Spotlight: Euphoria & Dystopia

Featuring worldwide pioneers, artists, cultural icons and digital industry innovators, Euphoria & Dystopia (eds. Sarah Cook and Sara Diamond) documents the key decade of Canada’s Banff New Media Institute, between 1995 and 2005. Attracted by innovative programming, set against Banff’s extraordinary mountain landscape, hundreds of international practitioners came together to debate the new forms wrought by technology. The book charts the rise of the emerging field of digital media art and industry through their discussions.

Euphoria & Dystopia contains essays by Sandra Buckley, Steve Dietz, Jean Gagnon, N. Katherine Hayles, Susan Kennard, Eric Kluitenberg, Jeff Lieper and Allucquere Rosanne Stone. The book is organized by themes that range from data visualization to the interface of technology and the body to curating to gaming. It includes fully annotated references and biographies of participants, a detailed list of events that took place at Banff between 1995 and 2005. Included is the catalogue of the exhibition The Art Formerly Known As New Media (2005) and a DVD of HorizonZero, the groundbreaking bilingual electronic journal produced at Banff from 2002 to 2004.