Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 16, No. 32.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
[1] From: Arun-Kumar Tripathi (53)
<tripathi@amadeus.statistik.uni-dortmund.de>
Subject: Space, Identity, and Embodiment in Virtual Reality
[2] From: Arun-Kumar Tripathi (27)
<tripathi@amadeus.statistik.uni-dortmund.de>
Subject: Writing Machines
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 21 May 2002 06:45:15 +0100
From: Arun-Kumar Tripathi
<tripathi@amadeus.statistik.uni-dortmund.de>
Subject: Space, Identity, and Embodiment in Virtual Reality
Digital Sensations: Space, Identity, and Embodiment in Virtual Reality by
Ken Hillis, University of Minnesota Press (October 1999, 248 Pages, 5
black-and-white photos, 2 figures IS AVAILABLE!!)
"Digital Sensations is the best critique of virtual reality's implications
we now have. Rather than breathlessly celebrating the limitless digital
future, Hillis carefully explores its continuities with certain earlier
tendencies in Western culture and shows their common dangers." --Martin
Jay--
Virtual reality is in the news and in the movies, on TV and in the air.
Why is the technology--or the idea of the technology--so prevalent
precisely now? What does it mean--what does it do--to us? Digital
Sensations looks closely at the ways representational forms generated by
communication technologies--especially digital/optical virtual
technologies--affect the "lived" world.
Virtual reality, or VR, is a technological reproduction of the process of
perceiving the real; yet that process is "filtered" through the social
realities and embedded cultural assumptions about human bodies,
perception, and space held by the technology's creators.
Through critical histories of the technology--of vision, light, space, and
embodiment--Digital Sensations traces the various and often contradictory
intellectual and metaphysical impulses behind the Western transcendental
wish to achieve an ever more perfect copy of the real. Because virtual
technologies are new, these histories also address the often unintended
and underconsidered consequences--such as alienating new forms of
surveilance and commodification--flowing from their rapid dissemination.
Current and proposed virtual technologies refelct a Western desire to
escape the body.
Exploring topics from VR and other earlier visual technologies, Digital
Sensations' penetrative perspective on the cultural power of place and
space broadens our view of the interplay between social relations and
technology.
"His discussion is ambitious; not only does he bring together multiple
disciplines and philosophies, he traces history from the Renaissance to
the present." [Technical Communication Quarterly]
Ken Hillis has written a wise interrogation of the impact of virtual
environments and the marriage of new digital and visual technologies.
Carefully balancing between the dangers of all-too-common and too-easy
skepticism and the risk of being seduced by the new medium, this book
analyses the manner in which the use of technologies to produce virtual
environments (VEs) changes the bases on which assumptions concerning
democratic politics and identity flourish." Space and Culture
Ken Hillis received his Ph.D. in Human Geography from the University of
Wisconsin at Madison in May, 1996. His dissertation -- Geography, Identity
and Embodiment in Virtual Reality -- looked at Information Technologies
(IT), new media, and more specifically at Virtual Reality (VR). He argued
the importance of distinguishing the technologies that collectively
constitute the "platform" that individuals rely on to "enter" virtual
environments from these environments or "worlds" in and of themselves.
((Ken Hillis is assistant professor in the Department of Communication
Studies and adjunct professor of geography at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill.))
Thank you!
best regards,
Arun
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 21 May 2002 06:45:59 +0100
From: Arun-Kumar Tripathi
<tripathi@amadeus.statistik.uni-dortmund.de>
Subject: Writing Machines
A new book, "Writing Machines" (November 2002, ISBN 0-262-08311-6) SERIES:
Mediaworks Pamphlets by N. Katherine Hayles and Designed by Anne Burdick
is available!
Tracing a journey from the 1950s through the 1990s, N. Katherine Hayles
uses the autobiographical persona of Kaye to explore how literature has
transformed itself from inscriptions rendered as the flat durable marks of
print to the dynamic images of CRT screens, from verbal texts to the
diverse sensory modalities of multimedia works, from books to technotexts.
Weaving together Kaye.s pseudo-autobiographical narrative with a
theorization of contemporary literature in media-specific terms, Hayles
examines the ways in which literary texts in every genre and period mutate
as they are reconceived and rewritten for electronic formats. As
electronic documents become more pervasive, print appears not as the sea
in which we swim, transparent because we are so accustomed to its
conventions, but rather as a medium with its own assumptions,
specificities, and inscription practices. Hayles explores works that focus
on the very inscription technologies that produce them, examining three
writing machines in depth: Talan Memmott.s groundbreaking electronic work
Lexia to Perplexia, Mark Z. Danielewski.s cult postprint novel House of
Leaves, and Tom Phillips.s artist.s book A Humument. Hayles concludes by
speculating on how technotexts affect the development of contemporary
subjectivity.
Writing Machines is the second volume in the Mediawork Pamphlets series.
More details at
Thanking you!
With regards,
Arun Tripathi
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