The Book of Shadows.
CD-ROM; London: Ellipsis London, 1996.
A selection of an artist's works which make powerful and subtle use of the 'rollover' as a revelatory gesture.
Broude, Norma and Garrard, Mary D., eds.
The Power of Feminist Art: The American Movement of the 1970s, History and Impact.
New York, NY: Harry N. Abrams, 1994.
A richly illustrated book of essays about the art, art spaces, publications and communities of the Feminist Movement in the 1970s. Most interesting were histories of performance art and body art by Josephine Withers and Joanna Frueh, respectively.
Colomia, Beatriz, ed.
Sexuality & Space.
New York, NY:Princeton Architectural Press, 1992.
This book of essays on space, scale, perspective, interiors and the enclosure (and sometimes, erasure) of bodies is not only about architecture. It is about the meaning of what we see and how we see within rooms, within films, within photographs, and in the arrangements of cities, amongst other sites.
Crary, Jonathan and Kwinter, Sanford, eds.
Incorporations.
New York, NY: ZONE, 1992.
These editors have created a glorious playground of a book in which deep thinkers and serious designers frolic. I've dipped into this playground often over the past few years and have always found an idea-playmate or two amongst these essays. The readings that addressed me during this thesis time have been an article by Gilles Deleuze called "Mediators", which is, essentially, about the courage to create in modern times; and a piece by Hillel Schwartz called, "Torque: The New Kinaesthetic of the Twentieth Century," about the nature or the culture of gesture and expression in our mechanical age.
Critical Art Ensemble
The Electronic Disturbance.
Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia, 1994.
A description of the politics of the cyberelite, the electronic resistance and other depoliticized, decentralized information groups. Of special interest to me is a chapter entitled "The Recombinant Theater and the Performative Matrix" on the possible manifestations of a transformative cybertheatre.
Donegan, Cheryl
Clarity.
1993, 4:14 minutes, color video.
GracefulPhatSheba.
1993, 6:27 minutes, color video.
Donegan performs in her own works, usually setting stuff 'up' (often literally hanging) around which and with which to perform. Her materials are like her co-stars as she smears a plastic bag which she is wearing over her face with paint and rolls it over a pane of glass between herself and her camera (in "Clarity") or takes seductive bites out of a suspended banana casting a huge shadow (in "GracefulPhatSheba"). These works appeal to that tendency in all of us to watch our neighbor's window from our own as they pick lint off a sweater.
Druckrey, Timothy, ed.
Electronic Culture: Technology and Visual Representation.
New York, NY: Aperture, 1996.
An illustrated compilation of essays by academics, theorists, critics (and a few venerable crack-pots) on art and science. Some interesting articles are: Raymond Bellour on the digital image as the destroyer of all distinctions; Vilem Flusser on the self as bits of, "swirling point-potentialities,"(p.244); Siegfried Zielinski in praise of the incalculable: and ADILKNO Geert Lovink on the bliss of organized innocence.
Foreman, Richard
Unbalancing Acts: Foundations for a Theatre.
New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1992.
Five of the dramatist's plays and four essays regarding his approach to ontological-hysteric artmaking and the curious task of staging and scripting.
Foucault, Michel
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.
New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1979.
A social history of internment and the nature of the institution in western culture. Excellent scholarship and interesting conjecture.
Fraser, John
Violence in the Arts.
Cambridge,UK:Cambridge University Press, 1976.
Essays on not only depictions of violence in art, but also suggestions of violence; asking how do they work, what is their purpose, where do they come from. A readable inquiry from a curious scholar.
Grosz, Elizabeth
Space, time, and perversion:essays on the politics of bodies.
New York, NY: Routledge, 1995.
Some very interesting thoughts on the connections between writing, building, and being sexual.
Hall, Doug and Fifer, Sally Jo, eds.
Illuminating Video: An Essential Guide to Video Art.
New York, NY: Aperture, 1990.
A book of writings and documentation by artists and theorists on video as a medium for artistic expression. Most useful to me were essays in the chapters entitled, "Furniture/Sculpture/Architecture," and, "Audience/Reception: Access/Control". Essential resource if you'll be placing a monitor in a space (otherwise called an installation).
Haraway, Donna J.
Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature.
New York, NY: Routledge, 1991.
Chapter Eight of this book is the oft cited "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," and it is with this essay that I spent most of my time in this book. Haraway reads the dynamics of some very real political and economic circumstances in concert with the novels of feminist science-fiction writers to posit some approaches to reinventing ourselves.
Hershman Leeson, Lynn, ed.
Clicking In: Hot Links to a Digital Culture.
Seattle, WA: Bay Press, 1996.
A collection of essays by artist, curators, critics (and a few 'media celebrities') on digital art, space, and self. Especially interesting are essays by: Sadie Plant on the computer as a female influenced matrix/weaver/simulator; Lev Manovitch on the psychophysical phenomenon of cognitive, and especially perceptual, work supplanting manual labor in the age of VR simulation; Florian Rotzer on the ideas, hopes and fears surrounding neurotechnology; Catherine Richards on what's excluded from our vision of the neat and tidy Feminist Cyborg; and Soke Dinkla who writes a good, short history of participatory and interactive artforms in the 20th Century.
Jabes, Edmond
The Book of Margins.
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993.
Marginal notes on the compulsive futility of writing, and making other kinds of marks, by a writer who is always oddly inspiring.
Kaprow, Allan
Essays on The Blurring of Art and Life.
Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 1993.
Manifestos, reviews and quests for truth dating from the 1950s through the 90s. As pertinent as they were prescient.
Lippard, Lucy R.
The Pink Glass Swan.
New York, NY: The New Press, 1995.
An illustrated compendium of some of Lippard's essays from 1970-1993, primarily on 'feminist' art. This book is a valuable historical document, both in content and as a sort of artifact in itself. Lippard's writing about women's artwork from the 1970s asks questions about the social and personal work of artmaking that transcend the term 'feminist'. Or, perhaps, her questions so elaborate on the term that the range of issues involved is too complex for the simplicity of any 'ism', yet essential to any work that might call itself 'art'.
Lovejoy, Margot
Postmodern Currents.
New Jersey: Simon & Schuster, 1989.
A thorough study of media-assisted art, including a wide range of artistic applications within interactive media. Lovejoy includes a section on internet-based performances which is usually absent from books of this type. A good resource.
McCarthy, Paul and Kelley, Mike
Fresh Acconci.
1995, 45:00 minutes, color video.
A "remake" of several of Vito Acconci's videos using seductive women in suggestive settings where the original artist usually placed his own, hairy body in non-descript or ugly settings. Very politically incorrect and provoking.
Oursler, Tony
Red Devil.
Exhibited at Metro Pictures, Chelsea: Spring, 1997.
An installation made up of two projected videos: one onto the full wall of a darkened room and the other onto a small balloon on the floor at the far corner of that same wall. The video on the wall was a meandering close-up in overlaying dissolves of foliage at a botanic garden and the named signposts beneath them. On the balloon, which trailed off into a vaguely sperm-like shape, was projected a horizontal face. The face was speaking a sort of unconscious, schizophrenic, whiney jumble of self-talk alternating with childish demands directed at some other. At one point the head began screaming, "get out of here! get out of here!," over and over. One by one all of the other viewers in the room left.
Plant, Sadie
Zeros + Ones: Digital Women + The New Technoculture.
New York, NY: Doubleday, 1997.
Herstories of Ada Lovelace, weaving, Anna Freud and her father, hysteria, Mona Lisa, and recombinant DNA. A smart patchwork treatise on the fears and desires that are gloriously refuted by the women behind the computer.
Rivette, Jacques
Celine et Julie vont en bateau.
1974, 192:00 minutes, color film.
A brilliant film, in form and content, featuring blurred boundaries, shared experience and the possibility of rescuing children and childish faith.
Schneemann, Carolee
More Than Meat Joy: Performance Works and Selected Writings.
Kingston, NY: McPherson & Co., 1997.
Documentation of the artist's works, paintings, films, mechanized pieces and performances, from the late 1950s through the late 1970s. Includes scripts and journal entries contemporary with the works, as well as more recent commentary and reflection.
Schwartz, Hillel
The Culture of the Copy: Striking Likenesses, Unreasonable Facsimiles.
New York, NY: ZONE Books, 1996.
Historical and anecdotal, these poet/philosopher's musings incorporate mannequins, parrots, imposters, camouflage and siamese twins, amongst other things, in an inquiry into our romance with duplicity. An incredible work.
Schwartz, Susan
On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection.
Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 1984.
An exploration of, "the social disease of nostalgia,"(p.ix), these essays on narrative function and its relation to objects raise questions that relate to all artifice. The correspondence between object, audience and ideology are discussed through considerations of such forms as the dollhouse, the locket, the miniature book, and skywriting. Some interesting thoughts on the role of the spectator / owner / collector / participant / performer / author and the nature of 'reality' arise from these considerations.
by debrah malater
School of Visual Arts
Graduate Computer Art
Class of 1998
Carolee Schneemann, Thesis Advisor
Ken Feingold, Thesis Group Leader