Synthetics: Aspects of Art and Technology in Australia, 1956-1975

Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2011. Hardcover. Good DJ/VG book (Ex-Library Review Copy from Visual Studies Workshop with small white sticker on the spine and rear endpaper; DJ is lightly edgeworn/scuffed/smudged; boards are lightly edgeworn; interior is clean; binding is solid.). Black DJ with color illustration and white and blue lettering; light blue boards with black lettering; xii, 395 pp.; 16 unnumbered pages of plates; richly illustrated; ephemera laid-in. New technologies continually arise, offering repeated opportunities to artists in search of the technologically novel. The author calls this phenomenon the "rolling new," and in this book he describes how artists in Australia used new technologies in their art, from the early days of digital computing in the 1950s to a landmark exhibition in 1975. He looks at not only the artists and the artworks they produced but also at the evolution of computing technologies and video displays as these new forms of media developed into tools that artists could use. -- DJ.