Variant Analyses: Interrogations of New Media Art and Culture

This collection of essays on technology, art and culture is part of my archive of nearly two decades of writing about what would become New Media society. If you’re not familiar with my participation in communities like Nettime, Thingist, Rhizome and Netbehaviour, as well as groups like Haymarket RIOT, Second Front, TMark, The Yes Men and others, I’ll tell you about why my interests could be seen as broad, but are squarely focused on the intersection of culture (including art), society, technology and politics. Much of my life has been touched deeply by this combination of effects; my mother was an artist, I was raised on Star Trek and science fiction in the 60s, I was given electronics kits and computers as soon as they were available, and my brother marched in the Moratorium during the Vietnam War, the first mediated war. I sprang forth from the technocultural vat, and my work has always been a reflection on my native culture, whether you would call it McLuhan’s Global Village, 90’s West Coast Cyberdelia, Baudrillard’s Mediascape, or the larger noosphere of Infoculture.

The general themes that the essays are grouped in represent the main areas of inquiry my work has followed in critical theory, New Media culture and activism, New Media art, history and assorted cultural topics, such as literature and newer uncategorized works. It’s important to mention that I have a number of writings on the area of New Media art curation, but concerns regarding space and breadth place them elsewhere. Some curatorial essays are included in Christiane Paul’s excellent anthology, New Media in the White Cube and Beyond: Curatorial Models for Digital Art,1 or around the Net, etc.
[Amsterdam: 2013]

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