Bøger i Issues in Cultural Theory serien

As technology has burgeoned in recent years, so have ghosts in the machine, or so the 29 artists featured here suggest. All use existing gadgets--photography, film, video, radio, Internet, and digital media--to explore age-old questions about parallel worlds and the paranormal. Photography has a long history with this topic--from the infamous Cottingham fairy photographs through studio spiritualist images to more recent grainy snapshots of Sasquatch and unexplained flying objects, it is often called upon by viewers to testify, and used by artists to move between science, fantasy and art. In days of millenial angst, ever-greater leaps of science, and ever-decreasing wilderness, other worlds seem as possible, probable, alluring, and potentially within reach of new technologies as they did in the days of fairies. Among the artists whose observations are recorded here are Jeremy Blake, Gregory Crewdson and Mariko Mori.

Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? Few expressions in the culture of human thought have the iconic stature, and emotive power, that the word "evolution" entails. Though commonly relegated to modern-day science, the concept of evolution is ingrained in representations of life and nature in the visual arts, and artists and scientists have much to share on the meaning of human origin, human existence and human fate. The present volume documents an online symposium, Visual Culture and Evolution, in which a distinguished panel of artists, curators, scientists, historians, educators, media theorists and critics participated in a lively, informative conversation on the interface of art and science. Opening interviews by bio-artist Eduardo Kac and Pulitzer Prize-winning biologist E.O. Wilson set the stage for an engaging debate on this perennial topic.

Command Z presents works by North American artists who have been pioneers in the area of art and technology. Pieces by Paul DeMarinis, Nina Katchadourian, Ingrid Bachmann, and team Emile Morin and Jocelyn Robert feature a wide range of technological formats including kinetics, computer programming and Morse code.