| Home News Releases | Calendar Contact |
Sources Bookshelf
MultiMedia from Wagner to virtual reality
Packer, Randal; Jordan Ken (ed.)
Publisher: Norton paperback, New York, USAYear Published: 2002 First Published: 2001
Pages: 458pp Price: $28.99 ISBN: 0-393-04979-5
Library of Congress Number: QA76.575.M8319 2001 Dewey: 006.7--dc21
Please see our media profile in Sources:
Sources Select Resources
Packer is a media critic and academic. Jordan has worked in new media as an editor and administrator. This book was originally published in 2001, with a slight expansion in 2002 as a more affordable paperback, geared to the student market. It is a collection of articles, ranging from the vision of Vannevar Bush (the seminal "As We May Think"), to William Burroughs ("The Future of the Novel"), Norbert Wiener (cybernetics), Tim Berners-Lee ("Information Management"), to the performance techniques of John Cage, to Alan Kay's notebook-sized computer, to Allan Karpov's 1966 "Untitled Guidelines for Happenings" (he coined the term), William Gibson, J.C.R. Licklider's man-computer symbiosis. These major writings of the pioneers of multimedia give it all a sense of history and of context, of being a prime document.
Thirty-seven articles (more than the hardback edition) are organized on themes of multimedia integration, interactivity, hypermedia, immersion, and narrativity. Each essay is introduced by the editors and put into context. The 25-page overall introduction (plus the contextual intros before the essays) provide a really good summary of the whole field. Endnotes comprise references. There is a Web site at www.artmuseum.net/w2vr with links to texts, photos, videos, timelines, profiles on people mentioned in the book, and visual artworks.
Audience or interest level: students, artists, critics and teachers.
Some interesting facts: given the eclectic nature of this book, we're indeed lucky it was published with consecutive pagination.
What I don't like about this resource: the importance of Wagner needed more punching up, but that's just a minor quibble.
What I do like about this resource: there is actually an index, rarely seen in anthologies. This one is almost 30 pages long.
Quality-to-Price Ratio: 95.
[Review by Dean Tudor]
Subject Headings
© Sources 2023. The information provided is copyright and may not be reproduced in any form or by any means (whether electronic, mechanical or photographic), or stored in an electronic retrieval system, without written permission of the publisher.