Responses to Marx & Shanken

Shanken E. (2014). Art and Electronic Media. New York, New York: Phaidon Press.

A concise history of Art as it pertains to Technology. Starting with early references such as Duchamp, and continuing to current working artists. 

Throughout the book, it spurs me to think of other works/technology that relate to this. 

Google Deep Dream
- You can give the AI a photo and it looks for things within the photograph. 

Here is one of mine. 

Arcade Fire Personalized Music Video

The Wilderness Downtown

AF made a music video that uses Google Street view images of the neighborhood you grew up in.

Tate After Dark

In August 2014 for 5 nights you could control robots inside of the Tate Museum in London. I never controlled a robot, but you could watch the live stream. They had 4 different robots on at a time. 


My Husband loved the "They Rule" website. We spent at least 30 minutes making different connections between companies. 

I also know where all of Katy Perrys wardrobe inspiration came from now.

Marx, L. (2010). Technology: The Emergence of a Hazardous Concept. Technology and Culture, Volume 51, Number 3. Retrieved from http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/tech/summary/v051/5.3.marx.html

This article discusses the term "technology" and how it's meaning changed over the course of time, particularly starting with the Industrial Revolution.

Quotes that stood out in the text:

"What requires emphasis is the republican thinkers' uncompromising insistence that advances in science and the mechanic arts are valuable chiefly as a means of arriving at social and political ends. " - 565

"To a vocal minority of dissident artists and intellectuals, the worshipful view of material progress was symptomatic of moral negligence and political regression." - 566

"Although the confluence of the sciences and the practical arts was well under way by 1847, it was not until the final quarter of the century, with the rise of the electrical and chemical industries, that the large-scale amalgamation of science and industry helped to create the semantic void that would eventually call forth the new concept - technology." -569

When talking about automotive technology and all it's parts; engine, assembly lines, engineers, corporate structure, stockholders, repair facilities. "Where, then, do we draw the boundary between the system and the rest of the society and culture?" - 575