Art, Time and Technology [Hardcover]

Art, Time and Technology examines the role of art in an age of 'real time' information systems and instantaneous communication. The increasing speed of technology and of technological development since the early nineteenth century has resulted in cultural anxiety. Humankind now appears to be an ever-smaller component of dauntingly complex technological systems, operating at speeds beyond human control or even perception. This perceived change forces us to rethink our understanding of key concepts such as time, history and art. Art, Time and Technology explores how the practice of art - in particular of avant-garde art - keeps our relation to time, history and even our own humanity open. Examining key moments in the history of both technology and art from the beginnings of industrialization to today, Charlie Gere explores both the making and purpose of art, and how much further it can travel from the human body.This is the first book that critically situates the technologies of real-time computing within the broader discourses of visual and media history. From Jack Burnham to John Cage, Leroi-Gourhan to Marshall Mccluhan, and Les immateriaux to Stanley Kubrick, Gere challenges us to consider the role of the entire apparatus of communication in the ongoing construction of art as information processing system. Barbara Maria Stafford, author of Devices of Wonder: From the World in a Box to Images on a Screen

Peter Mangoldis a journalist and author and a Senior Associate Member of St Antony's College, Oxford.

Charlie Gere is Reader in New Media Research at Lancaster University and is the author of Digital Culture