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Essays on electronic communication, cyberpunk culture, and rants and flames in cyberspace consider subjects such as the magazine Mondo 2000, the typewriter, virtual reality, feminism, comics, and erotica for cybernauts. Includes blurry b&w photos and illustrations, and an interviews with science fictions writers Samuel R. Delaney, Greg Tate, and Tricia Rose. Paper edition (unseen), $13.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.
The definitive biography of Edward Gorey, the eccentric master of macabre nonsense. ’A genius book about a bookish genius’ Daniel Handler, author of A Series of Unfortunate Events
The author explores the darkest corners of the American psyche--including the sexual fantasies of Star Trek fans, the hidden agendas of IQ tests, the homoerotic subtext of professional football, the poetic aspects of spam email and much more.
A wide-ranging collection of essays on millennial American culture that “marshals a vast pop vocabulary with easy wit” (The New York Times Book Review). From the far left to the far right, on talk radio and the op-ed page, more and more Americans believe that the social fabric is unraveling. Celebrity worship and media frenzy, suicidal cultists and heavily armed secessionists: modern life seems to have become a “pyrotechnic insanitarium,” Mark Dery says, borrowing a turn-of-the-century name for Coney Island. Dery elucidates the meaning to our madness, deconstructing American culture from mainstream forces like Disney and Nike to fringe phenomena like the Unabomber and alien invaders....
Mark Dery takes us on an electrifying tour of the high-tech underground.
A collaboration of political activism and participatory culture seeking to upend consumer capitalism, including interviews with The Yes Men, The Guerrilla Girls, among others. Coined in the 1980s, “culture jamming” refers to an array of tactics deployed by activists to critique, subvert, and otherwise “jam” the workings of consumer culture. Ranging from media hoaxes and advertising parodies to flash mobs and street art, these actions seek to interrupt the flow of dominant, capitalistic messages that permeate our daily lives. Employed by Occupy Wall Street protesters and the Russian feminist punk band Pussy Riot alike, culture jamming scrambles the signal, injects the unexpected, and ...
In the words of Dutch visual artist Paul Segers (b. 1976), Im trying to comprehend or react to current issues of the 21st century. A century characterized by acceleration, polarization and technological overload that seems to blur lines between reality and fiction with each passing day. What makes Segers nontraditional monograph so interesting is the visual journey he creates within four chapters, each including descriptions, extensive visuals and texts: The Methodfull of collage-like drawing of ominous military armaments like swarms of drones; The Infiltratorimages of performance works; The Machine HeadSegerss collection of mechanical inventions serving no purpose other than as metaphors for technological paradoxes; and Daily Practice the artists imagined reenactments of postmodern workforce businesses and practices. Included are essays by Sebastian Olma reflecting on the artist in the here and now, Ine Gevers on the role of Segers as performance artist and Mark Dery ruminating on what we can learn from this humor-filled artist.
The most compelling art form to emerge from the United States in the second half of the twentieth century, rock & roll stands in an edgy relationship with its own mythology, its own musicological history and the broader culture in which it plays a part. In Present Tense, Anthony DeCurtis brings together writers from a wide variety of fields to explore how rock & roll is made, consumed, and experienced in our time. In this collection, Greil Marcus creates a collage of words and pictures that evokes and explores Elvis Presley's grisly fate as an American cultural image, while Robert Palmer tells the gripping tale of the origins and meanings of the electric guitar. Rap music, MTV, and the issue...
Typecasting chronicles the emergence of the "science of first impression" and reveals how the work of its creators—early social scientists—continues to shape how we see the world and to inform our most fundamental and unconscious judgments of beauty, humanity, and degeneracy. In this groundbreaking exploration of the growth of stereotyping amidst the rise of modern society, authors Ewen & Ewen demonstrate "typecasting" as a persistent cultural practice. Drawing on fields as diverse as history, pop culture, racial science, and film, and including over one hundred images, many published here for the first time, the authors present a vivid portrait of stereotyping as it was forged by colonialism, industrialization, mass media, urban life, and the global economy.
2014 Locus Awards Finalist, Nonfiction Category In this hip, accessible primer to the music, literature, and art of Afrofuturism, author Ytasha Womack introduces readers to the burgeoning community of artists creating Afrofuturist works, the innovators from the past, and the wide range of subjects they explore. From the sci-fi literature of Samuel Delany, Octavia Butler, and N. K. Jemisin to the musical cosmos of Sun Ra, George Clinton, and the Black Eyed Peas' will.i.am, to the visual and multimedia artists inspired by African Dogon myths and Egyptian deities, the book's topics range from the "alien" experience of blacks in America to the "wake up" cry that peppers sci-fi literature, sermons, and activism. With a twofold aim to entertain and enlighten, Afrofuturists strive to break down racial, ethnic, and social limitations to empower and free individuals to be themselves.