Enfoldment and Infinity: An Islamic Genealogy of New Media Art

by Laura U. Marks

Tracing the connections—both visual and philosophical—between new media art and classical Islamic art. In both classical Islamic art and contemporary new media art, one point can unfold to reveal an entire universe. A fourteenth-century dome decorated with geometric complexity and a new media work that shapes a dome from programmed beams of both can inspire feelings of immersion and transcendence. In Enfoldment and Infinity , Laura Marks traces the strong similarities, visual and philosophical, between these two kinds of art. Her argument is more than metaphorical; she shows that the “Islamic” quality of modern and new media art is a latent, deeply enfolded, historical inheritance from Islamic art and thought. Marks proposes an aesthetics of unfolding and enfolding in which image, information, and the infinite image is an interface to information, and information (such as computer code or the words of the Qur'an) is an interface to the infinite. After demonstrating historically how Islamic aesthetics traveled into Western art, Marks draws explicit parallels between works of classical Islamic art and new media art, describing texts that burst into image, lines that multiply to form fractal spaces, “nonorganic life” in carpets and algorithms, and other shared concepts and images. Islamic philosophy, she suggests, can offer fruitful ways of understanding contemporary art.

Genres: Art

395 pages, Hardcover

First published September 30, 2010

Reviews

[Ema · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have yet to come across an art theory book that moved me so profoundly that I cried after finishing the last line. Every sentence felt like a labor of love, every thought exploded within my mind unfolding exciting new possibilities.

Laura U.Marks' book is one of profound insight, poetic prose, and an overwhelming confirmation of things I suspected, but lacked the scholarship and mastery of words that Marks possess.
As an artist I thank her for this book, as a student of the arts who was only taught one narrative and one way of thinking I thank her for this book, as a person I thank her for this book, for it has expanded my worldview and my ability to articulate thoughts and ideas I have struggled with for so long.
As one whose country is currently at war, I thank her for the epilogue.

[Alexander O. Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent art history-Deleuzian metaphysical synthesis. I really enjoyed how information was tied in more explicitly here than in Deleuze, and how algorithms are accounted as a "sensorial" thing.

My primary critique is that, as a scientist, it's really difficult to account for "touch" as literal touch without admitting superhuman characteristics of humans. So, although this does seem to draw out a theory, the basis upon which it seems to rest in psychology is closer to the phenomena of synesthesia.