The Cory Arcangel Hack
Digital Culture and Aesthetic Practice 

by Eivind Røssaak

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The first in-depth exploration of the work of artist Cory Arcangel, a pioneer of DIY-new media art whose influential “hacks” subvert the confines of Big Tech.Combining the hands-on skills from the 1990s net art scene and the 2010s post-internet art’s fondness for memes and the generic image, Arcangel demonstrated the wal critique. In The Cory Arcangel Hack, Eivind Røssaak shows how Arcangel’s body of work defines a particular strain of post-conceptual art that is fundamental for understanding the digital world we live in.

Eivind Røssaak is Research Professor at the National Library of Norway’s Department of Research, Visual Media Section. A former Visiting Scholar at Cinema and Media Studies at University of Chicago, Cinematic Arts at USC, and Tisch School of the Arts at NYU.He has published and lectured widely on media aesthetics, media archaeology, archival experiments, and critical theory. He got his first computer, an Apple Macintosh SE, in 1987, and his first laptop, an Apple Powerbook 140, in 1992. During his school, college, and graduate school years, he worked as a musician, journalist, reviewer of cinema and literature, and wrote travelogues from around the world. He can still remember the sound of a modem and life without a smartphone.

Alexander R. Galloway is a writer and computer programer working on issues in philosophy, technology, and theories of mediation. Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, he is author of several books on digital media and critical theory. Galloway has given over two hundred talks both across the U.S. and in ten countries around the world. His writings have been translated into eleven languages. He is recipient of a number of grants and awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Berlin Prize, and the Prix Ars Electronica.

Cory Arcangel is an artist, and composer living and working in Stavanger, Norway. Arcangel explores the potential and failures of old and new digital technologies, highlighting their obsolescence, humor, aesthetic attributes and, at times, eerie influence in contemporary life. Arcangel's notable works include Super Mario Clouds (2002), a modified version of the video game Super Mario Bros. in which all of the game's graphics have been removed, leaving a blue background with white clouds, and /roʊˈdeɪoʊ/ Let's Play: HOLLYWOOD (2017-2021), an AI video game playing computer. In 2014, Arcangel founded Arcangel Surfware, a software publisher and merchandise company. Notable brand releases include Arcangel's The Source zine series, and a first-time publishing of Tony Conrad's Music and the Mind of the World. Arcangel is the youngest artist since Bruce Nauman to have been given a full floor solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2011).




MIT Press | Paperback | 274 pages | 6 X 9 in | $45