Computers are more and more becoming creative tools in music as well as in the visual arts and design. In the last few years, it has become clear that digital technology provides a platform for multimedia productions as well as a medium for new art forms. Computer Music and Computer Graphics & Animation have their own international forums. The need was felt, however, to bring together the diverse disciplines within art and technology in one international event - the First International Symposium on Electronic Art (FISEA). The Symposium attracted considerable interest and hundreds of papers and proposals were submitted, of which a selection were accepted. This book, also published as a supplement to the journal Leonardo, publishes 20 of these selected papers under the editorship of Wim van der Plas, Ton Hokken and Johan den Biggelaar. This richly illustrated issue on Electronic Art reflects the enormous international interest which FISEA generated and will further stimulate interest in applications of new technology in music, visual arts and design.

Electronic art offers endless opportunities for reflection and interpretation. Works can be interactive or entirely autonomous and the viewer's perception and reaction to them may be challenged by constantly transforming images. Whether the transformations are a product of the appearances or actions of a viewer in an installation space, or a product of a self-contained computer program, is a source of constant fascination. Some viewers may feel strange or unnerved by a work, while others may feel welcoming, humorous, and playful emotions. The art may also provoke a critical response to social, aesthetic, and political aspects of early twenty-first-century life. This book approaches electronic art through the teachings of Jacques Lacan, whose return to Freud has exerted a powerful and wide-ranging influence on psychoanalysis and critical theory in the twentieth century. David Bard-Schwarz draws on his experience with Lacanian psychoanalysis, music, and interactive and traditional arts in order to address aspects of the works the viewer may find difficult to understand. Dividing his approach over four thematic chapters—Bodies, Voices, Eyes, and Signifiers—Bard-Schwarz explores the links between works of new media and psychoanalysis (how we process what we see, hear, touch, imagine, and remember). This is a fascinating book for new media artists and critics, museum curators, psychologists, students in the fine arts, and those who are interested in digital technology and contemporary culture.

Accompanying a landmark exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery, this catalogue explores the impact of computer and networked technologies on artists from the mid-1960s to the present day.

A landmark survey examining the pivotal role of new technologies in recent artistic innovation.

Reflecting the dynamic creativity of its subject, this definitive guide spans the evolution, aesthetics, and practice of today’s digital art, combining fresh, emerging perspectives with the nuanced insights of leading theorists. Showcases the critical and theoretical approaches in this fast-moving discipline Explores the history and evolution of digital art; its aesthetics and politics; as well as its often turbulent relationships with established institutions Provides a platform for the most influential voices shaping the current discourse surrounding digital art, combining fresh, emerging perspectives with the nuanced insights of leading theorists Tackles digital art’s primary practical challenges – how to present, document, and preserve pieces that could be erased forever by rapidly accelerating technological obsolescence Up-to-date, forward-looking, and critically reflective, this authoritative new collection is informed throughout by a deep appreciation of the technical intricacies of digital art