User: InfoTechnoDemo

by Peter Lunenfeld

In these essays, Peter Lunenfeld does theory and criticism "in real time," looking at (among other subjects) art, video games, book design, "techno-masturbation," The Matrix, and life extension diets. "Readers will have to determine for themselves," he writes, "if this range is symptomatic of pluralism or promiscuity." User illuminates the patterns and repetitions that link -- for example -- nanotechnology to electronic music, artist/archivist Harry Smith to architect/superstar Rem Koolhaas, Pontiacs to open source software. And User offers a reading experience that is more vivid than Mieke Gerritzen's bold visuals create a book that is also a designed object -- a compact matrix of words and image as potent as a smart bomb.User is not a manifesto. Lunenfeld means these essays -- which were written originally for the international magazine artext -- to be translator utilities, bridging the gap between the art world and the design establishment, between journalism and the seminar room. Pondering the "permanent present" of today's visual culture, Lunenfeld blames the twenty-first century's inability to imagine the future on a movie and an the too-influential aesthetic of Blade Runner and the ubiquitous desktop of nested files, icons, trash cans, and cascading windows, he argues, have become impediments to our thinking beyond the present. Lunenfeld writes about Euro-Disney, Matthew Barney, the VHS pornucopia that killed off Betamax, the computer as a "solitude enhancement machine," our embarrassing Y2K hysteria (when TEOTWAWKI -- The End of the World As We Know It -- didn't happen), and other faces of what he calls "that overwhelming diversity which for lack of a better term we call the present."

172 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2005

Reviews

[Melissa · Rating 1 out of 5]

Uhh! I feel as if the author just needed a way to force others on his opinions and this "book" was how he did it. This was mandatory reading for one of my college classes and so I drug myself through it. As if the writing was not bad enough, the design was horrible. I am all for mixing up the layout of pages to create interesting visuals (if they aid in making the point) but I feel as if the author did this to give SOMETHING of interest at all. More than that the copy was all over the place and often the choice of colors made it near impossible to read. Simple color wheel: don't place colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel on top of each other, it causes "distress" in the views eye. ie. Orange on blue.

I say again Uhhh!

[DWRL Library · Rating 4 out of 5]

A mashup of theory and popular culture, book and graphic art piece, print “artifact” and digital interactivity, Peter Lunenfeld’s series of short essays engages a range of media we encounter in our daily lives, drawing connections between technologies, genres and cultural phenomena. With bold visuals by Mieke Gerritzen, the book itself is a study of textual and disciplinary boundaries and hybridity, making it worth a look for those interested in visual rhetoric or inventive approaches to scholarship.