[-empyre-] HYBRID BOOKWORK, Week Two - Paradoxical Publishing, Postmedia, Critical Aesthetics

[Michael Dieter]

Hi all,

The discussion is still rolling from the first week, but I would like
to nevertheless introduce and welcome three more guests onto the list:
Lukas Jost Gross, Domenico Quaranta and Rita Raley.

I've put together some keywords for this introduction - Paradoxical
Publishing, Postmedia, Critical Aesthetics - (apologies for yet
another 'post' in there), but this is just a formality. I want to keep
things quite open in terms of how the conversation develops and what
gets discussed. Perhaps subscribers have specific questions or
comments to add at this point.

Indeed, hopefully many of you are also already familiar with their
work. If not, please check out TRAUMAWIEN's inspiring projects and
publications; the absolutely essential Link Editions series that
Domenico's been running and along with an overview of his curatorial
work and criticism; and some of Rita's key publications on a range of
influential media arts practices, concepts and themes from codework to
tactical media and counterveillance.

It's great to have you all on empyre!

- M.

Bios:

Lukas Jost Gross is an artist and paradoxical print publisher based in
Vienna. He co-founded TRAUMAWIEN in 2010 with Peter Moosgaard and
Julian Palacz as a non-academic initiative exploring new forms of
publishing. An important aspect is the ARTCLUB involving discussions
of various issues, books and releases
(http://traumawien.at/stuff/artclub/). Some key projects, meanwhile,
have included exploiting "Domains of Distribution" Ad Contaminated
Ebooks (Trojan Horses) exploring the connectivity and underground
distribution of ebooks by algorithmically changing/contaminating them
while feeding them back into Systems of Distribution
(http://rhizome.org/announce/events/59833/view/). In certain ways,
augmented reality is also an important concept for TRAUMAWIEN, as seen
in the development of Augmented Reality Software for YORICK/REPLIK in
2010, which was sold as 'Hybrids'. For more information on their
various projects and publications, see http://traumawien.at/

Domenico Quaranta (1978, Brescia, Italy, http://domenicoquaranta.com)
is an art critic and curator. He is a regular contributor to Flash Art
and Artpulse. He is the editor (with M. Bittanti) of the book
"GameScenes: Art in the Age of Videogames" (2006) and the author of
"Media, New Media, Postmedia" (2010; translated into English in 2013
with the title "Beyond New Media Art") and "In Your Computer" (2011).
He has curated various exhibitions, including "Holy Fire: Art of the
Digital Age" (Bruxelles 2008, with Y. Bernard), Playlist (Gijon 2009
and Bruxelles 2010) and "Collect the WWWorld. The Artist as Archivist
in the Internet Age" (Brescia 2011; Basel and New York 2012). He is a
co-founder of the Link Center for the Arts of the Information Age
(http://www.linkartcenter.eu/).

Rita Raley researches and teaches at the University of California,
Santa Barbara. Her work is situated at the intersection of digital
media and humanist inquiry, with a particular emphasis on cultural
critique, artistic practices, language, and textuality. She is the
author of Tactical Media (Electronic Mediations) (University of
Minnesota, 2009), co-editor of the Electronic Literature Collection,
Volume 2 (2011), and has more recently published articles in the
edited collections "Raw Data" Is an Oxymoron (2013) and Comparative
Textual Media: Transforming the Humanities in the Postprint Era
(2013). She has had fellowship appointments at the National Humanities
Center; UCLA (as part of the Mellon-funded project on the Digital
Humanities); University of Bergen, Norway (with "ELMCIP: Electronic
Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice"); and
the Dutch Foundation for Literature in Amsterdam. She currently
co-edits the "Critical Issues in Media Aesthetics" book series for
Bloomsbury and the "Electronic Mediations" book series for the
University of Minnesota Press.