A Philosophy of Computer Art

What is computer art? Do the concepts we usually employ to talk about art, such as ‘meaning’, ‘form’ or ‘expression’ apply to computer art? A Philosophy of Computer Art is the first book to explore these questions. Dominic Lopes argues that computer art challenges some of the basic tenets of traditional ways of thinking about and making art and that to understand computer art we need to place particular emphasis on terms such as ‘interactivity’ and ‘user’. Drawing on a wealth of examples he also explains how the roles of the computer artist and computer art user distinguishes them from makers and spectators of traditional art forms and argues that computer art allows us to understand better the role of technology as an art medium.

1. The machine in the ghost 2. A computer art form 3. Live wires: computing interaction 4. Work to rule 5. Artist to audience 6. Computer art poetics 7. Atari to art Envoi: a new Laocoön. Notes. Bibliography. Index

Dominic McIver Lopes is Associate Dean in the Faculty of Arts and Distinguished University Scholar and Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of two books on the philosophy of art, and editor (with Berys Gaut) of The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics.