[Reader-list] New Book on Multi-media

[Monica Narula]

For further details email Ken Jordan <ken at kenjordan.tv>

--list admin.

MULTIMEDIA: FROM WAGNER TO VIRTUAL REALITY
edited by Randall Packer and Ken Jordan
foreword by William Gibson
published by W.W. Norton, 400 pp., $27.95
publication date: July 23, 2001 (US), Sept 19 (UK)


"This book is one start toward a different sort of history.... I 
recommend this book to you with an earnestness that I have seldom 
felt for any collection of historic texts.  This is, in large part, 
where the bodies are buried.  Assembled in this way, in such close 
proximity, these visions give off strange sparks." - from the 
foreword by William Gibson

MULTIMEDIA: FROM WAGNER TO VIRTUAL REALITY presents the untold 
history behind the interfaces, links, and interactivity we all take 
for granted today. This groundbreaking work traces a fertile and 
fascinating series of collaborations between the arts and the 
sciences, going back to the years just after World War II -- and even 
further, to composer Richard Wagner, whose ideas about the immersive 
nature of music theater foreshadowed the experience of virtual 
reality.

Among the essential articles gathered in the book are the Futurists' 
1916 manifesto on cinema, which declared that the new medium would 
unite all media and replace the book; Vannevar Bush's 1945 Atlantic 
Monthly essay that leads directly to the hyperlinks in today's 
multimedia; J.C.R. Licklider's groundbreaking idea in 1960 that 
people and computers could collaborate in creative work; Nam June 
Paik's 1984 essay proposing that satellite technology would encourage 
a global information art; Tim Berners-Lee's 1989 proposal for a 
document-sharing network, which became the basis of the World Wide 
Web; and William Gibson's discussion of how he came up with the word 
"cyberspace." With an insightful introduction to the volume and 
critical commentaries on each article, editors Randall Packer and Ken 
Jordan lead us through the groundbreaking developments of the 
multimedia story.

The book publication completes a unique hybrid publication project 
that joins W.W. Norton with Intel Corporation's ArtMuseum.net, to 
present an untold history of multimedia.  The book and the Web site, 
which was launched in June, 2000, are meant to work in tandem. 
On-line, MULTIMEDIA: FROM WAGNER TO VIRTUAL REALITY is a dynamic, 
growing resource featuring hyperlinked texts and a wealth of 
multimedia documentation. Please visit the site at 
http://www.artmuseum.net.