Ars Electronica: Facing the Future (Electronic Culture: History, Theory and Practice) Book

Since 1979, annual electronic media Austrian festival and symposium Ars Electronica has investigated the intersection of theory and practice in the post-revolutionary world of the digital. This year, the festival's 20th anniversary, writer/curator Timothy Druckrey put together an edited volume of papers that have been given at the symposium over the past two decades.Ars Electronica: Facing the Future--A Survey of Two Decades has three sections: History, Theory and Practice. Practice is mainly brief explications of exhibits from past festivals; the other two sections are more complex. In History, Hari Kunzru's 1997 essay entitled "Bad Girl Versus the Astronaut Christ" explores the concept of the cyborg alongside the way humans relate to this technologically superior being--and the way this relationship has changed over time. "The Future Merging of Science, Art, and Psychology", Marvin Minksy's 1990 essay in Theory, is strangely moving, depicting as it does an emerging world where the simpler an action is, the more difficult it is to understand and how our study of "the twin enterprises of cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence" will help explain why.Though perhaps not a book you'd read cover to cover without putting it down, it is one you might keep on your bedside table and dip into and out of. The tightly written, provocative essays will shape your digital dreams. --Liz BaileyRead More