The long awaited Context Providers, edited by Margot Lovejoy, Christiane Paul, and Victoria Vesna has just been released from Intellect Press! Context Providers explores the ways in which digital art and culture are challenging and changing the creative process and our ways of constructing meaning.
The authors introduce the concept of artists as context providers—people who establish networks of information in a highly collaborative creative process, blurring boundaries between disciplines. Technological change has affected the function of art, the role of the artist, and the way artistic productions are shared,
creating a need for flexible information filters as a framework for establishing meaning and identity. Context Providers considers the work of media artists today who are directly engaging communities through collaboration, active dialogue, and challenging creative work.
In my chapter, “Play, Participation, and Art: Blurring the Edges,” I track the art history of play in the work of Dada, Surrealist, Fluxus, and contemporary artists such as Mark Napier, Future Farmers, and others.
- Editors Christiane Paul, Margot Lovejoy (right top and bottom); contributing author Mary Flanagan (center); editor Victoria Vesna and contributor Ellen K. Levy (far right)
photograph by Jack Toolin 2011