Mainframe Experimentalism: Early Computing and the Foundations of the Digital Arts

Mainframe Experimentalism challenges the conventional wisdom that the digital arts arose out of Silicon Valley's technological revolutions in the 1970s. In fact, in the 1960s, a diverse array of artists, musicians, poets, writers, and filmmakers around the world were engaging with mainframe and mini-computers to create innovative new artworks that contradict the stereotypes of "computer art." Juxtaposing the original works alongside scholarly contributions by well-established and emerging scholars from several disciplines, Mainframe Experimentalism demonstrates that the radical and experimental aesthetics and political and cultural engagements of early digital art stand as precursors for the mobility among technological platforms, artistic forms, and social sites that has become commonplace today.



Author: Hannah Higgins
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 09/21/2012
Pages: 376
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.00w x 1.00d
ISBN13: 9780520268388
ISBN10: 0520268385
BISAC Categories:
- Art | History | Modern (Late 19th Century to 1945)
- Art | Digital

About the Author
Hannah B Higgins is Professor of Art History at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the author of Fluxus Experience (UC Press).

Douglas Kahn is Professor of Media and Innovation at the National Institute of Experimental Arts (NIEA) at the University of New South Wales, Australia. He is the coeditor of Source: Music of the Avant-garde (UC Press).