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Publisher Phaidon says: This is the first book to explore mechanics, light, graphics, robotics, networks, virtual reality and the possibilities afforded by the web from an international perspective. It outlines the importance of figures previously neglected by art history, including engineers, technicians, and collaborators. Included are works by over 150 artists, both familiar - Jenny Holzer, Bruce Nauman, James Turrell, Mario Merz - as well as emerging and recent pioneers, such as Robert Lazzarini, Blast Theory, Granular Synthesis, Simon Penny, Marcel.li Antunez Roca, Mikami Seiko, and Jonah Bruckner-Cohen. The book is divided into seven thematic sections arranged chronologically. Art and Electronic Media is a lucid, accessible, and authoritative evaluation of continually developing media. As part of the THEMES AND MOVEMENTS series, Art and Electronic Media is intended for uninitiated readers and scholars alike. They include a complete overview of each theme or movement, situating individual artists' work in the context of modern art. Each book contains documents including artists' statements; interviews; manifestos; project notes; reviews and articles by key critics; and parallel texts from other cultural, philosophical, and literary sources. Also featured are approximately 250 plates, including rarely-published installation shots and preliminary drawings. Finally, each book includes biographies of all the artists and authors involved, plus a comprehensive bibliography.
Art and Electronic Media has received ecstatic endorsement by media art stars: • "It is a superb work of scholarship, marked by clarity, subtlety, and comprehensive vision. Art and Electronic Media does us all a great service. More than any other publication that I know of, it will bring our field of practice into the mainstream of art." - Roy Ascott
I'm not quite as enthusiastic as they are but that doesn't mean that i don't find the book remarkable under a series of aspects. First one is that, yes, the book might -maybe but not on its own- bring media art in the radar of contemporary art. Its decades of existence have not quite convinced the contemporary art world to fully embrace media art and a publication by Phaedon, a well-know producer of lavish objects that you will abandon on your coffee table for your guests to admire, could trigger the interest of major curators and art institutions. Besides, some artworks that have traveled the art shows around the globe are discussed in the book, establishing thus bridges between media art and the rest of the art world. One of them, Atsuko Tanaka's Electric Dress, even appears on the back cover of the book.
To me the biggest asset of the book is that it brings back to our attention a history of media art that has been forgotten or even has never been told in many media art schools (and i'd extend the criticism to interaction design schools.) It looks sometimes as if nothing has been achieved in the '60s, '70s, '80s or even '90s. I've seen so many involuntary 'copies' of Dan Graham's 1974 Present Continuous Past(s) i've stopped counting. Art and Electronic Media should be compulsory reading for students interested in art and technology.
The last section of the book is superb. It compiles essays by critics and artists. After having spent hours going through the hundreds of art pieces which are illustrated and clearly explained in the "Works" section of the book, i was glad to be able to read or re-read texts such as Jasia Reichardt's introduction to the exhibition Cybernetic Serendipity, Natalie Bookchin and Alexei Shulgin's Introduction to net.art, Michael Rees' Rapid Prototyping and Art, Lev Manovich's On Totalitarian Interactivity, Stelarc's The Body is Obsolete, subROSA's Tactical Cyberfeminism: An Art and Technology of Social Relations, etc. As i suggested above, i have a few critical remarks. One of them is the incredibly high proportion of artworks from the USA and Europe. There's a couple of Japanese and Australian ones mentioned here and there but apart from Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, there's almost no mention of media artists from Latin America. If you're curious about the dynamism of media art in Latin America, i'd recommend the book that was published two years ago to accompany the exhibition Emergentes at LABoral in Gijón, Spain (cf Emergentes - 10 projects by Latin American artists, part 1 and part 2).
My main deception is that the book is a bit stiff. It shows only a slice of the world i discovered with enthusiasm almost 6 years ago. I'm not sure i'd have started we-make-money-not-art and dedicated it to media art (at some point, some of you will remember, the blog was covering only new media art) if i had known about it only through this book. It's a great, useful and well-researched book but it doesn't quite convey the fantastic dynamism of media art. For example, activism and hacktivism are given a fairly modest space. Critical Art Ensemble (plus Beatriz Da Costa and Shyh-shiun Shyu)'s Free Range Grain finds itself printed side by side to the Robotic Chair by Max Dean, Rafaelo D'Andrea and Matt Donovan. Maybe it's because the artworks defile in the book in an almost chronological order. That's a choice but maybe it doesn't give rise to the most thought-provoking associations.
Photo on the homepage: Almacén de Corazonadas by Rafael Lozano Hemmer. |
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Publisher Princeton Architectural Press says: Over the last few decades, a rich and increasingly diverse practice has emerged in the art world that invites the public to touch, enter, and experience the work, whether it is in a gallery, on city streets, or in the landscape. Like architecture, many of these temporary artworks aspire to alter viewers' experience of the environment. An installation is usually the end product for an artist, but for architects it can also be a preliminary step in an ongoing design process. Like paper projects designed in the absence of "real" architecture, installations offer architects another way to engage in issues critical to their practice. Direct experimentation with architecture's material and social dimensions engages the public around issues in the built environment that concern them and expands the ways that architecture can participate in and impact people's everyday lives. The first survey of its kind,Installations by Architects features fifty of the most significant projects from the last twenty-five years by today's most exciting architects (...) Projects are grouped in critical areas of discussion under the themes of tectonics, body, nature, memory, and public space. Each project is supplemented by interviews with the project architects and the discussions of critics and theorists situated within a larger intellectual context.
You probably saw many examples of architects installations if you attended the latest Biennale of Architecture in Venice. They provide new platforms for innovative perspectives, ideas and experiments in the field of architecture. Some of these installations will remain at the experimental stage, others might later be implemented into built work. Installations, especially when temporary, enable architects to work outside the constraints dictated by clients and city regulations. The main purpose of installations is not necessarily to be useful but to generate conversations, to invite viewers to reflect on the role and essence of architecture. Installations are also vehicles for teaching and research as the Bauhaus was one of the first schools to demonstrate. Finally, young studios can find in installations a fantastic opportunity to advertise their talent.
I expected Installations by Architects: Experiments in Building and Design to be one of those fancy volumes you open to find big, glossy photos and little text to comment on them. I was expecting a beautiful book that lingers on the coffee table for your guests to admire. There are loads of images in the book indeed but there are even more essays by critics, by theorists and by the authors (Bonnemaison is an associate professor of architecture at Dalhousie University and Ronit Eisenbach is an associate professor of architecture at the University of Maryland). Architects get to give their own view as well. The book is divided into five chapters that explore a different area of discussion. Each of them is illustrated by 8 to 10 architectural installations (this post picks up one of them for each chapter): 1. Tectonics: by exploring new modes of assembly and materials, this section reminds us that architecture doesn't stop at the facade.
Mette Ramsgard Thomse's Vivisection is a spatial experiment that explores how a techtonic surface can embed a capacity for sensing and actuation. The silk and steel fabric is conductive thereby allowing the architects to pass electronic signals through it. By using antenna based sensor chips the fabric "feels" the presence of the audience. The sensors inform a network of distributed micro-computers, that in turn control the fans, inflating and deflating internal bladders in the structure. 2. Body examines the relationship between human body, spatial experience and design.
Thom Faulders covered with pink Memory Foam (as used in the earplugs that expand to fill the cavity of the ear) the floor of his Mute Room, a temporary listening environment for experimental electronic music. The foam's surface operates as a sound baffle to enhance acoustical clarity. Similar to the way that musical notes 'decay' in the air before dissipating, this surface has a transitory quality - impressions linger until fully erased by the slowly acting foam. 3. Nature might help shape a more responsible attitude towards nature.
The Prairie Ladder was commissioned by the Connemara Conservancy (Texas) to preserve, protect, and honor the prairie landscape. The ladder introduces a veritcal axis, making a departure from the natural horizontal axis of the prairie. The ladder also proclaims human defiance of the horizontal limitations of the earth. 4. Memory engages with the collective memory and its relationship with space.
Since 1960, Detroit has lost half of its population and demolished over 200,000 housing units. Kyong Park's 24620: The Fugitive House (2001-), is an abandoned house from Detroit that has been dismantled and reconstructed in several European cities. 24620 is looking for a new home in a 'kinder and gentler" city than Detroit. Europe, however, is becoming just as neo-liberal and neo-con as in the USA With its pieces misplaced and their incisions permanent, the house, when re-assembled, replicates the condition of a dysfunctional city in the violence of dismembered spaces. Wherever it may go, the house takes the ideals and failures of modernism with it, creating discourses on the cultural state and destiny of each community. 5. Public Space offers citizens new ways to inhabit or relate to the city.
Sky Ear, by Haque Design + Research, contains miniature sensor circuits that respond to electromagnetic fields, particularly those of mobile phones. When activated, the sensor circuits in the clouds co-ordinate to cause ultra-bright coloured LEDs to illuminate thousand glowing helium balloons. Related book reviews: Bright: Architectural Illumination and Light Installations, Spacecraft Fleeting Architecture and Hideouts and Ground-up City. Play as a Design Tool. Image on the homepage: land(e)scape (Savonlinna, Finlandia - 1999) by Marco Casagrande and Sami Rintala. |
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Publisher Birkhäuser says: In "Unfolded--Paper in Design, Art, Architecture and Industry" paper conquers the third dimension and demonstrates the undreamed-of possibilities it holds today for lightweight construction, product design, fashion and art. From "Paper", the collection of bags by Stefan Diez, to Konstantin Grcic's paper models and the scented paper garments of Issey Miyake, this book presents paper as a high-quality contemporary and ecological material. An enormous selection of projects, the lavish design and numerous illustrations provide designers with invaluable inspiration for their work. The content core of the book is a comprehensive list of state-of-the-art paper products and innovative paper technologies, supporting designers in their everyday work with detailed information on the "high-tech" material paper. From Japanese washi paper and paper foam, to ceramic paper and carbon fiber paper, "Unfolded" presents the latest in research and development, as well as the most important methods and technologies in handcrafts and industry.
Over the past few years, designers, engineers, artists and even architects have been hard at work proving that paper is much more than wrapping for Flemish potato chips. The first part of the book shows the many wonders of contemporary paper. The humble material can turned into a dramatic temporary installation in an art gallery but it can also be used to build a school, delicately cut it evokes a fairy-tale world, combined with electronics it's a breathing shirt. Give paper to Japanese engineers and they'll plan an origami paper plane that can return to Earth from space. Paper can be as rough or as aerial as artists and engineers need it.
The second part of the book gets far more techy and rigorous. It reveals the materials, manufacturing processes and technologies that allow for so many 3D applications. Paper can be tear-proof, transparent, breathable, weatherproof or even fire-resistant. Antibacterial paper integrate silver ions to defeat bacteria, funghi, salmonella and microbes. In Japan, air-purifying (or photo-catalyst) paper is used in sliding doors, lamps and wallpapers to purify the air in rooms that contain toxic substances. Ceramic paper does indeed break but it can also be folded and processed like paper.
In the future paper will become electrically conductive, it will be printed with chips and then folded. Pulp-based computing, for example, combines craft and computer technology and embeds electronic materials in paper. Paper might even be made of algae, helping thus preserve forest resources. What they do with paper: In 2001, studio Cottrell & Vermeulen, with Buro Happold, designed Europe's first permanent cardboard structure at Westborough Primary School in Westcliff-on-Sea, in Britain. Tubes of recycled cardboard form structural columns. Walls and roof are made from load bearing and insulating timber edged cardboard panels (via.)
55 hours were requited to create a fox stole made of 2500 paper balls that can be thrown like confetti at parties
Thomas Demand consumes a lot of paper. He is one of my favourite artists. He cuts and folds stacks of paper in order to create replicas of places which he turns into photographs. I saw his most intriguing work a year or two ago at Fundacion Telefonica in Madrid. Yellowcake exposed the inside of the the Ambassy of Niger in Rome. An burglary which took place there in 2001 saw the disappearance of some out-of-date letterhead and official seals. The unassuming event turned out to be instrumental to US intervention in Iraq. In his 2003 State of the Union Address, President Bush explained that the British government had learned that Saddam Hussein had been looking for significant quantities of Uranium (a chemical which, when enriched, may be used to make nuclear weapons) in Africa. The evidence for this accusation was a paper trail purportedly stolen from the Embassy of the Republic of Niger, in Rome. The documents were an apparent contract of sale for hundreds of tons of a concentrated form of uranium by Niger to the Iraqi authorities. As the events unraveled, it became clear that the evidence was little more than forgery. Because no one had gained access to Niger's Embassy in Rome, no photographic documentation has ever illustrated these events as they came to light. For his photo series, Demand managed to the embassy and conversed with its staff. He then built on his own memory to re-create the space.
The radio designed by Marine Rouit is called OTO. It is made of a moulded paper membrane whose surface acts as both a resonator and an interface to control the volume and the tuner.
From Here to Then and Back Again by Tommy Stockel
Zoe Bradley's spectacular window installations:
Bonus! Once unfolded, the paper cover of the book becomes a poster that celebrates paper creativity. Demonstration in the video below, with a peak inside the volume. Courtesy of the designers at Pixelgarten: Related book reviews: Three D: Graphic Spaces and Tactile - High Touch Visuals. Related stories: Mudam (part 2): RRRIPP!! Paper Fashion, Collapsible Cardboard Shelters Using Radio Devices for Homeless Persons, Trash this city, COCOSOCOASOCO, From our living room to yours, Origami bus pattern, etc.
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Publisher Princeton Architectural Press says: Architectural pioneers such as Frank Gehry and Greg Lynn introduced the world to the extreme forms made possible by digital fabrication. It is now possible to transfer designs made on a computer to computer-controlled machinery that creates actual building components. This "file to factory" process not only enables architects to realize projects featuring complex or double-curved geometries, but also liberates architects from a dependence on off-the-shelf building components, enabling projects of previously unimaginable complexity. Digital Fabrications (...) celebrates the design ingenuity made possible by digital fabrication techniques. Author Lisa Iwamoto explores the methods architects use to calibrate digital designs with physical forms. The book is organized according to five types of digital fabrication techniques: tessellating, sectioning, folding, contouring, and forming. Projects are shown both in their finished forms and in working drawings, templates, and prototypes, allowing the reader to watch the process of each fantastic construction unfold. Digital Fabrications presents projects designed and built by emerging practices that pioneer techniques and experiment with fabrication processes on a small scale with a do-it-yourself attitude. Views inside the book:
If i had to recommend you one book about the use of digital tools in architecture, it would be this one. Written by an expert who is also a successful practitioner (Lisa Iwamoto, a leader in the field of digital fabrications, is associate professor of architecture at UC Berkeley and a principal of IwamotoScott Architecture), Digital Fabrications is pleasantly approachable. First, there's the visual appeal of the publication. It is a light, compact book shock full of fabulous pictures and concise yet precise descriptions of the many projects covered. The most engaging characteristic of the volume however is its content. The author has chosen to highlight the innovative and DIY attitude that reigns among designers and architects who use digital technologies. Many of the projects are detailed and made comprehensible with graphics and pictures making it a great inspiration for other architects as well as for students. In fact, students projects are also featured in the book. Each type of digital fabrication -sectioning, tessellating (see the example on the cover of the book: Technicolor Bloom by Brennan Buck), folding, contouring and forming- is explained clearly and then illustrated through descriptions of pioneering case studies, driving you smoothly from the working method adopted by the architects to the final result of their experiments. Be warned that the focus is blatantly on US architects (with a preference for the East Coast.) Thom Faulders's screen façade for Airspace Tokyo is an example of tessellating technique. Four different overlapping organic patterns are made of laser-cut aluminium and plastic composite.
Folding technique: 3,500 molecules recycled cardboard molecules arranged in an interpretation of Cartesian space by Chris Bosse and the students at the University of Technology in Sydney.
And now for the forming technique, Andrew Kudless and Matsys' P_Wall investigates the self-organization of both plaster and elastic fabric, to produce evocative visual and acoustic effects.
Related stories: C.STEM 2008: Breeding Objects - Computational Design, from Digital Fabrication to Mass-Customization, Generator x - Beyond the Screen, Encoded art works. Bonus! Greg Lynn talks about the mathematical roots of architecture -- and how calculus and digital tools allow modern designers to move beyond the traditional building forms. Image on the homepage: Chris Bosse, Entry Paradise Pavilion, 2006. |
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Neuland, The future of German graphic design, by TwoPoints.Net (Amazon USA and
Publisher Actar says: German graphic design has undergone a dramatic metamorphosis in recent years. Young professionals and students have been demonstrating heightened technical skills and strong, individualistic styles. The emerging design generation has broken with cultural and geographical boundaries, entering the international arena and competing with cutting edge design icons worldwide. As the scope and depth of this exciting development has been under recognised, Neuland documents the future of German graphic design by presenting the best work of up-and-coming designers and design studios. This book compiles over 400 pages of exciting ideas, never before seen experiments, self initiated projects and commercial work from Germans working and studying at home and abroad, as well as non-Germans working and studying in Germany.
Design studio TwoPoints.Net looked up and down the blogs, magazines and design institutions, asked for recommendations and suggestions, reviewed some 700 portfolios and ended up with a selection of 50 graphic designers and graphic design offices to be featured in the book.
Neuland is not TwoPoints.Net's first adventure in the publishing world. The designers are also behind the irresistible design of Super Holland Design, a book dedicated to contemporary Dutch design. TwoPoints.Net is based in Barcelona, yet neither Super Holland nor Neuland reflect their own independent practice nor do they have a Barcelona feeling. Instead, the books seem to have been designed respectively by Dutch or German designers. Martin Lorenz from TwoPoints.Net throws light upon their strategy: "We work very hard on not having a style. All our inspiration comes from the project itself. In the case of the two books you mentioned, the German and the Dutch culture. This is a very exciting trip for us, starting to get to know the project and its essence, learn from it and then try to do something new or different. This is what is innovation to us. Its not the isolated genius that comes up with the idea that never has been there before. Its the person that is interested in the things that are happening around him and know how to add his bit to culture. With Neuland this trip was especially exciting because we did besides the design as well the edition of the book." Lupi Asensio from TwoPoints.Net explains the differences between SHD and Neuland: "In Super Holland Design we did a grid that we did not respect always cause we know well dutch design as we studied there, and one of the characteristics is they are really lovers of experiments and transgressions of the rules (something we love). In the case of Neuland, the whole grid is DIN size, since is about German design. Is just a small detail that shows how we think in very project considering the content. We never want to put ourselves "over" the content but find the best way how our design can help the content to shine for itself (something specially important when is about design books, so we don't have a competition going on between our work and the work that is portrayed there)."
Because Neuland means 'new territory' in german, various maps locate the schools where the designers featured in the book have studied and where they are based today. It turns out that Berlin is far from being the city that counts most graphic designers. Who would have thought that Darmstadt and Stuttgart were such hotbeds of design creativity? Each of the designers selected get a dozen pages. There's a selection of their portfolio, their contact details but also some images of their studio, the neighbourhood where they work and of an object or landscape they find typically German. In short interviews, the designers share their working process, their aim, their definition of what is 'german', etc. They also get to give their view on the state of contemporary graphic design in the country and their opinion contradicts splendidly the pages that feature their own work. Many of them define German design as being bland, stiff, tame. A duo of designers even declare that there isn't any such thing as German design yet. I'm no expert in graphic design but, based on what i've seen in Neuland, i have to disagree with these stern opinions about contemporary German design. Check out for yourself:
Previous book reviews on graphic design: Three D: Graphic Spaces, Enter Spanish Creativity, Tactile - High Touch Visuals, Super Holland Design, JPG 2: Japan Graphics. |
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Publisher Dutton says: The adventurous, insightful, and often chilling story of a young geographer's road trip through the underworld of U.S. military and CIA "black ops" sites Trevor Paglen is a scholar in geography, an artist, and a provocateur. His research into areas that officially "don't exist" leads him on a globe-trotting adventure into a vast, undemocratic, and uncontrolled black empire--the unmarked spots on a map, where our military conducts its most clandestine operations. Run by an amorphous group of government agencies and private companies, this empire's annual budget is over $40 billion, yet almost no one knows how it works or what it does. Paglen spies on the covert site at Groom Lake, Nevada, taking photos from a mountain top thirty miles away. He visits the widow of Walter Kasza, who, while working construction at Groom Lake, was poisoned by the toxic garbage pits there. The U.S. Air Force defense to his estate's suit? The base does not exist. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case. Whether it's from a hotel room in Vegas, secret prisons in Kabul, buried CIA aircraft in Central American jungles, Washington, D.C., suburbs, or a trailer in Shoshone Indian territory, Paglen's reporting is impassioned, rigorous, relentless--and eye-opening. Blank Spots on the Map is an exposé of a world that, officially, isn't even there.
There's a video of Paglen presenting Blank Spots on the Map for the Authors@Google series. I'd advise you to have a look and get back to me within one hour if you feel like it.
A report by Law Professor Mark Denbeaux examined the information released by the US defence department about the prisoners held at Gantanamo. The very prisoners that Former Vice President Dick Cheney himself had declared were "the worst of the worst". Debeaux' report revealed that 92% of the Guantanamo detainees had not been al-Qaeda fighters. Of those men, 42% had no clear connection to Al-Qaeda and 18% had no connection to either Al-Qaeda or the Taliban. Moreover, only 5% of the Guantanamo detainees were captured by the Americans themselves. 440 of 517 detainees appeared to have been captured by bounty hunters, in return for a $5,000 reward. How did we get there? That one of the issues that this book attempts to discuss. Amateurs of conspiracy theories who understand the title a bit too literally might not swim in happiness after they've opened Blank Spots. Ultimate sacrilege, the book is written by a geographer and there's only one lousy map inside. However, once you've accepted that there's more to geography than maps and that Paglen is a geography professor at UC Berkeley who doesn't venture into speculative territory, you're on the road for a fascinating read.
I must admit that, at first, Blank Spots was very U.S.A., very exotic to me. CIA, fortresses that emerge after a dusty road, high-security military bases, clandestine operations in the desert, etc. Paglen himself could be cast by Hollywood producers for a role as the next Indiana Jones. Except that there's no superhero nor super-villain in the world that Blank Spots uncovers. There is a lot of ultra-normal people, however. People working in mundane-looking offices and embarking planes with the blandest fuselage you can imagine. According to Paglen up to 4 million people work for what Dick Cheney publicly called the 'dark side.' They seem to operate in a world that responds to laws very different from ours, they do anything they can to erase any trace of their actions and even innocent bystanders might have to get to grips with some of its members whether they want it or not. The tableau that Blank Spots draws is deeply distressing. Yet, Blank Spots demonstrates also that the 'black world' is made of human beings who sometimes make gross errors and sometimes disagree with each other. The most important lesson of the book however is that it's amazing what you can uncover with a telescope, a GPS device, a military-band-capable radio scanner and a bunch of maps, some of them partially blank after careful editing. We need people like Paglen to do the digging for us, otherwise what will our own history look like if a substantial portion of it has been 'classified?' See also Bryan Finoki's article on Trevor Paglen for archinect. |
