------- Forwarded message follows ------- Date sent: Mon, 6 Jan 2003 20:13:09 -0000 Send reply to: Taylor Nuttall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> From: Taylor Nuttall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Oliver Grau: VIRTUAL ART, new at MIT Press To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
VIRTUAL ART From Illusion to Immersion by Oliver Grau A Leonardo Book published by MIT Press (January 2003, ISBN 0-262-07241-6, 7 x 9, 360 pp., 89 illus) "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) "The highly ambitious task of locating the latest image technologies within a wider art-historical context has now been accomplished." (Friedrich Kittler, author of Gramophone, Film, Typewriter) Content: 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 Pompeiis Villa dei Misteri via baroque frescoes, panoramas, immersive cinema to the CAVE. He describes the metamorphosis of the concepts of art and the image and relates those concepts to interactive art, interface design, telepresence, biogenetic art and image evolution. Grau retells art history as media history, helping us to understand the phenomenon of immersion beyond the hype. Grau also examines those characteristics of virtual art that distinguish it from earlier forms of illusionary art and thus shows us what is really new in media art. His analysis draws on the work of contemporary artists and groups like ART+COM, Maurice Benayoun, Charlotte Davies, Monika Fleischmann, Ken Goldberg, Agnes Hegedues, Eduardo Kac, Knowbotic Research, Laurent Mignonneau, Michael Naimark, Simon Penny, Daniela Plewe, Paul Sermon, Jeffrey Shaw, Karl Sims, Christa Sommerer, and Wolfgang Strauss. Grau offers not just a history of illusionary space but also a theoretical framework for analyzing its phenomenologies, functions, and strategies throughout history and into the future. Quotes from the field: "Grau's Virtual Art opens the door onto a significant new approach to media analysis by focusing in depth on a particular kind of digital art-- the attempt to create immersive environments. The combination of media archeology and careful analysis of both the possibilities and limitations of the impulse to put the viewer inside the artwork will make this book a valuable resource to both practitioners and theoreticians." (Stephen Wilson, Professor of Conceptual and Information Arts, San Francisco State University, and author of Information Arts) "Oliver Grau expands notions of immersion with a comprehensive overview of artistic meditations on illusion, presence and space. Using historical and innovative media-art project examples, he offers multiple perspectives on the evolution of our world-view. No doubt this volume will be a useful resource for any serious practitioner and/or theorist engaging the merging of art, science and technology." (Victoria Vesna, Chair, Design and Media Arts, University of California, Los Angeles) Quotes from the Press "A key book -- Oliver Grau's art historical study taps into the new virtual image spaces." (Frankfurter Allgemeine) "The scope ranges far beyond analogue and digital image techniques; this is more than a piece of media archaeology." (MEDIENwissenschaft) "Grau's analysis enriches the current debate on media art and virtual worlds by providing an historical perspective." (Der Tagesspiegel) "The parallels revealed are astounding." (Sueddeutsche Zeitung) Oliver Grau is a new-media art historian and lectures at the Department of Art History, Humboldt University in Berlin. He is a visiting professor at the Kunstuniversity Linz and is head of the German Science Foundation project on Immersive Art in Berlin, also he is developing the first international data base resource for virtual art. He published widely on VR-art and lectured in Europe, Japan, Brasil and the US. Oliver Grau is an elected member of the Young Academy of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences (BBAW) and the Leopoldina. His research focuses on the history of illusion and immersion in media and art, the history of the idea and culture of telepresence and telecommunication, genetic art, and artificial intelligence. (please visit: http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?sid=26570CB6-AB47- 414B-A780 -1ECA08AAB2D3&ttype=2&tid=9214) ******************************** DR. OLIVER GRAU Kunsthistorisches Seminar Humboldt University Berlin Dorotheenstr. 28; 10117 Berlin fon: +49 (0)30 2093-4295 (direct) - 4288 (secr.) Fax: +49 (0)30 2093-4209 [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.arthist.hu-berlin.de/arthistd/mitarbli/og/og.html www.diejungeakademie.de ********************************** ------- End of forwarded message ------- -- chris hand mungbean media edinburgh, scotland [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.mungbean.net fax +44 (0)7050 612741 tel +44 (0)7813 179736 ------------------------------------------------- a m b i t : networking media arts in scotland post: [EMAIL PROTECTED] archive: http://www.mediascot.org/ambit info: send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and write "info ambit" in the message body -------------------------------------------------
