Critical Issues in Electronic Media

Offers new critical perspectives on the practice of electronic media art, a field that has sparse critical and theoretical literature. It addresses the relationship between technological change and cultural change and between contemporary theory and contemporary technology.

Critical Issues in Electronic Media is an interdisciplinary sourcebook that offers new critical perspectives directly related to, or arising from, the practice of electronic media art. It sketches the changing topology of culture as it enters electronic space and specifically addresses questions of art practice in that space. Some of the contributions focus on the dynamics of specific emerging media such as interactive media, while others look at the cultural conditions formed by, and forming around, new technological complexes. Still others examine contemporary technocultural manifestations against a background of social and technological history.

The contributors are professionally and geographically diverse, representing professional fields such as computer graphics, video, sound, drama, and visual arts as well as media, cultural and literary theory, and the social sciences. Together, these essays provide a rich survey of contemporary technological critique and offer a perspective on creative practice in technological media.

Simon Penny is Associate Professor of Art and Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University. He has worked in electronic media arts as an artist, writer, and teacher for over ten years and has lectured, published, and exhibited widely in the United States, Europe, and Australia.