We are surrounded by images as never before: on Flickr, Facebook,
and YouTube; on thousands of television channels; in digital games
and virtual worlds; in media art and science. Without new efforts
to visualize complex ideas, structures, and systems, today¿s
informatio explosion would be unmanageable. The digital image
represents endless options for manipulation; images seem capable of
changing interactively or even autonomously. This volume offers
systematic and interdisciplinary reflections on these new image
worlds and new analytical approaches to the visual. Imagery in the
21st Century examines this revolution in various fields, with
researchers from the natural sciences and the humanities meeting to
achieve a deeper understanding of the meaning and impact of the
image in our time.
"Internationally renowned contributors from the arts, science & humanities examine this latest revolution of the image and its implications for our contemporary globalized media society...thus a highly recommended read to discover individually." -- Pamela C. Scorzin, Journal of Art History "I was thrilled to read Grau's and Veigl's Imagery in the 21st Century and I will use it in my teaching. Imagery in the 21st Century is a fabulous resource for the reflection on contemporary visuality." -- Trebor Scholz, NEW SCHOOL NY, ARTHIST "The authors systematically make comprehensible the challenges of visuality in the 21st century, and for the detailed analysis of concrete problems apply new tools and analysis forms in image science and digital humanities." -- Mikhail Stepanov, International Journal of Culture Research "The editors demonstrate the importance to recontextualise the latest images with historic art and a poetic need of reinterpreting old optical media for a better understanding and redefinition of the image in its historic dimension." -- Cleomar Rocha, Visualidades, Brasil "Even though we have just stepped into the 21st century, the texts in the book are... indispensable reading for the development of visual and media literacy essential for communication and social interaction in a dominantly visual world we live in." -- Jelena Guga, Nova Misao, Serbia "The analphabets of the future will not be those, who cannot read,but those who don' t know how to see and understand visually. The anthology Imagery in the 21st Century by Oliver Grau has seen and understood this prophetic writing on the wall by Walter Benjamin." -- Bent Fausing, Mediaculture
Oliver Grau is Professor for Image Science and Dean of the Department for Cultural Studies at Danube University. He is the author of Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion (2003) and editor of MediaArtHistories (2007), both published by the MIT Press.
