Book (collection)

Database Aesthetics examines the database as cultural and aesthetic form, explaining how artists have participated in network culture by creating data art. The essays in this collection look at how an aesthetic emerges when artists use the vast amounts of available information as their medium. Here, the ways information is ordered and organized become artistic choices, and artists have an essential role in influencing and critiquing the digitization of daily life.

Contributors: Sharon Daniel, U of California, Santa Cruz; Steve Deitz, Carleton College; Lynn Hershman Leeson, U of California, Davis; George Legrady, U of California, Santa Barbara; Eduardo Kac, School of the Art Institute of Chicago; Norman Klein, California Institute of the Arts; John Klima; Lev Manovich, U of California, San Diego; Robert F. Nideffer, U of California, Irvine; Nancy Paterson, Ontario College of Art and Design; Christiane Paul, School of Visual Arts in New York; Marko Peljhan, U of California, Santa Barbara; Warren Sack, U of California, Santa Cruz; Bill Seaman, Rhode Island School of Design; Grahame Weinbren, School of Visual Arts, New York. 

(Source: University of Minnesota Press catalogue)

I de senere år har man med fremvæksten af nye digitale medier og redskaber været vidne til en fremvækst af teoretiske betragtninger over de nye digitale fænomener: om deres forhold til filosofi, æstetik og design og om deres samspil med samfundet, kulturen og individet. Denne antologi søger at give et overblik over nogle af de mange synspunkter og teorier, der cirkulerer i den aktuelle debat mellem forskere inden for digital æstetik og design. Med baggrund i disse diskussioner afmærker bogen ikke blot debattens vigtigste temaer, men giver også konkrete bud på, hvordan de nye digitale fænomener kan analyseres. Bidragyderne er alle primært yngre forskere, der både nationalt og internationalt har været med til at etablere forskningen inden for digital æstetik og design: Gert Balling, Rasmus Blok, Ida Engholm, Jesper Juul, Anker Helms Jørgensen, Anders Fagerjord, Gonzala Frasca, Lisbeth Klastrup, Raine Koskimaa, Lars Qvortrup, Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen, Mette Sandbye, Frank Schaap, Lisbeth Thorlacius.

In J. Fibiger, G. Lütken & N. Mølgaar (eds) Litteraturens tilgange - metodiske angrebsvinkler (p 407-423). Copenhagen: Akademika.

Computers were once thought of as number-crunching machines; but for most of us it is their ability to create worlds and process words that have made them into a nearly indispensable part of life. As Jacques Leslie puts it, if computers are everywhere, it is because they have grown into "poetry machines." The term "cyberspace" captures the growing sense that beyond - or perhaps on - the computer screen lies a "New Frontier" both enticing and forbidding, a frontier awaiting exploration, promising discovery, threatening humanistic values, hatching new genres of discourse, and alerting our relation to the written word. The purpose of this book is to explore the concepts of text and the forms of textuality currently emerging from the creative chaos of electronic technologies. The essays gathered here address several needs in cybertext criticism: they engage in a critical, though not hostile, dialogue with the claims of the first generation developers and theorists; they search for a middle ground between a narrowly technical description of the works and general considerations about the medium; they outline a poetics tailor-made for electronic textuality, and they relate cybertexts to the major human, aesthetic and intellectual concerns of contemporary culture. Within the general territory of electronic textuality, they focus on three areas.

Introduction / Marie-Laure Ryan --
Pt.1. Cybertext theory. Aporia and epiphany in Doom and The Speaking Clock: the temporality of ergodic art / Espen Aarseth. Theorizing virtual reality: Baudrillard and Derrida / Mark Poster. Virtual topographies: smooth and striated cyberspace / Mark Nunes. Cyberspace, virtuality, and the text / Marie-Laure Ryan --
Pt.2. Cyberspace identity. Women writers and the restive text: feminism, experimental writing, and hypertext / Barbara Page. "The souls of cyber-folk": performativity, virtual embodiment, and racial histories / Thomas Fisher. The disturbing liveliness of machines: rethinking the body in hypertext theory and fiction / Christopher J. Keep. Postorganic performance: the appearance of theater in virtual spaces / Matthew Causey --
Pt.3. Cybertext criticism as writing experiment. Artificial life and literary culture / N. Katherine Hayles. Virtual termites: a hypotextual technomutant explo(it)ration of William Gibson and the electronic beyond(s) / Lance Olsen. Myths of the universal library: from Alexandria to the Postmodern Age.

While the ideas underlying hypertext have been around for a long time, it is only comparatively recently that the availability of powerful desktop microcomputers has enabled hypertext systems to become commercially viable tools. While developments in hypertext in recent years have been very much technology-oriented, interest is now centring on the effects of the technology from a human psychological perspective.

Written by leading figures in the field the authors look at the psychological considerations such as memory, education and navigation underlying the design of hypertext systems. Addressing itself to the full range of psychological issues, with direct reference to practical applications, this book places the technology within the domain of human activities and thereby provides a broader perspective on the role and value of emerging information systems.

Readership: Researchers, postgraduates and senior-level undergraduates in psychology and cognitive science. Also of interest to students and researchers in information science, computer science, ergonomics, software design, educational technology and human factors.

Contents

Chapter 1: Why Psychology? Cliff McKnight, Andrew Dillon and John RichardsonChapter 2: An Alternative Rhetoric for HypertextPeter WhalleyChapter 3: The Textbook of the FutureDonald J. Cunningham, Thomas M. Duffy and Randy A. KnuthChapter 4: Learning with Hypertext: Problems, Principles and ProspectsNick HammondChapter 5: Enhancing the Usability of Text Through Computer Delivery and Formative Evaluation: the SuperBook ProjectThomas Landauer, Dennis Egan, Joel Remde, Michael Lesk, Carol Lochbaum and Daniel KetchumChapter 6: To Jump or Not to Jump : Strategy Selection While Reading Electronic TextsPatricia WrightChapter 7: Effects Of Semantically Structured Hypertext Knowledge Bases on Users' Knowledge StructuresDavid H. JonassenChapter 8: Space -- the Final Chapter or Why Physical Representations are not Semantic IntentionsAndrew Dillon, Cliff McKnight and John Richardson

(Source: Publisher's catalogue copy)