NEWSgrist: 3rd Anniversary *Book Grist* Spring
2002 - Spring 2003
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NEWSgrist
where spin is art
{bi-weekly news digest}
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Vol.4, no.8 (Apr. 21, 2003)
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*Book Grist*
Fall 2002 - Spring 2003
Archived at:
http://www.newsgrist.net/Splash_Books2003.html
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CONTENTS:
02- Deux poids, deux
mesures, by Kathe Burkhart
03- Invisible Colors, by Chrysanne Stathacos
04- Ecovention, by Sue Spaid
05- Contamination, by Peter Halley/text byTim
Griffin
06- Free as in Freedom, by Sam Williams
07- Dark Fiber, by Geert Lovink
08- Virtuous War, By James Der Derian
09- Before and After the I-Bomb, by Tom Sherman
10- The Shape of Ancient Thought, by Thomas McEvilley
11- Virtual Art, by Oliver Grau
12- Art-Rite, ed. by Walter Robinson, Edit DeAk,
Joshua Cohen
13- Artfan, by Jacqueline Riva and Geoff Lowe
14- Tomorrow Now, by Bruce Sterling
15- Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, by
Manuel DeLanda
16- Autopilot, by
Carsten Nicolai
17- Jarhead, by Anthony Swofford
18- Secrets, by Daniel Ellsberg
19- The New Media Reader, ed. by N. Wardrip-Fruin +
N. Montfort
20- I´m So Happy I Could
Die, by Pia Dehne
01
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Con Art
by Helen and Pier Giorgio Varola
Exhibition catalogue
Site Gallery, Sheffield (UK); 2002
ISBN: 189992695X
72 pages, soft-cover
£12.99
search title at Cornerhouse Publications (UK):
http://www.cornerhouse.org/publications/default.htm
deception, demonstrating the ways in which art and magic
share a similar reliance on the willing participation of
the
viewer in an act which they know to be an illusion. Amidst
mysterious levitations, smoke-and-mirror vanishings, and
close-up chicanery emerges the notion of art as a kind of
perceptual sleight of hand which sets in motion a willful
play of
confidences between viewer and spectacle.
It includes documentation of newly commissioned and
existing
work from Jonathan Allen, Anna & Bernhard Blume, Sarah
Charlesworth, Christian Jankowski , Kyprianou and
Hollington,
Ingeborg Lüscher, Simon
Patterson, Aura Satz, Allessandra
Spranzi, Keith Tyson and Mark Wallinger and essays by Vanni
Bossi, Edwin A Dawes, Andrew Hubbard, Olu Oguibe, Raffaele
de Ritis, Jeff Sheridan and curator Helen Varola.
"Con Art" is published on the occasion of an
exhibition curated
by Helen and Pier Giorgio Varola at the Site Gallery,
Sheffield,
England.
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02
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Deux poids, deux mesures (The
Double Standard)
by Kathe Burkhart
200 pages (4 janvier 2002)
Hachette Littérature
ISBN : 2012355935
http://www.amazon.fr/exec/obidos/ASIN/2012355935/qid%3D1021420282/402-6743177-9592922
Reviewed by Christine Ferniot :
Bridget Jones Diary, junkie
version: Ruth Less, c'est un peu
Bridget Jones en version
junkie. Prête à pleurnicher pour un
garçon qui la regarde
gentiment et à se défoncer pour qu'il
reste toute la nuit. A 15 ans,
Ruth est une ado trop en avance
sur son âge, glissant de bras
en bras pour une dose de drogue
gratuite, passant de nuits
agitées en journées moroses au
lycée. A 30 ans, à peine plus
mûre, elle est devenue artiste, a
quitté son bled de Virginie
pour Manhattan, mais continue de
tomber amoureuse de types aux
bras truffés de piqûres diverses.
En mettant alternativement en
scène les journaux de Ruth à ces
deux périodes de sa vie,
l'auteur réussit un montage qui évite les
flash-back et plonge le
lecteur dans les années 1965 et 1980 par
l'entremise d'une fille
perpétuellement égarée. La drogue, le sexe,
mais aussi l'envie de grandir
et d'en sortir, sont les leitmotivs de
ces deux voix complémentaires.
Ruth, la provinciale romantique,
se noie dans les mauvais trips
en croyant aimer plus vite, partir
plus vite. Ruth, la
trentenaire, cherche toujours à prouver qu'elle
est capable de rencontrer le
grand amour pour se ranger des
voitures. Entre humour et
désespoir, réalisme sordide et rêveries
de midinette, Deux Poids deux
mesures est le constat d'une
Amérique cruelle établi par
une héroïne compulsive appelant à
l'aide : « Au secours ! Je n'ai
pas d'argent. Je suis prise dans une
distorsion temporelle
émotionnelle ! Mes cheveux tombent ! Et
j'écoute la musique de Dionne
Warwick ! »
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03
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Invisible Colors
by Chrysanne Stathacos
at Printed Matter, Inc.
Reception, June 4, 2002, 5 to 7 PM
Chrysanne Stathacos' new book Invisible Colors. The reception
will take place on Thursday, June 4th, from 5 to 7 PM at
Printed
Matter, Inc., located at 535 West 22nd Street, between
10th and
11th Avenues.
Invisible Colors is the first book published by Nature
Morte
Books, the publishing venture of Nature Morte New Delhi,
India,
and the brainchild of artist gallerist Peter Nagy.
The book presents 40 full-page color photographic
portraits by
Chrysanne Stathacos of Sadhus by the Ganges, Tibetan
refugees in
Dharamsala, Krishna devotees from Vrindavan, Shinto
dancers
from Japan, Sikhs from Long Island, and so on. All
of the
photographs are taken with an "aura camera," a
biofeedback
invention used at psychic fairs to record the aura of the
sitter. The
book is a result of three years of travel, photographing
in bead
stalls in Rishikesh, temples in Kyoto, and wherever else
the artist
was able to set up the awkward apparatus, she traveled
with to
make theseunique portraits. The photographs are organized
by the
color of the sitter's aura, moving through the rainbow
from the
front of the book to the back.
A short essay by Peter Nagy introduces the book. Each copy
comes with a bookmark designed by the artist. The book,
which
was printed in India, retails for $10.
Chrysanne Stathacos is a New York artist. Her garden
installation
"Refuge: a Wish Garden," commissioned for the
exhibition
"Landesgartenschau," is currently on view in
Grossenhain,
Germany, as part of a massive garden exhibition curated by
Heike
Strelow. Her previous book, 1000+ Wishes from The Wish
Machine project will be also available at the launch.
An interactive re-mix for web of Invisible Colors, by
Takuji
of KOGO*Candy Factory, Tokyo, Japan can be found at
http://www.trans.artnet.or.jp/%7Etransart/chrysanne/index.html
[Click on a face to scroll thru images]
For additional information about the event, sales, or
Invisible
Colors please contact David Platzker, Director, Printed
Matter
at (212) 925-0325. http://www.printedmatter.org
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04
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ECOVENTION: Current Art to Transform Ecologies
by Sue Spaid
Contemporary Arts Center; (June 2002)
ISBN: 0917562747
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0917562747/ref=ase_greenmuseumor-20/103-9112213-8387015
brown fields into sites where animals and plants can
thrive.
Contemporary Arts Center curator Sue Spaid, in conjunction
with
ecoartspace curator Amy Lipton, is organizing Ecovention
to explore art
that takes its inspiration from, and makes an impact on,
the
environment. Given the scale of environmental areas
that need
reclamation, selected artists and the CAC will collaborate
with
botanists, biologists, politicians, technicians, architects
and urban
planners to achieve their goals.
projects that have transformed local ecologies.
Ecovention was coined
to describe artist-initiated inventions or interventions
that physically
impact the ecosystem. This landmark exhibition will
truly illuminate
the important role that artists with environmental
concerns are playing
in their communities, as they work with these
environmental experts and
technicians to discover and implement innovative
strategies for solving
today's ecological problems.
June 2002, world governments, concerned citizens, United
Nations
agencies, multilateral financial institutions, and other
major actors
will gather in Johannesburg, South Africa for Rio+10: The
World Summit
on Sustainable Development. Rio +10 will serve as
the ten year
follow-up to the Rio Earth Summit and assess global
progress made since
the historic meeting. Ecovention will present
40 artist-initiated
projects that have transformed local environments.
From this group, six
artists have been selected to produce ecoventions that
will impact
Cincinnati's ecology for years to come.
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05
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Contamination, by Peter Halley
text by Tim Griffin
Alberico Cetti Serbelloni
Editore; 2002
30 x 30 cm; 108 pages
75 illus. (cloth)
bilingual, Italian - English edition
available from Gabrius Editions:
http://www.gabriusprintstore.com/index.asp?vl=mono&idm=34
Should the role of criticism today belong to critic,
artist or
entrepreneur? Where does criticism end and art begin?
Contamina-
tion borrows from tabloids, fashion, and porn to make an
aggressive assault on the limits of the art book
monograph. As a
collaborative production organized by artist Peter
Halley—one of
the pivotal figures of postwar American art—it continues
directly
in the vein of cultural criticism that he first pursued in
the 1980s
and 1990s, when he was inspired by the examples of Michel
Foucault and Robert Smithson to bridge the divide between
artist
and essayist. Images arising out of Halley's artistic
practice
(ranging from his landmark prison canvases to late-night
goings-
on at his magazine, Index) tie together essays by critic
and poet
Tim Griffin on the overlapping fields of technology,
fashion,
design, architecture and art. The titles of the essays
are: She Comes
in Colors: up with plastic; Drink at the Hilton Tokyo: why
suicide
fashion is in; Behind the Curve: new design reruns; The
Shining:
some reflections on contemporary architecture; Every Age
has its
Artist: recreation drug use is back.
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06
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Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free
Software
By Sam Williams
O'Reilly & Associates; (March 2002)
ISBN: 0596002874
Book Review: Happy Hacking, by Julian Dibbell
The Village Voice - Week of June 26 - July 2, 2002
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0226/dibbell.php
A long time ago, in a reality far, far away, a certain
legendary
hippie freedom fighter lobbed a cunning little think bomb
at the
publishing industry of his day. The bomb was a book, a
best selling
how-to manual for the author's fellow revolutionaries,
loaded with
practical tips on copping dope, constructing Molotov
cocktails,
incapacitating riot police, defrauding record-of-the-month
clubs,
and otherwise hastening the downfall of the Pig Empire.
Incend-
iary stuff for sure, and no doubt the 30-plus publishing
houses that
rejected the manuscript (before the author finally published
it
himself) did so well-advised by their own freaked-out legal
departments. But probably nothing advocated in the pages
of the
book rattled publishers as much as the advice framed,
famously, in
its title. In an era when the book business could still
barely admit it
was a business--let alone contemplate the overthrow of its
300-
year-old business model--Abbie Hoffman's Steal This Book
dared
it to do both.
Three decades later, Sam Williams's Free as in Freedom--a
long-
overdue (if somewhat undercooked) profile of legendary
hacker-
freedom fighter Richard Stallman, creator of the
nonproprietary
GNU operating system and founder of the burgeoning
free-soft-
ware movement--poses roughly the same challenge, and in
much
the same way. The differences, however, are both striking
and
illuminating.
In place of Hoffman's tongue-in-cheeky title, for
instance, this
book offers a rather more substantial invention of
Stallman's: the
GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1, seven pages
of
dead serious legalese appended to the text and granting
general
permission to more or less steal the bejesus out of
it--i.e., to "copy
and distribute the Document in any medium, either
commercially
or noncommercially, provided that this License, the
copyright
notices, and the license notice saying this License
applies to the
Document are reproduced in all copies." And while 30
years ago
such terms would have been an even harder sell than
Hoffman's
manuscript was, Williams seems to have had little trouble
convincing O'Reilly & Associates, Inc., a
well-established
computer books publisher, not only to release Free as in
Freedom
under the GNU license but also to provide a free online
version
of the text as well.
How the world's political economy came to accommodate such
a
book is, in a loose sense, just what the book is about.
More
precisely, its subject is Stallman, a virtuoso computer
programmer
who in 1983 set himself the selfless task of building an
entire
Unix-like operating system (the name GNU stands, with
typical
hacker wit, for "GNU's Not Unix") and dedicating
it to the public
domain. Soon thereafter he invented the radically
nonproprietary
form of copyright license (sometimes called a
"copyleft")
under which GNU was to be released. And the rest is
technological history. Half-finished for years, GNU was
effectively completed in the early '90s, when Finnish
hacker
Linus Torvalds picked up the ball and created the GNU-
compatible, copylefted Linux operating system. Beloved of
hackers (who like its open-hooded tinkerability and
general
libertarian vibe) and of major tech companies like IBM and
Sun (who like the economics of having thousands of hackers
working round the clock, for free, to improve their
software),
GNU/Linux has spread fast enough to become a credible
threat
to the Microsoft hegemony.
Scruffy of beard and long of hair, brilliantly obsessive,
unnervingly
intense, and given to such charming, geekish
eccentricities as
eating his split ends in public and ending every
conversation with
an earnest "Happy hacking," Stallman is a
character, and the book
tries fitfully to be the character study he deserves. Much
is made of
the "crushing loneliness" of Stallman's classic
nerd-boy youth and
of the likelihood that he suffers from the
high-functioning form of
autism known as Asperger syndrome (or more trendily as the
"geek
syndrome"). More than anything else, Williams
suggests, it was
his acute difficulty finding connection with other human
beings
that made Stallman a crusader against intellectual
property. The
almost edenically collaborative world of MIT programmers
was
the first and only real community Stallman knew, and when
he
woke up to the essentially anti-collaborative nature of
the
commercial copyrights that were beginning to invade that
world
in the early '80s, he got to work like a man whose home is
on fire.
Or so the story goes, and though in Williams's telling it
bogs
down far too frequently in technical details, it's not a
bad one.
Compelling or not, though, one man's psychodrama does not
a
political-economic sea change make. Stallman's crusade
matters, in
the end, not because his passion has made it matter but
because the
history of intellectual property has at last reached a
crisis of
epochal proportions. Just as the printing press begat the
age of
copyright, so now the computer portends a new tectonic
shift in
the relationship between ideas and markets--but exactly
what kind
of shift? Will we get the anarchic free-for-all dreamed of
in the
philosophies of Napster and its irrepressible progeny?
Will we
get the corporate police state portended by draconian
copyright
legislation aimed at capturing for media robber barons the
vast
new realms of profit in digital distribution?
Or will we get what Stallman has made his life's mission
to give
us: a well-tended intellectual commons amid the
increasingly
fenced-in realms of intellectual property? Only time and
the
complex, fast-moving politics of technology will tell, and
therein
lies the real drama of Stallman's story.
Unfortunately, as with Stallman's personal life, Williams
only
fitfully succeeds at getting the drama across. If you're
looking for a
better understanding of the political stakes involved in
the free-
software debate, for a clearer sense of how its outcome
will
transform not only technology but culture in the broadest
sense of
the word, you're better off looking elsewhere (Lawrence
Lessig's
lucid and penetrating The Future of Ideas would be a good
place to
start). In one key respect, though, Free as in Freedom
conveys
uniquely what Stallman's fight has been all about. By
copylefting
his book, Williams offers a concrete glimpse of how
literary
creativity might work in a world where everyone took at
its word
the proposition even Abbie Hoffman only took half
seriously. Free
as in Freedom may disappoint, but since anyone can steal
this
book, rewrite it to his or her taste, then post it back to
the Internet,
sooner or later someone may do just that. The author as
we've
known him for the last several centuries dies his final
death,
reborn as a perpetual collaborator. And while this may not
satisfy
the average freedom fighter's idea of utopia, to this
reviewer it
feels like the next best thing to heaven: a world in which
there are
no bad books, only rough drafts.
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07
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Dark Fiber : Tracking Critical Internet Culture
by Geert Lovink
Hardcover: 396 pages
Publisher: MIT Press; ISBN: 0262122499; (September 1, 2002)
According to media critic Geert Lovink, the Internet is
being closed off
by corporations and governments intent on creating a
business and
information environment free of dissent. Calling himself a
radical media
pragmatist, Lovink envisions an Internet culture that goes
beyond the
engineering culture that spawned it to bring humanities,
user groups,
social movements, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs),
artists, and
cultural critics into the core of Internet development.
In Dark Fiber, Lovink combines aesthetic and ethical
concerns and issues
of navigation and usability without ever losing sight of
the cultural and
economic agendas of those who control hardware, software,
content, design,
and delivery. He examines the unwarranted faith of the
cyber-libertarians
in the ability of market forces to create a decentralized,
accessible
communication system. He studies the inner dynamics of
hackers' groups,
Internet activists, and artists, seeking to understand the
social laws of
online life. Finally, he calls for the injection of
political and economic
competence into the community of freedom-loving
cyber-citizens, to wrest
the Internet from corporate and state control.
The topics include the erosion of email, bandwidth for
all, the rise and
fall of dot-com mania, techno-mysticism, sustainable
social networks, the
fight for a public Internet time standard, the strategies
of Internet
activists, mailing list culture, and collaborative text
filtering.
Stressing the importance of intercultural collaboration,
Lovink includes
reports from Albania, where NGOs and artists use new media
to combat the
country's poverty and isolation; from Taiwan, where the
September 1999
earthquake highlighted the cultural politics of the
Internet; and from
Delhi, where a new media center explores free software,
public access, and
Hindi interfaces.
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08
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Virtuous War
Mapping the Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment Network
By James Der Derian
Westview Press; June 2001
272 pp.
ISBN 0813397944
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0813397944/ref=ase_techdirectionson/002-8578364-7084850
Review:
http://www.techdirections.com/html/JDerDerian.html
In the Mojave Desert, off the shores of San Francisco Bay,
in the hills of
southern Germany, down the road from Disney World, and in
the heart of
Hollywood, the United States armed forces are preparing
for the next war.
They are fought by the military in the same manner as they
are viewed by
citizens, on real-time networks and by live-feed videos,
on the PC and TV,
actually and virtually. Motivated by political and ethical
imperatives,
enabled by smart technologies, a new form of high-tech,
low-risk,
networked warfare is emerging: virtuous war.
Virtuous War is a road trip into the cyborg heart of the
military-industrial-media-entertainment network. James Der
Derian takes
the reader from a family history of war and genocide to
new virtual
battlespaces in Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and Orlando’s
Simulation
Triangle. We travel with the author to the Army’s Advanced
Warfighting
Experiment in the Mojave Desert, the Marines Urban Warrior
occupation of
the San Francisco Bay area, and the staging areas of the
Kosovo air
campaign in Italy. Der Derian redesigns a ships command
center as the
Disney Room, and the Army builds a Holodeck at a
California university.
Computer simulations, cable news coverage, and feature
movies all blur
and converge in this new virtual alliance of the military,
the media, and the
entertainment industry.
Der Derian traces the hardwiring of Virtuous War through
new technologies
of global surveillance, networked communications,
computerized logistics,
and precision munitions. But he also digs deeply into the
political and
philosophical questions posed by this new form of secular
holy war, where
killing--based on our images of conflict in the Gulf,
Bosnia, and
Kosovo--appears to be distant and discriminate, efficient
and ethical. Will
the tail of technology not only wag the dog of military
strategy but also
up-end the policy of civilian control? Will going to war
become easier,
the making of peace bloodier? What happens to those at the
short-end of
the virtual stick? Is virtuous war the harbinger of a new
world order or a
brave new world? The result is the first book to offer a
virtual theory
for the military strategies, philosophical questions,
ethical issues, and
political controversies surrounding the future of war and
peace.
[James Der Derian is the director of INFO/tech/war/peace
project:
http://www.watsoninstitute.org/infopeace/index2.cfm
He is Professor of International Relations (Research) at
Brown University
and Professor of Political Science at UMASS/Amherst. His
articles on war
and technology have appeared in the New York Times,
Nation, Washington
Quarterly, and Wired.]
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09
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Before and After the I-Bomb: An Artist in the Information
Environment
by Tom Sherman
Banff Centre Press; (May 1, 2002)
ISBN: 092015994X
Book Signing
at
Printed Matter
535 West 22nd Street,
between 10th and 11th Avenue, in New York's Chelsea
district.
(212) 925-0325
order online from: http://www.printedmatter.org
Tom Sherman got wired early and has spent much of his
career leading the
way through the aftershocks of the "I-Bomb" and
its information explosion.
_Before and After the I-Bomb_ collects over fifty of
Sherman's texts about
art, technology, and nature from the last three decades.
His series of
personal reflections express both a love for and struggle
with the new
technologies and the cultural changes they have spawned.
Most
importantly, they provide an instrument for gauging the
evolution of a
human culture inextricably bound to Earth's ecosystem, and
a tool for
negotiating the future, even if [as Sherman writes] it is
currently "obscured
by a dense cloud of scrambled technobabble."
Tom Sherman is a media artist, writer, and broadcaster. He
knows the
media environment from several perspectives, having worked
in
mainstream radio and television, but also having produced
groundbreaking
art with video gear, industrial robots, surveillance
systems, and
telecommunications networks. He founded the Media Arts
Section of the
Canada Council for the Arts, co-founded Fuse magazine, and
represented
Canada at the Venice Biennale. Sherman performs and
records with
Bernhard Loibner in the group Nerve Theory. His work
integrates video,
music, and performance, and often features improvised
narratives. Tom
Sherman also teaches media art history, theory, and
practice at Syracuse
University.
_Before and After the I-Bomb: An Artist in the Information
Environment_ is
published by Banff Centre Press, 384 pages, paperback,
ISBN: 0-920159-94-X, and is priced at $20.50. _ Before and
After the
I-Bomb_, and over 15,000 other artists' books are
available from Printed
Matter's website: http://www.printedmatter.org
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10
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The Shape of Ancient Thought:
Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies
by Thomas McEvilley
Hardcover: 816 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.78 x 9.38
x 6.42
Publisher: Allworth Press; ISBN: 1581152035; (May 2002)
“Art critic and curator Thomas McEvilley at Talwar
Gallery, signing
hot-off-the-presses copies of his The Shape of Ancient
Thought, a
35-year labor published by Alworth Press that they say
demonstrates
links between Indian and Western philosophy that were
erased from
history by colonialism. It turns the history of the
Western tradition on
its head.”
-- from Weekend Update, by Walter Robinson, Artnet
Magazine, Oct 22.
http://www.artnet.com/Magazine/reviews/robinson/robinson10-22-02.asp?C=1
A revolutionary study by the classical philologist and art
historian
Thomas McEvilley is about to challenge much of academia.
In THE
SHAPE OF ANCIENT THOUGHT, an empirical study of the roots
of
Western culture, the author argues that Eastern and
Western
civilizations have not always had separate, autonomous
metaphysical
schemes, but have mutually influenced each other over a
long period of
time. Examining ancient trade routes, imperialist
movements, and
migration currents, he shows how some of today’s key
philosophical
ideas circulated and intermingled freely in the triangle
between Greece,
India, and Persia, leading to an intense metaphysical
interchange
between Greek and Indian cultures.
As the author explains it, "The records of caravan
routes are like the
philosophical stemmata of history, the trails of oral
discourses moving
through communities, of texts copied from texts. . . .What
they reveal is
not a structure of parallel straight lines--one labeled
Greece, another
Persia, another India--but a tangled web in which an
element in one
culture often leads to elements in others."
While scholars have sensed a philosophical kinship between
Eastern
and Western cultures for many decades, THE SHAPE OF
ANCIENT
THOUGHT is the first study to provide the empirical
evidence.
Covering a period ranging from 600 B.C. until the era of
Neoplatonism
and a geographical expanse reaching across the ancient
world,
McEvilley explores the key philosophical paradigms of
these cultures,
such as Monism, the doctrine of reincarnation in India and
Egypt, and
early Pluralism in Greece and India, to reveal striking
similarities
between the two metaphysical systems. Based on 30 years of
intense
intellectual inquiry and research and on hundreds of early
historical,
philosophical, spiritual, and Buddhist texts, the study
offers a scope
and an interdisciplinary perspective that has no equal in
the scholarly
world.
With a study like THE SHAPE OF ANCIENT THOUGHT, students
and
scholars of history, philosophy, cultural studies, and
classics will find
that their field has been put on entirely new footing. Yet
as editor Bill
Beckley points out, the merits of this work reach into a
broader social
context: "More recently, events have leant an unexpected
urgency to
the [book] by focusing the worlds attention on Afghanistan
(ancient
Bactria), where much of the story unfolds in this volume,
and where the
difficult karma of cross-cultural contacts is still alive."
About the Author
THOMAS MCEVILLEY is Distinguished Lecturer in Art History
at Rice
University, where he has been on the faculty since 1969.
The author
holds a Ph.D. in classical philology. In addition to Greek
and Latin, he
has studied Sanskrit and has taught numerous courses in
Greek and
Indian culture, history of religion and philosophy, and
art. He has
published countless scholarly monographs and articles in
various
journals on early Greek poetry, philosophy, and religion
as well as on
contemporary art and culture. He has been a visiting
professor at Yale
University and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago,
among others.
He was the recipient of a Fulbright Grant in 1993 and has
been awarded
an NEA critics grant and the Frank Jewett Mather Award for
Distinction
in Art Criticism by the College Art Association. His other
books include
Sculpture in the Age of Doubt (Allworth Press). He lives
in New York
City.
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11
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VIRTUAL ART
From Illusion to Immersion
by Oliver Grau
A Leonardo Book published by MIT Press
January 2003, ISBN 0-262-07241-6
http://www.arthist.hu-berlin.de/arthistd/mitarbli/og/og.html
"Equally at home in art history, media history, and
new media
art, Grau situates immersive image spaces of new media
within
a rich historical landscape. A must-read for anyone
interested
in new media, visual culture, art history, cinema, and all
other
fields that use virtual images."
-- Lev Manovich, author of The Language of New Media
Going beyond technical and ahistorical views of media art,
Oliver Grau analyzes what is really new in media art by
focusing
on recent work against the backdrop of historic
developments.
Although many people view virtual and mixed realities -
images
of art and science - as a totally new phenomenon, it has
its
foundations in an unrecognized history of immersive
images.
The search for illusionary visual space can be traced back
to
antiquity. Oliver Grau shows how virtual art fits into the
art
history of illusion and immersion and shows how each epoch
used the technical means available to produce maximum
illusion from Pompeii’s Villa
dei Misteri via baroque frescoes,
panoramas, immersive cinema to the CAVE.
this splash page is archived at:
http://www.newsgrist.net/Splash_Grau.html
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12
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Art-Rite
vintage artzine from the '70s
edited by Walter Robinson, Edit DeAk, Joshua Cohen
available at Printed Matter
535 West 22nd Street,
between 10th and 11th Avenue, in New York's Chelsea
district.
(212) 925-0325 http://www.printedmatter.org
[page 1, excerpted]
Art Forum - January Issue
http://www.artforum.com/inprint/id=3961
We were riding on the absurdity of the situation--that we
were
three nobodies, had no money, had no fame, and didn't know
anybody in the art world. But it was perfect--we were
totally free.
Edit deAk, 1974
EDIT DEAK AND WALTER ROBINSON may shudder to hear it,
but talking to them recently about Art-Rite I accidentally
thought of that old movie in which Judy Garland and Mickey
Rooney, teenaged and rural, stage a Broadway-type musical
in a
barn: "Hey kids, let's put on a show!" But since
the magazine
deAk and Robinson published and edited, and wrote and
designed and typeset and distributed, out of their
downtown-
Manhattan lofts between 1973 and 1978 was so open,
emocratic, and fresh-faced, they may think the parallel
fine, or
at least poetic justice: They and a third editor, Joshua
Cohn,
staged an exhilarating deconstruction (if an exhilarating
deconstruc