Syndicate: Multimedia: From Wagner To Virtual Reality

[Syndicate admin <syndicate@v2.nl>]

Date: Tue, 07 Aug 2001 23:07:46 -0400
From: Ken Jordan <ken@kenjordan.tv>
Subject: Multimedia: From Wagner To Virtual Reality

As facilitator of the Syndicate list, you may be interested to know about
our book, described below. If it's of interest, and appropriate, please pass
this along to the list. Thanks.  - Ken Jordan




MULTIMEDIA: FROM WAGNER TO VIRTUAL REALITY
edited by Randall Packer and Ken Jordan
foreword by William Gibson
published by W.W. Norton, 400 pp., $27.95
publication date: July 23, 2001 (US), Sept 19 (UK)


"This book is one start toward a different sort of history.... I recommend
this book to you with an earnestness that I have seldom felt for any
collection of historic texts.  This is, in large part, where the bodies are
buried.  Assembled in this way, in such close proximity, these visions give
off strange sparks." - from the foreword by William Gibson

MULTIMEDIA: FROM WAGNER TO VIRTUAL REALITY presents the untold history
behind the interfaces, links, and interactivity we all take for granted
today. This groundbreaking work traces a fertile and fascinating series of
collaborations between the arts and the sciences, going back to the years
just after World War II -- and even further, to composer Richard Wagner,
whose ideas about the immersive nature of music theater foreshadowed the
experience of virtual reality.

Among the essential articles gathered in the book are the Futurists' 1916
manifesto on cinema, which declared that the new medium would unite all
media and replace the book; Vannevar Bush's 1945 Atlantic Monthly essay that
leads directly to the hyperlinks in today's multimedia; J.C.R. Licklider's
groundbreaking idea in 1960 that people and computers could collaborate in
creative work; Nam June Paik's 1984 essay proposing that satellite
technology would encourage a global information art; Tim Berners-Lee's 1989
proposal for a document-sharing network, which became the basis of the World
Wide Web; and William Gibson's discussion of how he came up with the word
"cyberspace." With an insightful introduction to the volume and critical
commentaries on each article, editors Randall Packer and Ken Jordan lead us
through the groundbreaking developments of the multimedia story.

The book publication completes a unique hybrid publication project that
joins W.W. Norton with Intel Corporation's ArtMuseum.net, to present an
untold history of multimedia.  The book and the Web site, which was launched
in June, 2000, are meant to work in tandem. On-line, MULTIMEDIA: FROM WAGNER
TO VIRTUAL REALITY is a dynamic, growing resource featuring hyperlinked
texts and a wealth of multimedia documentation. Please visit the site at
http://www.artmuseum.net.


>From the early reviews:

"The best guide yet on a subject of central importance to anyone interested
in the future of media, and the growing marriage between art and
science....The collection is historically significant, given that nobody has
ever woven together the different threads, thoughts and impulses that become
multimedia, a new form both of media and culture.... The book flows
skillfully from one idea to the next, each section building on the one that
preceded it." - Jon Katz, Slashdot

"In the Norton Anthology tradition, Packer and Jordan bring together seminal
contributions that artists and scientists have made to the field of
computer-human interaction... An evocative whirlwind tour through 100 years
of work... Excellent..." - S. Joy Mountford, Wired

"[MULTIMEDIA is] a key source book in the field of art, science and
technology. This book is excellent in all respects." - Annick Bureaud,
Leonardo Digital Reviews

"Readers interested in the history of multimedia should be enthralled by
this collection of hard-to-find essays.... A remarkable blending of past and
present, these essays remind us that today's wondrous inventions didn't just
spring into existence out of nothingness." - Booklist




MULTIMEDIA: FROM WAGNER TO VIRTUAL REALITY
Table of Contents

Foreword by William Gibson

Overture by Randall Packer and Ken Jordan


I. Integration
1. Richard Wagner, "Outlines of the Artwork of the Future"

2. F. T. Marinetti, Bruno Corra, Emilio Settimelli, Arnaldo Ginna, Giacomo
Balla, Remo Chiti, ?he Futurist Cinema?
3. L?szl? Moholy-Nagy, ?heater, Circus, Variety?
4. Richard Higgins, ?ntermedia?
5. Billy Kl?ver, ?he Great Northeastern Power Failure?
6. Nam June Paik, ?ybernated Art?and ?rt and Satellite?

II. Interactivity
7. Norbert Wiener, ?ybernetics in History?
8. J.C.R. Licklider, ?an-Computer Symbiosis?
9. Douglas Engelbart, ?ugmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework?
10. John Cage, ?iary: Audience 1966?
11. Roy Ascott, ?ehaviourist Art and the Cybernetic Vision?
12. Myron Krueger, ?esponsive Environments?
13. Alan Kay, ?ser Interface: A Personal View?

III. Hypermedia
14. Vannevar Bush, ?s We May Think?
15. Ted Nelson, excerpt from Computer Lib/Dream Machines

16. Alan Kay and Adele Goldberg, ?ersonal Dynamic Media?
17. Marc Canter, ?he New Workstation: CD ROM Authoring Systems?
18. Tim Berners-Lee, ?nformation Management: A Proposal?
19. George Landow and Paul Delany, ?ypertext, Hypermedia and Literary
Studies: The State of the Art?

IV. Immersion
20. Morton Heilig, ?he Cinema of the Future?
21. Ivan Sutherland, ?he Ultimate Display?
22. Scott Fisher, ?irtual Interface Environments?
23. William Gibson, ?cademy Leader?
24. Marcos Novak, ?iquid Architectures in Cyberspace?
25. Daniel Sandin, Thomas DeFanti, and Carolina Cruz-Neira, ? Room with a
View?

V. Narrativity
26. William Burroughs, ?he Future of the Novel?
27. Allan Kaprow, ?ntitled Guidelines for Happenings?
28. Bill Viola, ?ill There Be Condominiums in Data Space??
29. Lynn Hershman, ?he Fantasy Beyond Control?
30. Roy Ascott, ?s There Love in the Telematic Embrace?"

31. Pavel Curtis, ?udding: Social Phenomena in Text-Based Virtual
Realities?
32. Pierre L?vy, ?he Art and Architecture of Cyberspace?


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