The Artist as Inventor: Investigating Media Technology through Art

Today the media arts not only address the great themes of our times, they inhabit the very media of which they speak. The contemporary is global, but only because of the media that enable globalisation. Those media are almost nowhere apparent in the mainstream practice of art that we see in biennials from Venice to Sao Paolo. The media arts reflect back to us our present condition, and in the archive present us with the ghosts of what we were, and what we failed to become. This book brings the reader into the centre of these strange encounters, introducing us to the rich legacies and futures of the most important arts of the last hundred years. It also looks ahead to the future and asks what happens to the condition of being human within the new constellation into which we are entering?

Valentino Catricalà (PhD) is curator of SODA Gallery in Manchester and lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University. A scholar and contemporary art curator who specializes in analysis of the relationship of artists with new technologies and media, he is director of the Art Section of the Maker Faire-The European Edition, the biggest fair on creativity and innovation in Europe, as well as an art consultant at Paris Sony CS Lab. He was previously artistic director of the Rome Media Art Festival (MAXXI Museum) and art project coordinator at Fondazione Mondo Digitale. Valentino has curated exhibitions in museums and private galleries including the Hermitage, Minnesota Street Project, New York Media Center, Stelline, MAXXI Museum, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Ca’ Foscari, and the New Dheli Italian Cultural Institute. He is the author of several essays and books including Media Art: Prospettive delle arti verso il XXI secolo. Storie, teorie, preservazione and Art and Technology in the Third Millenium. Scenarios and Protagonists.