Art, Time and Technology examines the role of art in an age of 'real time' information systems and instantaneous communication. The increasing speed of technology and of technological development since the early nineteenth century has resulted in cultural anxiety. Humankind now appears to be an ever-smaller component of dauntingly complex technological systems, operating at speeds beyond human control or even perception. This perceived change forces us to rethink our understanding of key concepts such as time, history and art. Art, Time and Technology explores how the practice of art - in particular of avant-garde art - keeps our relation to time, history and even our own humanity open. Examining key moments in the history of both technology and art from the beginnings of industrialization to today, Charlie Gere explores both the making and purpose of art, and how much further it can travel from the human body.

Much as art history is in the process of being transformed by new information communication technologies, often in ways that are either disavowed or resisted, art practice is also being changed by those same technologies. One of the most obvious symptoms of this change is the increasing numbers of artists working in universities, and having their work facilitated and supported by the funding and infrastructural resources that such institutions offer. This new paradigm of art as research is likely to have a profound effect on how we understand the role of the artist and of art practice in society. In this unique book, artists, art historians, art theorists and curators of new media reflect on the idea of art as research and how it has changed practice. Intrinsic to the volume is an investigation of the advances in creative practice made possible via artists engaging directly with technology or via collaborative partnerships between practitioners and technological experts, ranging through a broad spectrum of advanced methods from robotics through rapid prototyping to the biological sciences.

Multimedia Histories: From the Magic Lantern to the Internet is the first book to explore in detail the vital connections between today's digital culture and an absorbing history of screen entertainments and technologies. Its range of coverage moves from the magic lantern, the stereoscope and early film to the DVD and the internet. By reaching back into the innovative media practices of the nineteenth century, Multimedia Histories outlines many of the revealing continuities between nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first century multimedia culture. Comprising some of the most important new work on multimedia culture and history by key writers in this growing field, Multimedia Histories will be an indispensable new sourcebook for the discipline. It will be an important intervention in rethinking the boundaries of Anglo-American film and media history.

The failure of secular modernity to deliver on its promise of progress and enlightenment leaves a void that religion is rushing to fill. Yet what kind of religious thinking and doing can be adequate to our posthuman condition? And how can we avoid either embracing religious fundamentalism and fantasy or remaining mired in hopeless atheistic nihilism? In Unnatural Theology Charlie Gere provides ways of thinking about the possibilities of religion and theology in the context of our highly technologized postmodernity. Taking its cue from a wide range of thinkers, from John Ruskin and Alfred North Whitehead, to Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler, Giorgio Agamben, Simon Critchley, Catherine Keller, Bruno Latour, and Timothy Morton, and artists such as Marcel Duchamp and Richard Hamilton, and films including The Incredible Shrinking Man, the book seeks the remnants of theology and religion in the realms of technology and media, and also art, as the basis of potential new religious thinking. Through an interdisciplinary engagement with these thinkers and artists it develops the notion of an unnatural theology as the basis of a new kind of religious thought that does not insult our intelligence.

Much as art history is in the process of being transformed by new information communication technologies, often in ways that are either disavowed or resisted, art practice is also being changed by those same technologies. One of the most obvious symptoms of this change is the increasing numbers of artists working in universities, and having their work facilitated and supported by the funding and infrastructural resources that such institutions offer. This new paradigm of art as research is likely to have a profound effect on how we understand the role of the artist and of art practice in society. In this unique book, artists, art historians, art theorists and curators of new media reflect on the idea of art as research and how it has changed practice. Intrinsic to the volume is an investigation of the advances in creative practice made possible via artists engaging directly with technology or via collaborative partnerships between practitioners and technological experts, ranging through a broad spectrum of advanced methods from robotics through rapid prototyping to the biological sciences.

Art, Time and Technology examines the role of art in an age of 'real time' information systems and instantaneous communication. The increasing speed of technology and of technological development since the early nineteenth century has resulted in cultural anxiety. Humankind now appears to be an ever-smaller component of dauntingly complex technological systems, operating at speeds beyond human control or even perception. This perceived change forces us to rethink our understanding of key concepts such as time, history and art. Art, Time and Technology explores how the practice of art - in particular of avant-garde art - keeps our relation to time, history and even our own humanity open. Examining key moments in the history of both technology and art from the beginnings of industrialization to today, Charlie Gere explores both the making and purpose of art, and how much further it can travel from the human body.

The failure of secular modernity to deliver on its promise of progress and enlightenment leaves a void that religion is rushing to fill. Yet what kind of religious thinking and doing can be adequate to our posthuman condition? And how can we avoid either embracing religious fundamentalism and fantasy or remaining mired in hopeless atheistic nihilism? In Unnatural Theology Charlie Gere provides ways of thinking about the possibilities of religion and theology in the context of our highly technologized postmodernity. Taking its cue from a wide range of thinkers, from John Ruskin and Alfred North Whitehead, to Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler, Giorgio Agamben, Simon Critchley, Catherine Keller, Bruno Latour, and Timothy Morton, and artists such as Marcel Duchamp and Richard Hamilton, and films including The Incredible Shrinking Man, the book seeks the remnants of theology and religion in the realms of technology and media, and also art, as the basis of potential new religious thinking. Through an interdisciplinary engagement with these thinkers and artists it develops the notion of an unnatural theology as the basis of a new kind of religious thought that does not insult our intelligence.