Abstract Video: net.video.abstraction

Abstract Video: net.video.abstraction is a conversation between Charlotte and three curator/historians who deal with the digital or new media art and art online specifically in which each bring an example – including work by Thomson&Craighead, Vuk Cosic, Rosa Menkman and Lorna Mills. Questions of the site of access to the moving image work – from websites to downloads – and its familiar forms (webcams, gifs) are addressed. The book includes contributions on Transmission, Interference and Reception by authors including Michael Connor, Katja Kwastek, and John G Hanhardt.

Offering historical and theoretical positions from a variety of art historians, artists, curators, and writers, this groundbreaking collection is the first substantive sourcebook on abstraction in moving-image media. With a particular focus on art since 2000, Abstract Video addresses a longer history of experimentation in video, net art, installation, new media, expanded cinema, visual music, and experimental film. Editor Gabrielle Jennings―a video artist herself―reveals as never before how works of abstract video are not merely, as the renowned curator Kirk Varnedoe once put it, “pictures of nothing,” but rather amorphous, ungovernable spaces that encourage contemplation and innovation. In explorations of the work of celebrated artists such as Jeremy Blake, Mona Hatoum, Pierre Huyghe, Ryoji Ikeda, Takeshi Murata, Diana Thater, and Jennifer West, alongside emerging artists, this volume presents fresh and vigorous perspectives on a burgeoning and ever-changing arena of contemporary art.