Bücher von Domenico Quaranta

Originally published in 2008, this book documents the life and work of Gazira Babeli, the avatar artist active in Second Life between 2006 and 2010. In about 4 years, Gazira Babeli has created a vast body of works which address the world she lives in, and which have lent her such a solid, recognizable image that she has become a household name in Second Life. She acts like a virus, unleashing earthquakes, tornados and storms of images, deforming the bodies of other residents and constructing metaphorical machines; a capricious deity, she herself is a work of art, a "constructed identity" which ably generates its own legends. This monographic publication tells her story, and presents and analyzes the most significant areas of her work, with contributions from writers such as Mario Gerosa and Domenico Quaranta, and Americans Patrick Lichty and Alan Sondheim.

Produced as a catalogue for the exhibition Holy Fire, Art of the Digital Age (2008), this book is more than a simple catalogue. Along with the works of the 27 artists in the exhibition it features the editors' essays along with a collective interview involving some of the most important representatives of the new media art world. Holy Fire is not a book on new media art, but an exploration of the contemporary art of the digital age, and a pamphlet against the new media art paradigm and the self-isolation in which these practices evolved in the last sixty years. In the words of Régine Debatty: "Forget the new, drop the media, enjoy art." With contributions by: Inke Arns & Jacob Lillemose, Alexei Shulgin, Vuk Cosic, Régine Debatty, Steve Dietz, Olia Lialina & Dragan Espenschied, Patrick Lichty, Vicente Matallana, Eva & Franco Mattes, Christiane Paul, Magdalena Sawon & Tamas Banovich, Paul Slocum, Bruce Sterling, Michele Thursz, Mark Tribe, UBERMORGEN.COM, Karen A. Verschooren and many others.

In more than five years of activity, the Free Art and Technology Lab produced an impressive series of projects, all developed with open source software, shared online and documented in a way that allows everybody to copy, improve, abuse or simply use them. This approach situates F.A.T. Lab in a long tradition of DIY, processual, sharable artistic practices based on instructionals, and reveals a democratic idea of art where Fluxus scores meet hacker culture (and rap music). The F.A.T. Manual is a selection of more that 100 projects, done in the belief that printing these bits on paper will allow them to spread in a different way, infiltrate other contexts, and germinate. An archive, a catalogue, a user manual and a software handbook. F.A.T. Lab is an organization dedicated to enriching the public domain through the research and development of creative technologies and media. Co-produced by Link Editions and MU in collaboration with XPO Gallery, Paris.

Kaj je novomedijska umetnost? Kaj v resnici opisuje ta izraz? Kaj je povzröilo razkol med tem izrazom in umetnostno sceno, ki naj bi jo opisoval? In kon¿no, kaj lahko pojasni omejeno navzönost te umetni¿ke prakse - za katero se zdi, da ima vse, kar je potrebno, da bi veljala za reprezentativno prakso obdobja, v katerem digitalni mediji odlöno spreminjajo politi¿no, ekonomsko, drübeno in kulturno organiziranost sveta, v katerem ¿ivimo - v kriti¿kih razpravah? Onkraj novomedijske umetnosti je poskus analize trenutnega ume¿¿anja tako imenovane novomedijske umetnosti v ¿ir¿e polje sodobnih umetnosti in poskus raziskave zgodovinskih, sociolökih in konceptualnih razlogov za njen obroben polöaj in omejeno prepoznavnost v sodobni umetnostni zgodovini. Po drugi strani je ta knjiga tudi poskus uvedbe novih kriti¿kih in kuratorskih strategij, ki bi to marginalizacijo potisnile v preteklost, in osvetlitve aktualnosti umetnosti, ki se loteva medijev in problematike informacijske dobe.

Eternal September. The Rise of Amateur Culture is a group exhibition that explores the relationship between professional art making and the rising of amateur cultural movements through the web, an historical event that is triggering a big and fascinating shift in every field of culture, especially visual culture. This catalogue features a curatorial text by Valentina Tanni, together with an interview with artist Matthias Fritsch, the man beyond the Teknoviking meme, an essay by artist group Smetnjak on practicing critical theory in the form of internet memes, and visual documentation of Tanni's ongoing curatorial project The Great Wall of Memes. Featured artists: Mauro Ceolin, Paolo Cirio, Electroboutique, Paul Destieu, Matthias Fritsch, Colin Guillemet, David Horvitz, Maskull Lasserre, Aled Lewis, Dennis Logan (Spatula007), Valeria Mancinelli and Roberto Fassone, Mark McEvoy, Casey Pugh, Steve Roggenbuck, Helmut Smits, Pawe¿ Sysiak & Tymek Borowski, TheGamePro, Phil Thompson, Wendy Vainity.

How did the internet go from the utopian free-for-all, open source heaven, libertarian last frontier to the current state of permanent surveillance, exhibitionism and paranoia? This duplicity is the underlying thread that links the artists, activists, and researchers in The Black Chamber, an exhibition, a symposium, an urban intervention and a publication. The Black Chamber aims at discussing the delicate and often awkward role of art and imagination in the age of mass surveillance, stressing the multiple connections between post-studio art and independent research, grassroots reverse engineering, and new forms of political activism in the age of networks.Not just an exhibition catalogue, this book is also an attempt to show the exhibited works as part of larger research processes. With works and original contributions by Jacob Appelbaum & Ai Weiwei, Laura Poitras, Metahaven, Zach Blas, James Bridle, Émilie Brout & Maxime Marion, Simon Denny, Jill Magid, !Mediengruppe Bitnik and Evan Roth.

Artist and game designer, Eddo Stern explores the uneasy and otherwise unconscious connections between physical existence and electronic simulation, surrounding the subject matters of violence, memory and identification. A game manual, a catalogue, a making of and an archive, How to Play Eddo Stern revolves around a selected body of works developed with di(erent media that can be understood as "games". Featuring an essay by Matteo Bittanti, the book is a deep dive into the massive amount of small bits and pieces that make up the folders of Stern's game projects: 3D models, texture maps and atlases, backdrops, animation frame sequences, code snippets, circuit diagrams, as well as emails, design documents, meeting notes, and installation diagrams. Co-produced with Haus der elektronischen Künste Basel.

There is this hacker slogan: "We love your computer." We also get inside people's computers. And we are honored to be in somebody's computer. You are very close to a person when you are on his desktop. Jodi, 1997 This book is a collection of texts written by Domenico Quaranta between 2005 and 2010 for exhibition catalogues, printed magazines and online reviews: a pocket version of what the author would save from the universal flood, in a world without computers. Most of the fields of research he has developed are represented: from Net Art to Software Art and videogames, from biotechnologies to the debate around curating and the positioning of New Media Art in the contemporary landscape, and back to Net Art again.

"Beyond New Media Art" is the revised, updated version of a book first published in Italian with the title "Media, New Media, Postmedia" in 2010. Through the circulation of excerpts, reviews and interviews, the book produced some debate outside of Italy, which persuaded the author to release, three years later, this English translation. "Beyond New Media Art" is an attempt to analyze the current positioning of so-called New Media Art in the wider field of contemporary arts, and to explore the historical, sociological and conceptual reasons for its marginal position and under-recognition in recent art history. On the other hand, this book is also an attempt to suggest new critical and curatorial strategies to turn this marginalization into a thing of the past, and to stress the topicality of art addressing the media and the issues of the information age. Domenico Quaranta (http://domenicoquaranta.com) is an art critic, teacher and curator. He regularly writes for Flash Art and Artpulse.