Overview

Blending artist theory, personal memoir, satire, and fictional narratives, a noted net artist constructs a poetics of net art that parallels his practice. This rich collection of writings by pioneering digital artist Mark Amerika mixes (and remixes) personal memoir, net art theory, fictional narrative, satirical reportage, scholarly history, and network-infused language art. META/DATA is a playful, improvisatory, multitrack ""digital sampling"" of Amerika's writing from 1993 to 2005 that tells the early history of a net art world ""gone wild"" while simultaneously constructing a parallel poetics of net art that complements Amerika's own artistic practice. Unlike other new media artists who may create art to justify their theories, Amerika documents the emergence of new media art forms while he creates them. Presenting a multifaceted view of the digital art scene on subjects ranging from interactive storytelling to net art, live VJing, online curating, and Web publishing, Amerika gives us ""Spontaneous Theories,"" ""Distributed Fictions"" (including his groundbreaking GRAMMATRON, the helpful ""Insider's Guide to Avant-Garde Capitalism,"" and others), the more scholarly ""Academic Remixes,"" ""Net Dialogues"" (peer-to-peer theoretical explorations with other artists and writers), and the digital salvos of ""Amerika Online"" (among them, ""Surf-Sample-Manipulate: Playgiarism on the Net,"" ""The Private Life of a Network Publisher,"" and satirical thoughts on ""Writing As Hactivism""). META/DATA also features a section of full-color images, including some of Amerika's most well-known and influential works. Provocative, digressive, nomadic, and fun to read, Amerika's texts call to mind the cadences of Gertrude Stein, the Beats, cyberpunk fiction, and even The Daily Show more than they do the usual new media theorizing. META/DATA maps the world of net culture with Amerika as guide and resident artist.

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9780262513142

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Reviews

Meta/Data perfectly captures the essence and style of pioneering net artist and online fiction writer Mark Amerika. Featuring a mix of scholarly theory, personal narrative, and conversations with peers, the book provides both meta data on the artist's multifaceted body of work and insightful commentary on digital poetics and culture. The personae Amerika has created for himself--from 'digital thoughtographer' to VJ as artist-researcher--are reflected as different viewpoints in the book's stories, theoretical essays, and dialogues, and make it a multilinear read that mirrors the diversity of digital culture. --Christiane Paul, Adjunct Curator of New Media Arts, Whitney Museum of American Art Mark Amerika is at the cutting edge of developments in both art and technology. META/DATA is an indispensable guide to the promises and potentials of new media--and also to the hype, irony, and disappointment that all too often surround them. --Steven Shaviro, DeRoy Professor of English, Wayne State University Mark Amerika is a hacker. He hacks language, image, sound, identities, cultures. He plays space, time, and tech like a saxophone. He plays out, way out sometimes, but he will always beckon you to join him. His writings are like invitations to a happening party you don't know you are already at. It's dense, it's hard, but it flows, and it's fun. What more could you want? --McKenzie Wark, author of Gamer Theory

"""Elmer's study of profiling zeroes in on a key aspect of modern media spaces. He takes us beyond the study of texts and contexts to look at the forms of linkage and feedback that media regimes use to define and delimit the role of the consumer and the citizen. This is a great book for anybody trying to puzzle out how media, technology, power, and subjectivity function in the contemporary world.""--McKenzie Wark, author of *Gamer Theory* "" Meta/Data perfectly captures the essence and style of pioneering net artist and online fiction writer Mark Amerika. Featuring a mix of scholarly theory, personal narrative, and conversations with peers, the book provides both meta data on the artist""s multifaceted body of work and insightful commentary on digital poetics and culture. The personae Amerika has created for himselffrom ""digital thoughtographer"" to VJ as artist-researcherare reflected as different viewpoints in the book""s stories, theoretical essays, and dialogues, and make it a multilinear read that mirrors the diversity of digital culture."" Christiane Paul , Adjunct Curator of New Media Arts, Whitney Museum of American Art ""Mark Amerika is at the cutting edge of developments in both art and technology. META/DATA is an indispensable guide to the promises and potentials of new mediaand also to the hype, irony, and disappointment that all too often surround them."" Steven Shaviro , DeRoy Professor of English, Wayne State University ""*First Person* makes an invaluable contribution to the current discussion surrounding new media narratives, computer games, and the performative ties that bind them. The anthology brings together major players in the field who discuss their ideas in the appropriately open-ended format of statements and responses, all of which shed light on the aesthetic and social implications of our new experiences of stories.""--Christiane Paul, Adjunct Curator of New Media Arts, Whitney Museum of American Art ""*Unit Operations* is a major milestone on the path to establishing a framework for analyzing videogames as important cultural artifacts of our time. Proposing a comparative approach to videogame criticism that is equally relevant for humanists and technologists, Ian Bogost weaves philosophy, psychoanalysis, literature, film, media theory, informatics, software, and videogames into a narrative that reveals how these seemingly disparate fields relate to and inform each other. Unit operations -- discrete, programmatic units of meaning -- are used as the conceptual tool for unpacking complex relationships between different worlds: criticism and computation, genetics and complex adaptive systems, and narrative spaces from *Casablanca* and *Half-Life* to *Ulysses* and *Grand Theft Auto*.""--Christiane Paul, Adjunct Curator of New Media Arts, Whitney Museum of American Art ""Mark Amerika is at the cutting edge of developments in both art and technology. *META/DATA* is an indispensable guide to the promises and potentials of new media -- and also to the hype, irony, and disappointment that all too often surround them.""--Steven Shaviro, DeRoy Professor of English, Wayne State University ""*Meta/Data* perfectly captures the essence and style of pioneering net artist and online fiction writer Mark Amerika. Featuring a mix of scholarly theory, personal narrative, and conversations with peers, the book provides both meta data on the artist's multifaceted body of work and insightful commentary on digital poetics and culture. The personae Amerika has created for himself -- from 'digital thoughtographer' to VJ as artist-researcher -- are reflected as different viewpoints in the book's stories, theoretical essays, and dialogues, and make it a multilinear read that mirrors the diversity of digital culture.""--Christiane Paul, Adjunct Curator of New Media Arts, Whitney Museum of American Art"

Author Information

Mark Amerika, named a ""Time Magazine 100 Innovator"" in 2001, is an interdisciplinary artist and Associate Professor in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Colorado at Boulder. His works include the epic online narrative GRAMMATRON, selected for the 2000 Whitney Biennial; the sound art work PHON:E:ME, commissioned by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art in Western Australia; and FILMTEXT 2.0, initially commissioned by Sony PlayStation 2 as part of a major retrospective at the ICA in London. He is the author of two novels, The Kafka Chronicles and Sexual Blood. In 1993 he became founder and publisher of Alt-X.

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