information complexity and
effective complexity. 158
5.2 Systems used in generative art identified by effective complexity. 158
5.3 77,000‐year‐old generative art etched in red ocher. 159
5.4 Michael Noll, Gaussian Quadratic, 1963. 161
6.1 Joan Truckenbrod, Oblique Wave, 1979. 188
6.2 Ericka Beckman, Hiatus, 1999. 16 mm film. Screenshot. 190
6.3 subRosa, SmartMom sensate dress, 1999. 195
7.1 Leon Harmon and Ken Knowlton, Studies in Perception No. 1, 1966. 207
7.2 Leon Harmon and Ken Knowlton, Telephone, 1967. 211
8.1 Lynn Hershman Leeson: The Agent Ruby Files, SFMOMA (2013). 234
8.2 Julia Scher, Predictive Engineering, 1993. SFMOMA
installation view. Multi‐channel video installation with sound,
dimensions variable. 239
