Behind the Picture: Art and Evidence in the Italian Renaissance by Martin Kemp (review)

Reviews 71 poetic, his argument lacks the adventure of Hegel’s. There are no struggles, trials or climactic transformations. Rather than theoretical complexity, Collective Intelligence stands out for the generosity of its ideas. The challenge of making knowledge immanent to itself offers significant design opportunities. Lévy’s book is threaded with references to a French system he calls the “knowledge tree,” which maps the skills resident in a community. This is a useful pretext for artists attempting to design virtual spaces for mirroring collectivities. Without acknowledging him, Lévy’s ideas reflect the theories of Emile Durkheim, for whom religions are primarily ways for societies to represent themselves. Read with a degree of speculative license, Collective Intelligence can offer artists of digital media the opportunity to renew their contract with society and open new avenues for cultural , political and economic life—a window of possibility not seen since the era of Russian constructivism in the 1920s. Though the way ahead may not be as smooth as Lévy suggests, he certainly raises our expectations about what it might contain. DIGITAL DILEMMA edited by Arthur and Marilouise Kroker. St. Martin’s Press, New York, NY, U.S.A., 1997. $16.95. ISBN: 0-31217327 -0. Reviewed by Stephen Wilson, Conceptual/ Information Arts, Art Department, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA 94132, U.S.A. E-mail: . “Image the world, but understand nothing /The real can no longer keep up to the speed of the image. Reality shudders and collapses and fragments into the vortex of many different alternative realities: some cybernetic, some designer , some residual, some an outmoded stock of the vanishing real.” So starts the “Slow Media” section of the introduction to Digital Dilemma. Theorists celebrate/deconstruct the present era of dissolving significations. Digital Dilemma is one recent addition to the Krokers’ remarkable Cultural Text series of books that attempts to throw light on the current state of mediated culture. It investigates what is gained and lost in moving to the digital future. Digital Dilemma collects essays in a series of sections including “30 CyberDays in San Francisco,” “Digital Futures ,” “Net Politics,” “Memetic Flesh” and “Global Algorithm.” Samples of the articles and authors in the “Digital Futures ” section include “It’s Better to be Inspired than Wired” by R.U. Sirius; “Unstable Networks” by Bruce Sterling; “Global Debt and Parallel Universe” by Jean Baudrillard; and “Cyberwar, God and Television: An Interview with Paul Virilio.” Samples from the “Net Politics” section include “Digital Humanism: The Processed World of Marshall McLuhan”; “Cybernetic Delirium of Norbert Weiner” by Stephen Pfohl; and “Hyperreal Serbia” by Aleksandar Boskovic. Samples in the “Mimetic Flesh” section include “Requiem” by Kathy Acker; “Conceiving Ada” by Lynn Hershman Leeson; “Extended-Body: An Interview with Stelarc” by Paolo Atzori and Kirk Woolford; and “Discovering CyberAntarctic: An Interview with Knowbotics Research” by Atzori. There is a growing body of books focused on cultural theory. Digital Dilemma offers some unique strengths. It extends beyond just academics to include writing by artists and other cultural explorers outside of academia. It begins actually to realize the postmodern diversity that theorists like to write about. The book is also honest to the confusion that marks this era. It spans both transhuman optimism and nihilistic dejection . At times the writing is almost jubilant ; at other times it is full of despair. There are no easy answers. The book is a rich archive of diverse writing on current cultural realities. I strongly recommend it. BEHIND THE PICTURE: ART AND EVIDENCE IN THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE by Martin Kemp. Yale Univ. Press, New Haven, CT, U.S.A., 1997. 324 pp. $35.00. ISBN: 0-300-07195-7. Reviewed by David Topper, History Department , University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3B 2E9 Canada. E-mail: . Over 150 years ago, Leopold von Ranke initiated modern (“scientific”) historiography by asserting, in his famous dictum , that the goal of historical writing was to narrate events as they had actually happened (wie es eigentlich gewesen), a directive with which I—and I think Kemp, too—would agree. But much has happened between then and now in the writing of history, particularly art history , to sabotage that goal. In a sense, this book...