The contributors to this innovative volume consider the new visual technologies which make the human body into a virtual territory; popular representations of genetics and identity; the diagnostic and medical practices centered around women's bodies, and debates about 'feminist science studies'. They engage with scientific phenomena and controversies such as the Visible Human Project; the supposed existence of a 'gay gene'; cosmetic surgery; breast cancer media activism; HIV testing, and abortion. Contributors include: Anne Balsamo, Lisa Cartwright, Kathy Davis, Janine Marchessault, Kim Sawchuk, Jennifer Daryl Slack, Catherine Waldby

Wild Science investigates the world-wide boom in 'health culture'. While self-help health books and medical dramas are popular around the globe, we are bombarded with daily media images of DNA research, and news reports about cloning, the fight against AIDS, cancer and depression. With popular culture now the principal means through which the non-scientific population encounters science why do certain images of science get promoted above others?
Contributors examine the public meanings of science, revealing the frictions and contradictions within popular representations of what medicine can and should do. Focusing on the visual culture of medicine, they show how representations of science have a direct impact on popular perceptions of the limits of science, and ultimately on health education, funding and research, and examine the belief that media literacy in popular representations of medicine makes an ethical public discourse on the aims of science possible.
With sections addressing the new visual technologies which make the human body into a virtual territory, the diagnostic and medical practices centered around women's bodies, and popular debates around genetics and identity, Wild Science argues that science is a practice bound in values and institutions, and argues for a responsible engagement with the public cultures of science and health.

'In quite a profound, high-modernist way, this succinct but comprehensive book deems its subject worthy of careful scholarly analysis. I applaud and recommend it for taking much of the nonsense out of McLuhan' - Topia Journal 'Feted and reviled in his own lifetime, Marshall McLuhan has made a dramatic comeback in recent years. Marchessault gives a balanced and carefully considered appraisal of McLuhan's contribution to cultural theory, which may be even more pertinent now, in the early twenty-first century, than when he originally formulated it in the 1950s and '60s' Jim McGuigan, Professor of Cultural Analysis, Loughborough University Why is McLuhan important? What use can we make of his approach to the media today? In this insightful critical introduction, McLuhan's contribution is carefully explained and his reputation reassessed. The book: * Explains McLuhan's key ideas * Engages with critical issues in media and contemporary art * Demonstrates the relevance of his work for students of media and communications * Addresses his methodological contribution * Revises our understanding of his place in the history of ideas. Illustrated with many examples from the network society, the book works as a guide to anyone who wants to know why McLuhan is important.

Expo 67, in its utopian aspirations, invited artists to create the world anew. What distinguished Montreal's exhibition from previous world fairs were its dramatic displays of film and media, transformed into urban and futuristic architectures. Reimagining Cinema explores the innovations that film and media artists offered Expo audiences and presents extensive visual material to reconstruct the viewer's experience. At the pinnacle of a new global humanism, cinema was expanded beyond the frame into total environments, multi-screens, multi-image and 360-degree immersion - experiments often seen as a harbinger of the digital age. Taking this expanded cinema as a starting point, the contributors focus on eight screen experiments, and employ innovative methodologies to reveal the intricacies and processes of production, while including factual descriptions, interpretive essays, interviews, and image dossiers. The book reflects how the Expo 67 film-events were encountered as creative experimentations that resonated with broader 1960s arts and culture, and as institutional collaborations with artists. More displays of photographic, cinematic, and telematic technology were experienced at Expo 67 than in any other previous world exposition. Reimagining Cinema captures the complexity and imaginative fervour of this exciting period in film history. Contributors include Seth Feldman (York University), Monika Kin Gagnon, (Concordia University), Anthony Kinik, (Concordia University), Janine Marchessault, (York University), Gary Mediema, Chief Historian and Associate Director, Heritage Toronto (Ontario), Aimee Mitchell, Canadian Filmmaker's Distribution Centre (Ontario), Johanne Sloan, (Concordia University), Donald Theall (Trent University).

Handmade films stretch back to cinema's beginnings, yet until now their rich history has been neglected. Process Cinema is the first book to trace the development of handmade and hand-processed film in its historical and contemporary contexts, and from a global perspective. Mapping the genealogy of handmade film, and uncovering confluences, influences, and interstices between various international movements, sites, and practices, Process Cinema positions the resurgence of handmade and process cinema as a counter-practice to the rise of digital filmmaking. This volume brings together a range of renowned academics and artists to examine contemporary artisanal films, DIY labs, and filmmakers typically left out of the avant-garde canon, addressing the convergence between the analog and the digital in contemporary process cinema. Contributors investigate the history of process cinema - unscripted, improvisatory manipulation of the physicality of film - with chapters on pioneering filmmakers such as Len Lye and Marie Menken, while others discuss an international array of collectives devoted to processing films in artist-run labs from South Korea to Finland, Australia to Austria, and Greenland to Morocco, along with historical and contemporary practices in Canada and the United States. Addressing the turn to a new, sustainable creative ecology that is central to handmade films in the twenty-first century, and that defines today's reinvigorated film cultures, Process Cinema features some of the most beautiful handcrafted films and the most forward-thinking filmmakers within a global context.

Media are incorporated into our physical environments more dramatically than ever before - literally opening up new spaces of interactivity and connection that transform the experience of being in the city. Public gatherings and movement, even the capabilities of democratic ideology, have been redefined. Urban Screens, mobile media, new digital mappings, and ambient and pervasive media have all created new ecologies in cities. How do we analyze these new spaces? Recognition of the mutual histories and research programs of urban and media studies is only the beginning. Cartographies of Place develops new vocabularies and methodologies for engaging with the distinctive situations and experiences created by media technologies which are reshaping, augmenting, and expanding urban spaces. The book builds upon the rich traditions and insights of a post-war generation of humanist scholars, media theorists, and urban planners. Authors engage with different historical and contemporary currents in urban studies which share a common concern for media forms, either as research tools or as the means for discerning the expressive nature of city spaces around the world. All of the media considered here are not simply "free floating," but are deeply embedded in the geopolitical, economic, and material contexts in which they are used. Cartographies of Place is exemplary of a new direction in interdisciplinary media scholarship, opening up new ways of studying the complexities of cities and urban media in a global context.

Media are incorporated into our physical environments more dramatically than ever before - literally opening up new spaces of interactivity and connection that transform the experience of being in the city. Public gatherings and movement, even the capabilities of democratic ideology, have been redefined. Urban Screens, mobile media, new digital mappings, and ambient and pervasive media have all created new ecologies in cities. How do we analyze these new spaces? Recognition of the mutual histories and research programs of urban and media studies is only the beginning. Cartographies of Place develops new vocabularies and methodologies for engaging with the distinctive situations and experiences created by media technologies which are reshaping, augmenting, and expanding urban spaces. The book builds upon the rich traditions and insights of a post-war generation of humanist scholars, media theorists, and urban planners. Authors engage with different historical and contemporary currents in urban studies which share a common concern for media forms, either as research tools or as the means for discerning the expressive nature of city spaces around the world. All of the media considered here are not simply "free floating," but are deeply embedded in the geopolitical, economic, and material contexts in which they are used. Cartographies of Place is exemplary of a new direction in interdisciplinary media scholarship, opening up new ways of studying the complexities of cities and urban media in a global context.

Locating Migrating Media details the extent to which media productions, both televisual and cinematic, have sought out new and cheaper shot locations, creative staff, and financing around the world. The book contributes to debates about media globalization, focusing on the local impact of new sites of media production. The book's chapters also question the role that film and television industries and local and regional governments play in broader economic develop and tax incentive schemes. While metaphors of transportation, mobility, fluidity and change continue to serve as key concepts and frames for understanding contemporary media industries, products and processes, the essays in this book look to local spaces, neighborhoods, cultural workers and stories to ground the global that is, to interrogate the effect of media globalization before, during and after film and television shooting and onsite production. By locating migrating media, these chapters seek to determine the political, economic and cultural conditions that produce contemporary forms of televisual and cinematic storytelling, and how these processes affect the inhabitants, the "look" and the very geopolitical future of local communities, neighborhoods, cities and regions. The focus on relocated screen production highlights the act of film- and television-making, both aesthetically and economically. To locate migrating media is therefore to determine the political and cultural economies of globalized sets and stages, be they in new studios or on city streets or, perhaps most importantly, in our imaginations."

'In quite a profound, high-modernist way, this succinct but comprehensive book deems its subject worthy of careful scholarly analysis. I applaud and recommend it for taking much of the nonsense out of McLuhan' - Topia Journal 'Feted and reviled in his own lifetime, Marshall McLuhan has made a dramatic comeback in recent years. Marchessault gives a balanced and carefully considered appraisal of McLuhan's contribution to cultural theory, which may be even more pertinent now, in the early twenty-first century, than when he originally formulated it in the 1950s and '60s' Jim McGuigan, Professor of Cultural Analysis, Loughborough University Why is McLuhan important? What use can we make of his approach to the media today? In this insightful critical introduction, McLuhan's contribution is carefully explained and his reputation reassessed. The book: * Explains McLuhan's key ideas * Engages with critical issues in media and contemporary art * Demonstrates the relevance of his work for students of media and communications * Addresses his methodological contribution * Revises our understanding of his place in the history of ideas. Illustrated with many examples from the network society, the book works as a guide to anyone who wants to know why McLuhan is important.

This book brings together essays that engage with mainstream entertainment, experimental film, and historical scholarship as part of a larger context for examining the grammar of 3D cinema, its histories, and its futures. From cinema and television to video games and augmented reality, the essays consider an "expanded field" of stereoscopic visual culture. Contributors explore historic and emerging technologies, singular and trendsetting practices, narrative and documentary approaches, and the overall perceptual experiences of 3D media. This groundbreaking collection includes Sergei Eisenstein's extraordinary 1947 essay "On Stereocinema," translated for the first time in its entirety; a landmark address by Wim Wenders; and the last essay written by 3D-pioneer researcher Ray Zone. The first book of its kind to investigate 3D arts in its various forms, it will be admired for its rigor and accessibility by scholars across disciplines in the visual arts.