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The artists presented in the book include Gretchen Bender, Michael Brodsky, Michael Endsdorf, Carol Flax, Ester Parada, MANUAL (Ed Hill and Suzanne Bloom), Keith Piper,Jim Pomeroy, George Legracly,Jim Campbell, Rocio Goff, Lynn Hershman, Alan Kath, Ken Feingold and Grahame Weinbren. Each artist’s section includes an artist’s statement about the work included in the show and a handsomely produced 5-8 page section of illustrations of the work. Many of the artists’ statements seem well thought out and provide interesting insight into the perspectives that inform the work. Digital work has not, historically speaking, been well presented in survey books, with perhaps one or two images representing an artist’s body of work. This book’s focus on particular pieces offers a more in-depth understanding of the works-something desperately needed in art publishing about new media. The book also provides five essays: Charles Stainback’s “Introduction”; Tim Druckrey’s “Revisioning Technology ”;Regina Cornwell’s “From the Analytical Engine to Lady Ada’s Art”; Florian Rotzer’s “ImagesWithin Iniages , or From the Image to the Virtual World”;and Brenda Laurel’s “On Dramatic Interaction.” Druckrey offers a strong essay that deconstructs the fantasy that the new media present total revolution. Druckrey urges that we “look back over our shoulders at the future ”-that is, that we try to understand the cultural context of the developments . He uses the history of photography and the nariatives that lie underneath technological innovations to illustrate the approach. The essay suggests that each “revolution”may actually be assimilated into larger cultural themes. Regina Cornwell’s essay challenges the notion that the computer is a neutral mind amplifier. She notes that it privileges certain kinds of perspectives over others-for example, the explicit over the implicit, ambiguous and nietaphoric ; the objective over the interpreted ; and data and information over knowledge and wisdom. She warns about the dangers of ;I new rationalism and consumerism. ing new innovations.The latter are portrayed as clueless, misguided technoeuphorists who lack analytical insights about the real meanings of their technological enterprises. While there is merit in enriching the ways of thinking about the intersection of technology and culture, the hyper-certitude of critical theory is in danger of becoming a new orthodoxy. Shows are curated in such a way that artists who do not display proper critical perspectives are automatically excluded. If not over-restricted , the arts could provide a useful arena for investigating the ideas of both the techno-optimists and the technoskeptics . The book is useful in what it does, but it does not totally encompass the range of ideas that needs to be considered . FAIR USE: THE STORY OF THE LETTER uAND THE NUMERAL 2 by Negativland. Seeland Press, Concord , CA, U.S.A., 1995. 270 pp., illus. Paper, $19.95. ISBN: 0-9643496-0-4. Reviewed b)~ Clqf Pickover,IBM TliomasJ. WatsonResearch Center, YorlttownHeights, NY 10598, U.S.A. E-mail: cclijjf@watson.ibm.corn>. These days many artists and writers are interested in the legal notion of “fair use,” which helps us understandjust how much material we can use from other sources in our own work without legal problems. This book tells the story of two lawsuitsinvolving the rock group Negativland and their parody of a song by another rock group, U2: “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” The book takes the reader deep inside Negativland’s legal, ethical and artistic odyssey that began when the group used a 35-second sample of U2’s recording of the song and when it made a CD cover design that, at first glance, actually made Negativland’s CD appear to be a new release by U2. According to the “fair use” doctrine, unauthorized reproduction of copyrighted materials is permissible for such purposes as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship or reposes as teaching or scholarship and is nonprofit. 2. The nature of the copyrighted work. For example, fair use sometimes suggests that teachers can make single copies of the following for use in research, instruction or preparation for teaching: book chapters; articles from periodicals or newspapers; short stories, essays or poems; and charts, graphs, diagrams, drawings, cartoons or pictures from...

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