META/DATA: A Digital Poetics (Hardcover)

Description

This rich collection of writings by pioneering digital artist Mark Amerika mixes (and remixes) personal memoir, net art theory, fictional narrative, satirical reportage, scholarly history, and network-infused language art. META/DATA is a playful, improvisatory, multitrack "digital sampling" of Amerika's writing from 1993 to 2005 that tells the early history of a net art world "gone wild" while simultaneously constructing a parallel poetics of net art that complements Amerika's own artistic practice.

Unlike other new media artists who may create art to justify their theories, Amerika documents the emergence of new media art forms while he creates them. Presenting a multifaceted view of the digital art scene on subjects ranging from interactive storytelling to net art, live VJing, online curating, and Web publishing, Amerika gives us "Spontaneous Theories," "Distributed Fictions" (including his groundbreaking GRAMMATRON, the helpful "Insider's Guide to Avant-Garde Capitalism," and others), the more scholarly "Academic Remixes," "Net Dialogues" (peer-to-peer theoretical explorations with other artists and writers), and the digital salvos of "Amerika Online" (among them, "Surf-Sample-Manipulate: Playgiarism on the Net," "The Private Life of a Network Publisher," and satirical thoughts on "Writing as Hactivism"). META/DATA also features a section of full-color images, including some of Amerika's most well-known and influential works.

Provocative, digressive, nomadic, and fun to read, Amerika's texts call to mind the cadences of Gertrude Stein, the Beats, cyberpunk fiction, and even The Daily Show more than they do the usual new media theorizing. META/DATA maps the world of net culture with Amerika as guide and resident artist.

描述

這本由先驅數位藝術家馬克·阿梅里卡（Mark Amerika）所撰寫的豐富作品集，結合了個人回憶錄、網路藝術理論、虛構敘事、諷刺報導、學術歷史和網絡融合的語言藝術。《META/DATA》是阿梅里卡從1993年到2005年的寫作的一個多軌「數位取樣」，既講述了一個瘋狂的網絡藝術世界的早期歷史，同時也構建了一個與阿梅里卡自己的藝術實踐相輔相成的網絡藝術詩學。

與其他可能為了證明他們的理論而創作藝術的新媒體藝術家不同，阿梅里卡在創作藝術的同時記錄了新媒體藝術形式的出現。他以多面向的方式呈現了數位藝術場景，涉及互動敘事、網絡藝術、現場視覺表演、在線策展和網絡出版等主題，阿梅里卡帶給我們「即興理論」、「分佈式虛構」（包括他開創性的作品《GRAMMATRON》、對「前衛資本主義內幕指南」等的幫助）、「學術混音」、「網絡對話」（與其他藝術家和作家進行點對點的理論探索）以及「阿梅里卡在線」的數位攻擊（其中包括「在網絡上冲浪、取樣、操縱：網絡上的玩擬」、「一個網絡出版商的私人生活」以及對「寫作作為黑客行動主義」的諷刺思考）。《META/DATA》還包括一部分全彩圖像，其中包括阿梅里卡最著名和有影響力的作品。

阿梅里卡的文字引人思考，流連忘返，遊牧式的閱讀，讓人聯想到格特魯德·斯坦、垮掉的一代、赛博朋克小說，甚至是《每日秀》等，而不是通常的新媒體理論。《META/DATA》以阿梅里卡作為指南和常駐藝術家，繪製了網絡文化的世界。