Duograph

If all you know of British duo Thomson and Craighead is "Trigger Happy" and "e-poltergeist," the first survey publication of their work will prove very enlightening. The new book "Thomson and Craighead," in association with the Film and Video Umbrella, features essays by art historians Julian Stallabrass and Michael Archer, and provides documentation and description of their vast catalogue of net art, technical experimentation and installation work from '90s projects such as "Obituary" and "Speaking in Tongues" to current works like "Template Cinema" and "Beacon." The only shame is that the book lacks texts by the artists themselves which, given their talent for verbal as well as visual insight, seems a real oversight. With their recent work "Decorative Newsfeeds" providing the cover illustration, alongside the way in which this book begins to illustrate the patterns traced by their careers so far, one could be forgiven for wanting to scrap the slightly weak notion of a ‘minigraph’ and instead call it a Spirograph! - Charlotte Frost