Abstracting Reality
Art, Communication, and Cognition in the Digital Age

Abstracting Reality considers the relationship between digital technology and culture and their mutual influences on each other.

Abstracting Reality considers the relationship between digital technology and culture and their mutual influences on each other. The book begins with an examination of how everyday life became quantized over time, setting the stage for digital technology, which developed out of communication, machine control, and calculating machines. From there the book explores how digital technology changed the nature of art, inherent culture biases in digitization, composite imagery, machine-mediated communication, the metaphor of cyberspace, virtual reality, and finally, the way in which digital technology and imaging changes the very nature of indexicality itself.

Chapter 1 Acknowledgements Chapter 2 Preface Part 3 The Emergence of Digital Technology: Chapter 4 The Quantization of Everyday Life Chapter 5 Digital Technology Develops Part 6 Art: Chapter 7 The Work of Art in the Digital Art Chapter 8 Cultural Biases Inherent in Digitization Chapter 9 The Composite Image Part 10 Communication / Media: Chapter 11 Machine Mediation of Social Interaction Chapter 12 The Metaphor of Cyberspace Part 13 Perception / Representation / Cognition: Chapter 14 The Digital Environment Chapter 15 Virtual Reality and Other Substitutes Chapter 16 Indexicality Chapter 17 Epilogue