In Touch; Laura U. Marks develops a critical approach more tactile than visual; an intensely physical and sensuous engagement with works of media art that enriches our understanding and experience of these works and of art itself. These critical; theoretical; and personal essays serve as a guide to developments in nonmainstream media art during the past ten years-sexual representation debates; documentary ethics; the shift from analog to digital media; a new social obsession with smell. Marks takes up well-known artists like experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs and mysterious animators the Brothers Quay; and introduces groundbreaking; lesser-known film; video; and digital artists. From this emerges a materialist theory-an embodied; erotic relationship to art and to the world. Markss approach leads to an appreciation of the works mortal bodies: films volatile emulsion; videos fragile magnetic base; crash-prone Net art; it also offers a productive alternative to the popular understanding of digital media as "virtual" and immaterial. Weaving a continuous fabric from philosophy; fiction; science; dreams; and intimate experience; Touch opens a new world of art media to readers.Laura U. Marks; associate professor of film studies at Carleton University; Ottawa; is a critic and curator of artists independent media. She is the author of The Skin of the Film (2000).
#3106083 in eBooks 2010-09-13 2010-09-13File Name: B0042FZYG4
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