[Nettime-bold] MULTIMEDIA: FROM WAGNER TO VIRTUAL REALITY

"This book is one start toward a different sort of history.... I recommend this book to you with an earnestness that I have seldom felt for any collection of historic texts. This is, in large part, where the bodies are buried. Assembled in this way, in such close proximity, these visions give off strange sparks." - from the foreword by William Gibson

MULTIMEDIA: FROM WAGNER TO VIRTUAL REALITY presents an untold history behind the interfaces, links, and interactivity we all take for granted today. This work traces a fertile and fascinating series of collaborations between the arts and the sciences, going back to the years just after World War II -- and even further, to composer Richard Wagner, whose ideas about the immersive nature of music theater foreshadowed the experience of virtual reality.

Among the essential articles gathered in the book are the Futurists' 1916 manifesto on cinema, which declared that the new medium would unite all media and replace the book; Vannevar Bush's 1945 Atlantic Monthly essay that leads directly to the hyperlinks in today's multimedia; J.C.R. Licklider's groundbreaking idea in 1960 that people and computers could collaborate in creative work; Nam June Paik's 1984 essay proposing that satellite technology would encourage a global information art; Tim Berners-Lee's 1989 proposal for a document-sharing network, which became the basis of the World Wide Web; and William Gibson's discussion of how he came up with the word "cyberspace." With an insightful introduction to the volume and critical commentaries on each article, editors Randall Packer and Ken Jordan lead us through the groundbreaking developments of the multimedia story.

The book publication completes a unique hybrid publication project that joins W.W. Norton with Intel Corporation's ArtMuseum.net. The book and the Website, which was launched in June, 2000, are meant to work in tandem. On-line, MULTIMEDIA: FROM WAGNER TO VIRTUAL REALITY is a dynamic, growing resource featuring hyperlinked texts and a wealth of multimedia documentation. Please visit the site at http://www.artmuseum.net.

"The best guide yet on a subject of central importance to anyone interested in the future of media, and the growing marriage between art and science....The collection is historically significant, given that nobody has ever woven together the different threads, thoughts and impulses that become multimedia, a new form both of media and culture.... The book flows skillfully from one idea to the next, each section building on the one that preceded it." - Jon Katz, Slashdot

"Readers interested in the history of multimedia should be enthralled by this collection of hard-to-find essays.... A remarkable blending of past and present, these essays remind us that today's wondrous inventions didn't just spring into existence out of nothingness." - Booklist

MULTIMEDIA: FROM WAGNER TO VIRTUAL REALITY
Table of Contents

Foreword by William Gibson

Overture by Randall Packer and Ken Jordan

I. Integration
1. Richard Wagner, "Outlines of the Artwork of the Future"

2. F. T. Marinetti, Bruno Corra, Emilio Settimelli, Arnaldo Ginna, Giacomo Balla, Remo Chiti, "The Futurist Cinema"

3. László Moholy-Nagy, "Theater, Circus, Variety"

6. Nam June Paik, "Cybernated Art" and "Art and Satellite"

II. Interactivity
7. Norbert Wiener, "Cybernetics in History"

8. J.C.R. Licklider, "Man-Computer Symbiosis"

9. Douglas Engelbart, "Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework"

10. John Cage, "Diary: Audience 1966"

11. Roy Ascott, "Behaviourist Art and the Cybernetic Vision"

12. Myron Krueger, "Responsive Environments"

13. Alan Kay, "User Interface: A Personal View"

III. Hypermedia
14. Vannevar Bush, "As We May Think"

15. Ted Nelson, excerpt from Computer Lib/Dream Machines

16. Alan Kay and Adele Goldberg, "Personal Dynamic Media"

17. Marc Canter, "The New Workstation: CD ROM Authoring Systems"

18. Tim Berners-Lee, "Information Management: A Proposal"

19. George Landow and Paul Delany, "Hypertext, Hypermedia and Literary Studies: The State of the Art"

IV. Immersion
20. Morton Heilig, "The Cinema of the Future"

21. Ivan Sutherland, "The Ultimate Display"

22. Scott Fisher, "Virtual Interface Environments"

23. William Gibson, "Academy Leader"

24. Marcos Novak, "Liquid Architectures in Cyberspace"

25. Daniel Sandin, Thomas DeFanti, and Carolina Cruz-Neira, "A Room with a View"

V. Narrativity
26. William Burroughs, "The Future of the Novel"

27. Allan Kaprow, "Untitled Guidelines for Happenings"

28. Bill Viola, "Will There Be Condominiums in Data Space?"

29. Lynn Hershman, "The Fantasy Beyond Control"

30. Roy Ascott, "Is There Love in the Telematic Embrace?"

31. Pavel Curtis, "Mudding: Social Phenomena in Text-Based Virtual Realities"