Review

Simanowski, while offering insightful practical observations on artworks, also builds larger historical frameworks; for instance, the chapter on Concrete Poetry dwells on its relationship to the baroque.

In various ways, Roberto Simanowski precisely uses his pro-critical stance to assemble a rejection of the common notions of “embrace” that occur as media and art are blended, establishing a polemic that privileges a “methodology” of close reading that resists its more imposing or absolutist implications.

Unlike many studies from the "first-wave" of digital criticism of the mid- to late-nineties, which tended to focus on the capabilities of the stand-alone computer (see, for example, Michael Heim's "Erotic Ontology of Cyberspace," Lev Manovich's Language of New Media, Janet H. Murray's Hamlet on the Holodeck, Turkle's Life on the Screen), this work takes into special consideration digital art that exists within and as a part of complexly configured spaces of performance and expression and thus makes a welcome addition to the exciting work being done by scholars such Rita Raley ("Writing 3.D") and Mark B.N. Hansen (New Philosophy for New Media); scholar-practitioners, such as Noah Wardrip-Fruin (Expressive Processing), and Mark Marino ("L.A. Flood," Critical Code Studies), among the many other artists and apostles of three-dimensional space.