Digital Art and Meaning: Reading Kinetic Poetry, Text Machines, Mapping Art, and Interactive Installations

Critical Writing
Publication Type: 
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Year: 
2011
ISBN: 
9780816667383
Pages: 
xiii, 291
License: 
All Rights reserved
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Abstract (in English): 

From the publisher: How to interpret and critique digital arts, in theory and in practice Digital Art and Meaning offers close readings of varied examples from genres of digital art, including kinetic concrete poetry, computer-generated text, interactive installation, mapping art, and information sculpture. Roberto Simanowski combines these illuminating explanations with a theoretical discussion employing art philosophy and history to achieve a deeper understanding of each example of digital art and of the genre as a whole.

(Source: University of Minnesota Press catalog description)

Pull Quotes: 

It is important not to reduce any specific example of digital art to the status of typical representative of some aspect of digital media or of some genre of digital art. It is time to pay attention to the specificities of particular works.

...my agenda proceeds with a threefold rejection of the embrace: the embrace of code as such at the expense of its actual materialization, the embrace of the body's action at the expense of its cognitive reflection, and the embrace of the pure presence of the artwork at the expense of any examination of its semiotic meaning. What this book does embrace, however, is the methodology of close reading while rejecting its more traditional implications.

If the text continues to be important as a linguistic phenomenon, then we may speak of digital literature. If the text becomes primarily a visual object of interaction, then we are dealing with digital art.

This book is driven by the belief that the first purpose that a digital work serves is to produce an act of creative expression; it is not a mere product of technology or chance.

Images: 
Cover of Roberto Simanowski's Digital Art and Meaning

Critical writing that references this:

Title Author Publisher Year
A Literatura Cibernética 2 Pedro Barbosa Edições Árvore 1977
Arte Digital: Pixel, Algoritmo, Código, Programação e Dados Álvaro Seiça idearte 2011
Call and response: Towards a digital dramaturgy Barbara Bridger, J. R. Carpenter Journal of Writing in Creative Practice 2014
Collecting digital literature in Europe J. R. Carpenter Jacket2 2011
Digital Literature: Theoretical and Aesthetic Reflections Luciana Gattass 2011
Digital Poesi. Æstetisk Analyse og det Mediales Rolle i Kunstværkers Kommunikation Mette-Marie Zacher Sørensen 2013
Electronic Literature Scott Rettberg Polity 2018
Further, Reading Scott Rettberg Vagant 2011
Interview with Michael J. Maguire Michael J. Maguire 2014
Narrative Affect in William Gillespie's Keyhole Factory and Morpheus: Biblionaut, or, Post-Digital Fiction for the Programming Era Eric Dean Rasmussen CounterText 2016
Remediating the Social introduction Simon Biggs 2012
Revealing Noise: The Conspiracy of Presence in Alternate Reality Aesthetics Adam Pilkey
Review of Digital Art and Meaning: Reading Kinetic Poetry, Text Machines, Mapping Art, and Interactive Installations, by Chris Funkhouser Chris Funkhouser Rain Taxi 2012
The Computational Sublime in Nick Montfort's ‘Round’ and ‘All the Names of God’ Mario Aquilina CounterText 2015
TRANS.MISSION [A.DIALOGUE]: Locating Narrative Resonance in Transatlantic Communications Networks J. R. Carpenter 2012
Translation, transmutation, transmediation and transmission in TRANSMIISSION [A DIALOGUE] J. R. Carpenter Laboratorie NT2 2014
Unprinted Anne Sofia Karhio, Walt Hunter Kelly Writers House, Jacket2 2015
Writing Coastlines: Locating Narrative Resonance in Transatlantic Communications Networks J. R. Carpenter 2015

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