Scholars from science, art and humanities explore the meaning of our new image worlds and offer new strategies for visual analysis. With contributions a.o. by Marie-Luise ANGERER, Olaf BREIDBACH, Adrian CHEOK, Wendy CHUN, Sean CUBITT, James ELKINS, Oliver GRAU, Stefan HEIDENREICH, Eduardo KAC, Martin KEMP, Harald KRAEMER, Lev MANOVICH, Martin SCHULZ, Christa SOMMERER & Laurent MIGNONNEAU, David & Dolores STEINMAN, Martin WARNKE and Peter WEIBEL.

More than ever we are surrounded by images: Flickr, Facebook, YouTube; thousands of television channels; digital games and virtual worlds, in media art and science, in politics, communication and knowledge representation. The digital image represents endless options for manipulation; images seem capable of changing interactively or even autonomously. Without new efforts to visualize complex ideas, structures, and systems, today’s knowledge explosion would be unmanageable. This volume offers systematic and interdisciplinary reflections on these new image worlds and new analytical approaches to the visual. Imagery in the 21st Century examines this revolution in various fields with researchers from the natural sciences and the humanities to achieve a deeper understanding of the meaning and impact of the image in our time.

The contributors explore and discuss new critical terms of multidisciplinary scope, from database economy to the dramaturgy of hypermedia, from visualisations in neurosciences to the image in bio art. They consider the power of the image in the development of human consciousness, pursue new definitions of visual phenomena, and examine new tools for image research and visual analysis. The goal is to expand visual competence in investigating new visual worlds and to build cross-disciplinary exchanges among the arts, humanities and natural sciences.

MIT Press: http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12675

Join international panel of over 30 scientists, artists, historians, writers and other experts as they discuss the nexus between visual culture and evolution. This past year, in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, a number of festivals, celebrations, and conferences have been held around the world focusing on the impact of the concept of evolution. This symposium will be a platform to discuss the ideas generated from the activities of the past year and the present impact of evolutionary thought on both art and visual culture. Visit http://vcande.blogspot.com/ to follow the discussion.

Visual Culture and Evolution: An Online Symposium is co-sponsored by Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Sciences (CPNAS); the Center for Design, Art, and Visual Culture (University of Maryland, Baltimore County); and Johns Hopkins University’s Master of Arts in Museum Studies Program.