[Leonardo/ISAST Network] MediaArtHistories, edited by Oliver Grau

NEW from The Leonardo Book Series and MIT Press

MediaArtHistories, Edited by Oliver Grau; with contributions by Rudolf Arnh=
eim, Andreas Broeckmann, Ron Burnett, Edmond Couchot, Sean Cubitt, Dieter D=
aniels, Felice Frankel, Oliver Grau, Erkki Huhtamo, Douglas Kahn, Ryszard W=
. Kluszczynski, Machiko Kusahara, Timothy Lenoir, Lev Manovich, W. J. T. Mi=
tchell, Gunalan Nadarajan, Christiane Paul, Louise Poissant, Edward A. Shan=
ken, Barbara Maria Stafford and Peter Weibel.

Digital art has become a major contemporary art form, but it has yet to ac=
hieve acceptance from mainstream cultural institutions; it is rarely colle=
cted, and seldom included in the study of art history or other academic di=
sciplines. In MediaArtHistories, leading scholars seek to change this. They=
take a wider view of media art, placing it against the backdrop of art his=
tory. Their essays demonstrate that today's media art cannot be understood =
by technological details alone; it cannot be understood without its history=
, and it must be understood in proximity to other disciplines–film, cultu=
ral and media studies, computer science, philosophy, and sciences dealing w=
ith images.

Contributors trace the evolution of digital art, from thirteenth-century Is=
lamic mechanical devices and eighteenth-century phantasmagoria, magic lante=
rns, and other multimedia illusions, to Marcel Duchamp's inventions and 19=
60s kinetic and op art. They reexamine and redefine key media art theory te=
rms–machine, media, exhibition–and consider the blurred dividing lines be=
tween art products and consumer products and between art images and scienc=
e images. Finally, MediaArtHistories offers an approach for an interdiscip=
linary, expanded image science, which needs the "trained eye" of art histo=
ry.

Oliver Grau is Professor for Image Science and Dean of the Department for C=
ultural Studies, Danube University Krems. He is the author of Virtual Art: =
From Illusion to Immersion (MIT Press, 2003), editor of Mediale Emotionen (=
2005) and founder of the pioneering international digital art archive www.v=
irtualart.at.