Sound collage
Encyclopedia
In music
, montage (literally "putting together") or sound collage ("gluing together") is a technique where sound object
s or compositions
, including song
s, are created from collage
, also known as montage
, the use of portions of previous recording
s or scores. This is often done through the use of sampling
, while some playable sound collages were produced by glue
ing together sectors of different vinyl records. Like its visual cousin, the collage work may have a completely different effect than that of the component parts, even if the original parts are completely recognizable or from only one source.
programmatic sonata Battalia (1673) and Mozart's
Don Giovanni (1789), and some critics have described certain passages in Mahler
symphonies as collage, but the first fully developed collages occur in a few works by Charles Ives
. Earlier traditional forms and procedures such as the quodlibet
, medley
, potpourri
, and centonization
differ from collage in that the various elements in them are made to fit smoothly together, whereas in a collage clashes of key, timbre, texture, meter, tempo, or other discrepancies are important in helping to preserve the individuality of the constituent elements and to convey the impression of a heterogeneous assemblage. What made their technique true collage, however, was the juxtaposition of quotations and unrelated melodies, either by layering them or by moving between them in quick succession, as in a film montage sequence. When layering melodies, Biber, Mozart, and Ives also pioneered the technique of using of different tempi for different sections of the orchestra at the same time, a technique which creates the illusion that two distinct pieces of music are being performed simultaneously.
Although the technique of collage is generally associated with painting, the use of collage in music by Biber, Mozart, Mahler, and Ives actually predates the use of collage in painting by artists like Picasso and Braque, who are generally credited with creating the first collage paintings around 1912. In the third movement of Mahler's Symphony No. 1
, completed in 1888, for instance, a slow, minor key funeral march based on the French song "Frère Jacques
" unexpectedly gives way to what sounds like a klezmer band, only for this second theme to be suddenly interrupted by an even more exotic sounding melody. Ives, on the other hand, in his piece Central Park in the Dark
, composed in 1906, creates the feeling of a walk in the city by layering several distinct melodies and quotations on top of each other.
The first documented instance of sound collage created by electronic means is the piece "Wochenende" (in English, "Weekend"), a collage of words, music and sounds created by film-maker and media artist Walter Ruttmann
in 1928. Later, in 1948, Pierre Schaeffer
used the techniques of sound collage to create the first piece of musique concrète
, "Étude aux chemins de fer", which was assembled from recordings of trains. Schaeffer created this piece by recording sounds of trains onto several vinyl records, some of which had lock grooves allowing them to play in a continuous loop. He then set up multiple turntables in his studio, allowing him to trigger and mix together the various train sounds as needed.
Sound collage became more common with the widespread use of magnetic tape
in the early 1950s. Recording engineers soon discovered that tape could be cut with a razorblade and spliced back together in a different order, and even from different sources. It wasn't long before artists began to explore the new possibilities. Iannis Xenakis
is the first well-known composer to have worked with sound collage; other early artists who experimented with it include John Cage
, Brion Gysin
, and William S. Burroughs
. The most famous examples in popular music
are to be found in the work of The Beatles
: George Martin
cut up and randomly reassembled a recording of a carousel
in "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite" on the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band LP, and John Lennon
included a long pastiche of sound effects and crowd noises on The Beatles
titled "Revolution 9
".
The cultural awareness of dada
sound collage was greatly increased in the 1980s and early 1990s due largely to two lawsuits: the first by the Canadian Recording Association against John Oswald
for his seminal collage work Plunderphonics
and the second by Island Records
against the band Negativland
for their EP titled U2
. The latter was provoked by Negativland's misleading cover art. The popularity of two new musical genres that included elements of sound collage—rap
and house music
—over the same period also helped to popularize it.
Today audio collage may be thought of as fluxus
postmodern
and a form of digital art
. An example is George Rochberg
, an artist well known for his use of collage in pieces including Contra Mortem et Tempus and Symphony No. 3 (Rochberg).
s. Its primary proponent is composer Horacio Vaggione
in works such as Octuor (1982), Thema (1985, Wergo 2026-2), and Schall (1995, Mnémosyne Musique Média LDC 278-1102). The technique may include the extraction and arrangement of sound particles from a sample or the creation and exact placement of each particle to create complex sound patterns or singular particles (transients). It may be accomplished through graphic editing, a script, or automated through a computer program.
Regardless, digital micromontage requires :
Granular synthesis
incorporates many of the techniques of micromontage, though granular synthesis is inevitably automated and micromontage may be realized directly, point by point. "It therefore demands unusual patience" and may be compared to the pointillistic paintings of Georges Seurat.
as well. They are used when a radio station
is stunting
towards an eventual format change. Broadcasted sound collages often contain random bits of music, movie clips, sound effects, and other audio which may or may not relate to the previous or upcoming format. In addition, they may be interspliced with messages prompting listeners to tune in at specific date and time to find out what the new format will be. After dropping its Free FM
talk format, WFNY-FM in New York City
played a sound collage for several hours on May 24, 2007 before returning to the rock
format the station previously held. The collage was interspliced with messages inviting listeners to tune in "today at 5" in order to find out what format the station would adopt.
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
, montage (literally "putting together") or sound collage ("gluing together") is a technique where sound object
Sound object
In music a sound object , a generalization of the concept of a musical note, is any sound from any source which in duration is on the time scale of 100 ms to several seconds....
s or compositions
Musical composition
Musical composition can refer to an original piece of music, the structure of a musical piece, or the process of creating a new piece of music. People who practice composition are called composers.- Musical compositions :...
, including song
Song
In music, a song is a composition for voice or voices, performed by singing.A song may be accompanied by musical instruments, or it may be unaccompanied, as in the case of a cappella songs...
s, are created from collage
Collage
A collage is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole....
, also known as montage
Photomontage
Photomontage is the process and result of making a composite photograph by cutting and joining a number of other photographs. The composite picture was sometimes photographed so that the final image is converted back into a seamless photographic print. A similar method, although one that does not...
, the use of portions of previous recording
Recording
Recording is the process of capturing data or translating information to a recording format stored on some storage medium, which is often referred to as a record or, if an auditory medium, a recording....
s or scores. This is often done through the use of sampling
Sampling (music)
In music, sampling is the act of taking a portion, or sample, of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or a different sound recording of a song or piece. Sampling was originally developed by experimental musicians working with musique concrète and electroacoustic music, who physically...
, while some playable sound collages were produced by glue
Glue
This is a list of various types of glue. Historically, the term "glue" only referred to protein colloids prepared from animal flesh. The meaning has been extended to refer to any fluid adhesive....
ing together sectors of different vinyl records. Like its visual cousin, the collage work may have a completely different effect than that of the component parts, even if the original parts are completely recognizable or from only one source.
History
The origin of sound collage can be traced back to the works of Biber'sHeinrich Ignaz Biber
Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber von Bibern was a Bohemian-Austrian composer and violinist. Born in the small Bohemian town of Wartenberg , Biber worked at Graz and Kroměříž before he illegally left his Kroměříž employer and settled in Salzburg...
programmatic sonata Battalia (1673) and Mozart's
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
Don Giovanni (1789), and some critics have described certain passages in Mahler
Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler was a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born in the village of Kalischt, Bohemia, in what was then Austria-Hungary, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic...
symphonies as collage, but the first fully developed collages occur in a few works by Charles Ives
Charles Ives
Charles Edward Ives was an American modernist composer. He is one of the first American composers of international renown, though Ives' music was largely ignored during his life, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Over time, Ives came to be regarded as an "American Original"...
. Earlier traditional forms and procedures such as the quodlibet
Quodlibet
A quodlibet is a piece of music combining several different melodies, usually popular tunes, in counterpoint and often a light-hearted, humorous manner...
, medley
Medley
-Sports:*Medley swimming, races requiring multiple swimming styles*Medley relay races at track meets-Music:*Medley , multiple pieces strung together*"Medley" -People:...
, potpourri
Potpourri
Potpourri is a mixture of dried, naturally fragrant plant material, used to provide a gentle natural scent in houses. It is usually placed in a decorative wooden bowl, or tied in small sachet made from sheer fabric....
, and centonization
Centonization
In music centonization is a theory about the composition of a melody, melodies, or piece based on pre-existing melodic figures and formulas...
differ from collage in that the various elements in them are made to fit smoothly together, whereas in a collage clashes of key, timbre, texture, meter, tempo, or other discrepancies are important in helping to preserve the individuality of the constituent elements and to convey the impression of a heterogeneous assemblage. What made their technique true collage, however, was the juxtaposition of quotations and unrelated melodies, either by layering them or by moving between them in quick succession, as in a film montage sequence. When layering melodies, Biber, Mozart, and Ives also pioneered the technique of using of different tempi for different sections of the orchestra at the same time, a technique which creates the illusion that two distinct pieces of music are being performed simultaneously.
Although the technique of collage is generally associated with painting, the use of collage in music by Biber, Mozart, Mahler, and Ives actually predates the use of collage in painting by artists like Picasso and Braque, who are generally credited with creating the first collage paintings around 1912. In the third movement of Mahler's Symphony No. 1
Symphony No. 1 (Mahler)
The Symphony No. 1 in D major by Gustav Mahler was mainly composed between late 1887 and March 1888, though it incorporates music Mahler had composed for previous works. It was composed while Mahler was second conductor at the Leipzig Opera, Germany...
, completed in 1888, for instance, a slow, minor key funeral march based on the French song "Frère Jacques
Frère Jacques
"Frère Jacques" , in English sometimes called "Brother John" or "Brother Peter", is a French nursery melody. The song is traditionally sung in a round. When the first singer reaches the end of the first line the next person starts at the beginning...
" unexpectedly gives way to what sounds like a klezmer band, only for this second theme to be suddenly interrupted by an even more exotic sounding melody. Ives, on the other hand, in his piece Central Park in the Dark
Central Park in the Dark
Central Park in the Dark is a music composition by Charles Ives for chamber orchestra. It was composed in 1906 and has been paired with The Unanswered Question as part of “Two Contemplations” and Hallowe’en and The Pond in “Three Outdoor Scenes.”...
, composed in 1906, creates the feeling of a walk in the city by layering several distinct melodies and quotations on top of each other.
The first documented instance of sound collage created by electronic means is the piece "Wochenende" (in English, "Weekend"), a collage of words, music and sounds created by film-maker and media artist Walter Ruttmann
Walter Ruttmann
Walter Ruttmann was a German film director and along with Hans Richter and Viking Eggeling was an early German practitioner of experimental film....
in 1928. Later, in 1948, Pierre Schaeffer
Pierre Schaeffer
Pierre Henri Marie Schaeffer was a French composer, writer, broadcaster, engineer, musicologist and acoustician of the 20th century. His innovative work in both the sciences —particularly communications and acoustics— and the various arts of music, literature and radio presentation after the end...
used the techniques of sound collage to create the first piece of musique concrète
Musique concrète
Musique concrète is a form of electroacoustic music that utilises acousmatic sound as a compositional resource. The compositional material is not restricted to the inclusion of sounds derived from musical instruments or voices, nor to elements traditionally thought of as "musical"...
, "Étude aux chemins de fer", which was assembled from recordings of trains. Schaeffer created this piece by recording sounds of trains onto several vinyl records, some of which had lock grooves allowing them to play in a continuous loop. He then set up multiple turntables in his studio, allowing him to trigger and mix together the various train sounds as needed.
Sound collage became more common with the widespread use of magnetic tape
Magnetic tape
Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic recording, made of a thin magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic. It was developed in Germany, based on magnetic wire recording. Devices that record and play back audio and video using magnetic tape are tape recorders and video tape recorders...
in the early 1950s. Recording engineers soon discovered that tape could be cut with a razorblade and spliced back together in a different order, and even from different sources. It wasn't long before artists began to explore the new possibilities. Iannis Xenakis
Iannis Xenakis
Iannis Xenakis was a Romanian-born Greek ethnic, naturalized French composer, music theorist, and architect-engineer. He is commonly recognized as one of the most important post-war avant-garde composers...
is the first well-known composer to have worked with sound collage; other early artists who experimented with it include John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
, Brion Gysin
Brion Gysin
Brion Gysin was a painter, writer, sound poet, and performance artist born in Taplow, Buckinghamshire.He is best known for his discovery of the cut-up technique, used by his friend, the novelist William S. Burroughs...
, and William S. Burroughs
William S. Burroughs
William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...
. The most famous examples in popular music
Popular music
Popular music belongs to any of a number of musical genres "having wide appeal" and is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional music, which are typically disseminated academically or orally to smaller, local...
are to be found in the work of The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
: George Martin
George Martin
Sir George Henry Martin CBE is an English record producer, arranger, composer and musician. He is sometimes referred to as "the Fifth Beatle"— a title that he often describes as "nonsense," but the fact remains that he served as producer on all but one of The Beatles' original albums...
cut up and randomly reassembled a recording of a carousel
Carousel
A carousel , or merry-go-round, is an amusement ride consisting of a rotating circular platform with seats for riders...
in "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite" on the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band LP, and John Lennon
John Lennon
John Winston Lennon, MBE was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music...
included a long pastiche of sound effects and crowd noises on The Beatles
The Beatles (album)
The Beatles is the ninth official album by the English rock group The Beatles, a double album released in 1968. It is also commonly known as "The White Album" as it has no graphics or text other than the band's name embossed on its plain white sleeve.The album was written and recorded during a...
titled "Revolution 9
Revolution 9
"Revolution 9" is a recorded composition that appeared on The Beatles' 1968 self-titled LP release . The sound collage, credited to Lennon–McCartney, was created primarily by John Lennon with assistance from George Harrison and Yoko Ono. Lennon said he was trying to paint a picture of a revolution...
".
The cultural awareness of dada
Dada
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
sound collage was greatly increased in the 1980s and early 1990s due largely to two lawsuits: the first by the Canadian Recording Association against John Oswald
John Oswald (composer)
John Oswald is a Canadian composer, saxophonist, media artist and dancer. His best known project is Plunderphonics, the practice of making new music out of previously existing recordings .-Philosophy:Oswald coined the term "plunderphonics" to describe his craft in a paper called which he...
for his seminal collage work Plunderphonics
Plunderphonics
Plunderphonics is a term coined by composer John Oswald in 1985 in his essay Plunderphonics, or Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative. It has since been applied to any music made by taking one or more existing audio recordings and altering them in some way to make a new composition...
and the second by Island Records
Island Records
Island Records is a record label that was founded by Chris Blackwell in Jamaica. It was based in the United Kingdom for many years and is now owned by Universal Music Group...
against the band Negativland
Negativland
Negativland is an experimental music and sound collage band which originated in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1970s. They took their name from a Neu! song, while their record label is named after another Neu! song...
for their EP titled U2
U2 (EP)
U2 is an EP by the experimental music and sound collage band Negativland, released in 1991. The EP and the band gained notoriety when lawyers representing Island Records, the record label of the band U2, sued over misleading artwork and the use of unauthorized sampling.-History:After Helter Stupid,...
. The latter was provoked by Negativland's misleading cover art. The popularity of two new musical genres that included elements of sound collage—rap
Hip hop music
Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...
and house music
House music
House music is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in Chicago, Illinois, United States in the early 1980s. It was initially popularized in mid-1980s discothèques catering to the African-American, Latino American, and gay communities; first in Chicago circa 1984, then in other...
—over the same period also helped to popularize it.
Today audio collage may be thought of as fluxus
Fluxus
Fluxus—a name taken from a Latin word meaning "to flow"—is an international network of artists, composers and designers noted for blending different artistic media and disciplines in the 1960s. They have been active in Neo-Dada noise music and visual art as well as literature, urban planning,...
postmodern
Postmodern music
Postmodern music is either simply music of the postmodern era, or music that follows aesthetical and philosophical trends of postmodernism. As the name suggests, the postmodernist movement formed partly in reaction to modernism...
and a form of digital art
Digital art
Digital art is a general term for a range of artistic works and practices that use digital technology as an essential part of the creative and/or presentation process...
. An example is George Rochberg
George Rochberg
George Rochberg was an American composer of contemporary classical music.-Life:Rochberg was born in Paterson, New Jersey. He attended the Mannes College of Music, where his teachers included George Szell and Hans Weisse, and the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with Rosario Scalero and...
, an artist well known for his use of collage in pieces including Contra Mortem et Tempus and Symphony No. 3 (Rochberg).
Micromontage
Micromontage is the use of montage on the time scale of microsoundMicrosound
Microsound includes all sounds on the time scale shorter than musical notes, the sound object time scale, and longer than the sample time scale. Specifically this is shorter than one tenth of a second and longer than 10 milliseconds, including the audio frequency range and the infrasonic...
s. Its primary proponent is composer Horacio Vaggione
Horacio Vaggione
Horacio Vaggione is an electro-acoustic and musique concrète composer who specializes in micromontage, granular synthesis, and thus microsound and whose pieces often are for performer and computer-generated tape...
in works such as Octuor (1982), Thema (1985, Wergo 2026-2), and Schall (1995, Mnémosyne Musique Média LDC 278-1102). The technique may include the extraction and arrangement of sound particles from a sample or the creation and exact placement of each particle to create complex sound patterns or singular particles (transients). It may be accomplished through graphic editing, a script, or automated through a computer program.
Regardless, digital micromontage requires :
- creation or compilation of a library of sound files on several different time scales
- importation into the library of the editing and mixing program
- use of the cursor, script, or algorithm to position each sound at a specific time-pointTime-pointIn music a time-point is the beginning of a sound, rather than its duration. In serial music a time point set, proposed by Milton Babbitt , is a temporal order of pitches in a tone row which indicates the instants at which the notes start...
or time-points - editing of the duration, amplitudeAmplitudeAmplitude is the magnitude of change in the oscillating variable with each oscillation within an oscillating system. For example, sound waves in air are oscillations in atmospheric pressure and their amplitudes are proportional to the change in pressure during one oscillation...
, and spatial positions of all sounds (possibly done by a script or algorithm)
Granular synthesis
Granular synthesis
Granular synthesis is a basic sound synthesis method that operates on the microsound time scale.It is based on the same principle as sampling. However, the samples are not played back conventionally, but are instead split into small pieces of around 1 to 50ms. These small pieces are called grains...
incorporates many of the techniques of micromontage, though granular synthesis is inevitably automated and micromontage may be realized directly, point by point. "It therefore demands unusual patience" and may be compared to the pointillistic paintings of Georges Seurat.
Sound collages in broadcasting
Sound collages can occasionally be heard on the radioRadio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
as well. They are used when a radio station
Radio station
Radio broadcasting is a one-way wireless transmission over radio waves intended to reach a wide audience. Stations can be linked in radio networks to broadcast a common radio format, either in broadcast syndication or simulcast or both...
is stunting
Stunting (broadcasting)
In radio broadcasting, stunting occurs when a station abruptly airs programming that is seemingly uncharacteristic compared to what they normally play...
towards an eventual format change. Broadcasted sound collages often contain random bits of music, movie clips, sound effects, and other audio which may or may not relate to the previous or upcoming format. In addition, they may be interspliced with messages prompting listeners to tune in at specific date and time to find out what the new format will be. After dropping its Free FM
Free FM
Free FM was a short-lived, mostly-talk-radio format and brand name for eleven FM CBS Radio stations in the United States, and was created because of Howard Stern's departure to Sirius Satellite Radio in January 2006. Free FM was given its name to highlight that its stations broadcast free-to-air,...
talk format, WFNY-FM in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
played a sound collage for several hours on May 24, 2007 before returning to the rock
Rock and roll
Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...
format the station previously held. The collage was interspliced with messages inviting listeners to tune in "today at 5" in order to find out what format the station would adopt.
See also
- Musique ConcreteMusique concrèteMusique concrète is a form of electroacoustic music that utilises acousmatic sound as a compositional resource. The compositional material is not restricted to the inclusion of sounds derived from musical instruments or voices, nor to elements traditionally thought of as "musical"...
- DetournementDetournementA détournement is a technique developed in the 1950s by the Letterist International, and consist in "turning expressions of the capitalist system against itself." Détournement was prominently used to set up subversive political pranks, an influential tactic called situationist prank that was...
- MashupMashup (music)A mashup or bootleg is a song or composition created by blending two or more pre-recorded songs, usually by overlaying the vocal track of one song seamlessly over the instrumental track of another...
- RemixRemixA remix is an alternative version of a recorded song, made from an original version. This term is also used for any alterations of media other than song ....
- Sampling (music)Sampling (music)In music, sampling is the act of taking a portion, or sample, of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or a different sound recording of a song or piece. Sampling was originally developed by experimental musicians working with musique concrète and electroacoustic music, who physically...
- Some Assembly Required
- WhoSampledWhoSampledWhoSampled is a website and database of information about sample-based music founded in London, United Kingdom.WhoSampled is an online sample-based music databases of music that compares original songs with covered songs or songs that "borrowed" samples, it serves as a historical line of where...
Further reading
- Blais, Joline, and Jon IppolitoJon IppolitoJon Ippolito is an artist, educator, new media scholar, and former curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Ippolito studied astrophysics and painting in the early 1980s, then pursued Internet art in the 1990s...
. At the Edge of Art. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd, 2006. - Buci-Glucksmann, ChristineChristine Buci-GlucksmannChristine Buci-Glucksmann is a French philosopher and Professor Emeritus from University of Paris VIII specializing in the aesthetics of the Baroque, Japan and computer art...
. "L’art à l’époque virtuel". In Frontières esthétiques de l’art, Arts 8, . Paris: L’Harmattan, 2004. - Couchot, EdmondEdmond Couchot-Life and work:Couchot is a Doctor of aesthetics in the visual arts. From 1982-2000 he headed the department of Arts and Technologies of the Image at the University Paris VIII. He continues to take part in speculative and hands-on study of digital imagery and virtual reality at University Paris...
. Des Images, du temps et des machines, dans les arts et la communication. [Nîmes]: J. Chambon, 2007. ISBN 2742769404. - Forest, FredFred ForestFred Forest is a French new media artist making use of video, photography, the printed press, mail, radio, television, telephone, telematics, and the internet in a wide range of installations, performances, and public interventions that explore both the ramifications and potential of media space...
. Art et Internet. Paris: Editions Cercle D'Art / Imaginaire Mode d'Emploi, 2008. ISBN 9782702208649. - Liu, Alan. The Laws of Cool: Knowledge, Work, and the Culture of Information. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.
- Lovejoy, MargotMargot LovejoyMargot Lovejoy is a digital artist and historian of art and technology. She is Professor Emerita of Visual Arts at the State University of New York at Purchase and author of the books "Digital Currents: Art in the Electronic Age" and "Postmodern Currents: Art and Artists in the Age of Electronic...
. Digital Currents: Art in the Electronic Age. London: Routledge, 2004. - Paul, ChristianeChristiane Paul (curator)Christiane Paul is a scholar in the field of digital art and an historian of art and technology. She is Professor of Visual Arts at The New School and author of the seminal book Digital Art. Dr...
. Digital Art. London and New York: Thames & Hudson Ltd, 2003. ISBN 0500203679. - Popper, FrankFrank PopperFrank Popper is a historian of art and technology and Professor Emeritus of Aesthetics and the Science of Art at the University of Paris VIII. He has been decorated with the medal of the Légion d'honneur by the French Government...
. From Technological to Virtual Art. Leonardo (Series). Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007. ISBN 026216230X. - Taylor, Brandon. CollageCollageA collage is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole....
. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd, 2006. - Wands, Bruce. Art of the Digital Age. London and New York: Thames & Hudson, 2006. ISBN 0500238170 (hbk.), ISBN 0500286299 (pbk.)