Skip to Main Content

Art & Art History

Suggested Databases

Selected Books

Coded territories : tracing Indigenous pathways in new media art

This collection of essays provides a historical and contemporary context for Indigenous new media arts practice in Canada. The writers are established artists, scholars, and curators who cover thematic concepts and underlying approaches to new media from a distinctly Indigenous perspective. Through discourse and narrative analysis, the writers discuss a number of topics ranging from how Indigenous worldviews inform unique approaches to new media arts practice to their own work and specific contemporary works.

Coding art : the four steps to creative programming with the processing language

Finally, a book on creative programming, written directly for artists and designers! Rather than following a computer science curriculum, this book is aimed at creatives who are working in the intersection of design, art, and education. In this book you'll learn to apply computation into the creative process by following a four-step process, and through this, land in the cross section of coding and art, with a focus on practical examples and relevant work structures.

Machine Art in the Twentieth Century

An investigation of artists' engagement with technical systems, tracing art historical lineages that connect works of different periods. "Machine art" is neither a movement nor a genre, but encompasses diverse ways in which artists engage with technical systems. In this book, Andreas Broeckmann examines a variety of twentieth- and early twenty-first-century artworks that articulate people's relationships with machines.

Computers and Art

This work gathers together contributions from a broad spectrum of individuals concerned with the use of the computer as a tool for artists. The approaches taken vary; different contributors look at the historical, philosophical and practical implications of the use of computer technology in art practice. Stuart Mealing looks at the future for developments across a broad span of the arts, from sculpture to ballet. Mealing is the author of The Art and Science of Computer Animation and Mac 3D.

Mainframe Experimentalism : Early Computing and the Foundations of the Digital Arts

Mainframe Experimentalism challenges the conventional wisdom that the digital arts arose out of Silicon Valley's technological revolutions in the 1970s. In fact, in the 1960s, a diverse array of artists, musicians, poets, writers, and filmmakers around the world were engaging with mainframe and mini-computers to create innovative new artworks that contradict the stereotypes of "computer art."

Cover Art links to catalog record

Art of the Digital Age

This illustrated survey of the experimental world of digital art explores the ways in which traditional painting and sculpture have been significantly changed by digital technologies, citing the emergence of such new forms as net art, digital installation and virtual reality.

Cover Art links to catalog record

Digital art and meaning: reading kinetic poetry, text machines, mapping art, and interactive installations

In a world increasingly dominated by the digital, the critical response to digital art generally ranges from hype to counterhype. Popular writing about specific artworks seldom goes beyond promoting a given piece and explaining how it operates, while scholars and critics remain unsure about how to interpret and evaluate them. This is where Roberto Simanowski intervenes, demonstrating how such critical work can be done. Digital Art and Meaning offers close readings of varied examples from genres of digital art such as kinetic concrete poetry, computer-generated text, interactive installation, mapping art, and information sculpture.

More selected books

Cover Art links to catalog record

Digital art history : a subject in transition

This book looks at the transformation that Art and Art history is undergoing through engagement with the digital revolution. Since its initiation in 1985, CHArt (Computers and the History of Art) has set out to promote interaction between the rapidly developing new Information Technology and the study and practice of Art. It has become increasingly clear in recent years that this interaction has led, not just to the provision of new tools for the carrying out of existing practices, but to the evolution of unprecedented activities and modes of thought.

Computer graphics, computer art

This book describes concepts and tools for computer graphics, computer animation, picture processing, computer-aided design, computer music, computer choreography and computer poetry. In addition, it gives a historical review from the origins of computer art to current developments.

A Companion to Digital Art

Reflecting the dynamic creativity of its subject, this definitive guide spans the evolution, aesthetics, and practice of today's digital art, combining fresh, emerging perspectives with the nuanced insights of leading theorists.

Digital Art

Here Christiane Paul surveys the developments in digital art from its appearance in the early 1990s right up to the present day, and looks ahead to what the future may hold. Drawing a distinction between work that uses digital technology as a tool to produce traditional forms and work that uses it as a medium to create new types of art, she discusses all the key artists and works.

Renderosity : digital art for the 21st century

Renderosity refers to a magazine of which noted digital artist Vysniauskas is a former editor, as well as to a website that serves as a central online gallery for digital images. She and Grant, author of award-winning fantasy art books, feature 21 portfolios showcasing the best of digital art. Accompanying the some 200 color images are brief technical and artist autobiographical notes.