Perceptive and entertaining investigations of digital culture.
For a growing number of people, virtual activities on the internet are becoming more significant than the lives they actually lead in the real world. Others are skeptical or even alarmed by the seemingly inevitable technological developments in our digital age. In his work, Aram Bartholl investigates this dichotomy and the blurred dynamics in between with a playfully ironic ingenuity.
This first comprehensive monograph offers entry to Bartholl's entertaining art in which space and cyberspace mingle and mangle each other--a realm that uses as little technology as possible while still speaking a digital language. Aram Bartholl: The Speed Book features savvy experiments with transitions from the virtual to the physical: USB sticks embedded into walls, buildings, and curbs; giant real-life versions of Google's red map markers positioned in public spaces; portraits generated from search results.
An introduction by critic and curator Domenico Quaranta as well as essays by science fiction writer Bruce Sterling, art critics, and fellow artists guide readers through a wonderfully skewed version of our society under the influence of the internet, something Sterling refers to as
