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Thesis Info
- LABS ID
- 00022
- Thesis Title
- Art in the Information Age: Cybernetics, Software, Telematics, and the Conceptual Contributions of Art and Technology to Art History and Aesthetic Theory
- Author
- Edward Allen Shanken
- E-mail
- shanken AT artexetra.com
- 2nd Author
- 3rd Author
- Degree
- Ph.D.
- Year
- 2001
- Number of Pages
- 327
- University
- Duke University
- Thesis Supervisor
- Hans Van Miegroet, WJT Mitchell
- Supervisor e-mail
- Other Supervisor(s)
- Language(s) of Thesis
- English
- Department / Discipline
- Art History
- Copyright Ownership
- Edward A. Shanken
- Languages Familiar to Author
- French, German, Spanish
- URL where full thesis can be found
- Keywords
- art, technology, software, information, conceptual, burnham, ascott, telematics, cybernetics, language, systems theory, information theory, robotics, telerobotics, kac
- Abstract: 200-500 words
- This dissertation argues that the artistic use of technology demands greater recognition. Scholarship on twentieth century art generally has ignored or disparaged the artistic current otherwise known as Art and Technology. Art History has failed to recognize and incorporate into its canons the rich historical and theoretical underpinnings of this tendency. This oversight is especially conspicuous in the literatures inability to grasp how the sciences and technologies particular to the Information Age have shaped the formal and conceptual development of art since 1945. The research presented here employs a synthetic method drawing on diverse disciplines, archival research, correspondence, and personal interviews. The work of British artist Roy Ascott and American art critic Jack Burnham furnish central practical and theoretical frameworks and are discussed in detail. Their contributions support the dissertations thesis that the cultural manifestations of the late twentieth century can be better understood by closely analyzing the scientific and technological developments that have played a central role in shaping society. This study does not privilege science and technology as the engines of discovery that drive subsequent cultural developments, but demonstrates how artists have integrated art with science and technology in a praxis that interrogates key aspects of western epistemology and aesthetics. The dissertation examines how this praxis seeks to challenge conventional models of communication, such as aesthetic exchanges in which an authorial message is embedded in an object by an artist and decoded by an audience. By contrast, many works of Art and Technology (and artists theories about them) explicitly propose that richer forms of meaning can arise from a multi-directional flow of information in discursive networks. Such works stress the processes of artistic creation and audience participation. They emphasize the dematerialized forms of ideation and collaboration rather than the materiality of concrete art objects. The dissertation problematizes these aesthetic theories, but maintains that artistic meaning in the Information Age is not embedded in objects or individuals so much as it is abstracted in the collective production, manipulation, and distribution of information.