When the machine made art
Subtitle: the troubled history of computer art
By: Grant D. Taylor
Series: International texts in critical media aesthetics
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Published: 2014
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 337
ISBN-13: 9781623567958; 9781623568849
Subjects: Computer art; SOCIAL SCIENCE / Media Studies; ART / History / General
Description: "When the Machine Made Art covers the reception and criticism of computer art from its emergence in 1963 to its crisis in 1989, when ideological differences fragment the art movement. The text begins by identifying the various divisions between the humanistic and scientific cultures that inform early criticism. The fact that the first computer art has military origins and is imbued with various techno-science mythologies, places the movement at odds with artworld orthodoxy. Yet, while mainstream art critics reproach computerized art, a comparison between similar art forms of the era, such as conceptual art, reveals that the criticism of computer art was motivated more by the fear of the machine than by aesthetics. Dr. Grant Taylor shows that social anxiety, often fueled by Cold War dystopianism, posited the computer as a powerful instrument in the overall subordination of the individual to the emerging technocracy. But even though anti-computer sentiment abated in the late 1970s, computer art did not find acceptance. The book illustrates how computer art's exponents, desiring artworld legitimacy, traced its lineage back to modernism. Conversely, in the 1980s, art theorists, employing the latest critical theory, began critiquing the assumptions of modernism, and thus viewed computer art's modernist history as hopelessly outdated. And yet other critics reconciled computer technology with the critical insights of postmodernism, viewing the computer as a pluralistic agent that could challenge modernist conventions. Nonetheless, while postmodernist criticism enabled the formation of new discourses for emerging digital arts, it left computer art, which was committed to modernist and techno-science philosophies, in a state of crisis"--

"Examines the cultural and critical response to computer art, by identifying the destabilizing forces that affect, shape, and eventually fragment the computer art movement"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 305-320) and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note:; title: Introduction: Unorthodox Chapter 1: Future Crashes Chapter 2: Coded Aesthetics Chapter 3: Virtual Renaissance Chapter 4: Frontier Exploration Chapter 5: Critical Impact Epilogue: Aftermath Bibliography Index.