Deleuze and the Map-Image: Aesthetics, Information, Code, and Digital Art

by Jakub Zdebik

Overview

The map, as it appears in Gilles Deleuze's writings, is a concept guiding the exploration of new territories, no matter how abstract. With the advent of new media and digital technologies, contemporary artists have imagined a panoply of new spaces that put Deleuze's concept to the test. Deleuze's concept of the map bridges the gap between the analog and the digital, information and representation, virtual and actual, canvas and screen and is therefore best suited for the contemporary artistic landscape.

Deleuze and the Map-Image explores cartography from philosophical and aesthetic perspectives and argues that the concept of the map is a critical touchstone for contemporary multidisciplinary art. This book is an overview of Deleuze's cartographic thought read through the theories of Sloterdijk, Heidegger, and Virilio and the art criticism of Laura U. Marks, Carolyn L. Kane, and Alexander Galloway, shaping it into a critical tool through which to view the works of cutting edge artists such as Janice Kerbel and Hajra Waheed, who work with digital and analog art. After all, Deleuze did write that a map can be conceived as a work of art, and so herein art is critiqued through cartographic strategies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501346781
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	05/30/2019
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.56(d)

About the Author

Jakub Zdebik received his PhD from the University of Western Ontario. He is Assistant Professor of Art History and Theory at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He is the author of Deleuze and the Diagram: Aesthetic Threads in Visual Organization (2012).

Table of Contents

List of Figures viii

Acknowledgments x

Introduction: Map as Fluctuating Image 1

1 Deleuze's Vermeer: Maps, Art, and Information 21

2 Map and Code in A Thousand Plateaus: Savard, Lagrange Paquet, and Data Art 37

3 Celluloid Film as Digital Art: Translation, Information, and Intermediality in Cory Arcangel 73

4 Virtual Images of Swarms and Grids: John F. Simon Jr.'s Posthuman Aesthetics 107

5 The Island/Image Apparatus: Virtual Networks in Kerbel, Bartholl, and Scott 137

6 Surveilling Aesthetics: Waheed's Overhead Images and Farocki's Operative Image 175

Conclusion: Tracing on the Map 195

Works Cited 198

Index 207

Editorial Reviews

“Deleuze and the Map-Image counts among the most exciting and provocative studies we have on Deleuze, art, and new media. Working with a panoply of artists and objects, Jakub Zbedik discerns in new modes of mediation, in digital aesthetics, and in posthuman theory a common and even pervasive cartographic imperative.” —Tom Conley, Abbott Lawrence Lowell Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies and of Romance Languages and Literatures, Harvard University, USA

“Deleuze and the Map-Image: Aesthetics, Information, Code, and Digital Art gives a thorough analysis of Deleuze's conceptualization of mapping and its formative presence in digital aesthetics. Zdebik charts a path into a domain of contemporary art practice in which digital technologies and Deleuze's thinking operate in concert. Further, his theorization of the map-image provides a refreshing new avenue by which to reconsider the critical roots and philosophical importance of digital art.” —Amanda Boetzkes, Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory, University of Guelph, Canada

From the Publisher