“Modern art created the aesthetic object as a closed system in reaction to the machine·based industrial revolution. Postmodernism created a form of art as an open system of signs and practises in reaction to the postindustrial revolution of the information society. At the moment, net art is the driving force most radically transforming the closed system of the aesthetic object of modernism into the open practices of postmodernism... ”
“The »net_condition« is brazen, impertinent, reflective, and not liniited to the symptomatic mise en scime of closed systems. The works emerging are often open ended, invoke critiques of the centralizing effects of illusory communities (as opposed to imaginary ones), interrogate technology itself as self-justifying, and deconstruct the pre· sumptions of universality or authority that have come to mystify cyberspace. Without acceding to inevitability, the net sphere and its art will have to find its way past its initial condition and prompt a reconsideration of the compelling interdependence between technology, communication, and creativity.”
This series will examine the ways in which modern media influence the full range of human expression, in particular representation, illusion, mimesis, desire, and cultural politics. The broad range of themes will include visuality, imagination, the image and the future of the self, perception, cognition, intelligence, reason, time, gender, information (and its theories), memory, ideology. The books will be organized thematically, focusing on areas in which technique, creativity, and culture find especially dynamic expression.
The goal of Electronic Culture: History, Theory, Practice is to reveal the technical world of mechanization as the foundation for a world of information, communication, artificiality, and simulation by exposing the depth to which these ideas have been assimilated into the creative process historically, theoretically and artistically.