High Techne: Art and Technology from the Machine Aesthetic to the Posthuman

R. L. Rutsky

ISBN 10: 0816633568 / ISBN 13: 9780816633562

Published by University of Minnesota Press, 1999

About this Item

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Seller Inventory # B9780816633562

Bibliographic Details

• Title: High Techne: Art and Technology from the Machine Aesthetic to the Posthuman
• Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
• Publication Date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0816633568
• ISBN 13: 9780816633562
• Binding: Paperback / softback
• Condition: New
• Weight: 307 grams

About this title

Synopsis

Explores our changing cultural perceptions of the relations between technology and art.

In an age of high tech, our experience of technology has changed tremendously, yet the definition of technology has remained largely unquestioned. High Techne redresses this gap in thinking about technology, examining the shifting relations of technology, art, and culture from the beginnings of modernity to contemporary technocultures.

Drawing on the Greek root of technology, (techne, generally translated as “art, skill, or craft”), R. L. Rutsky challenges both the modernist notion of technology as an instrument or tool and the conventional idea of a noninstrumental aesthetics. Today, technology and aesthetics have again begun to come together: even basketball shoes are said to exhibit a “high-tech style” and the most advanced technology is called “state of the art.” Rutsky charts the history and vicissitudes of this new high-tech techne up to our day—from Fritz Lang to Octavia Butler, Thomas Edison to Japanese Anime, constructivism to cyberspace.

Progressing from the major art movements of modernism to contemporary science fiction and cultural theory, Rutsky provides clear and compelling evidence of a shift in the cultural conceptions of technology and art and demonstrates the centrality of technology to modernism and postmodernism.

About the Author

R. L. Rutsky is assistant professor of communications and theatre at the University of Notre Dame.