Copyright 2006. You can really learn a lot about the perspective of a writer by looking at the legal information page in a publication. What sort of interests are involved, what concerns did they have (vis a vis the proliferation of their material throughout the digital zeitgeist), and what time frame are they writing from. This is especially true about any authority on computer science.
2006 was an exciting time, Computers were gaining speed all of the time, getting smaller, and finding their way into everything. This is a year before the iPhone really broke through the market that tech entrepreneurs had struggled with for decades at that point. But there is something to be said about how little has really happened since then. Sure, we have a very mobile internet now. In many ways computers have entered into our daily lives more then ever before, but they haven't really improved. Not like from the time between 1996 and 2006. Now *that* was a tumultuous time. The typical processor went from clocking in at 350mhz to 3ghz, from 32 bit to 64bit. Instruction sets changed drastically. Powerpc was the reigning champion of Apple inc, and the x86 architecture seemed like a cheap piece of sh*t. That all changed right around 2004, when AMD released the first commercially available 64 bit x86 processors. It's worth noting that Apple had been using 64 bit and even 362bit on all of their computers for over a decade at that point, but still it was a tectonic shift in the tech industry. So, I think that Bruce Wands was in danger of writing a book that would be obsolete within the year, just like any book written in the decade since.
From a technical standpoint, almost nothing has changed. Yes, the computers have gotten smaller and cheaper. Storage is vast, and you can't spit without landing on a piece of computer that would have cost 1000s back in 2005, but we're still clocking our fastest processors at right around 3ghz.
But Bruce wands wasn't tasked with instructing a new generation of programmers to figure out how to work with what they had (instead of just kicking the can down the road for an engineer to solve over at AMD or intel), instead he was tasked with writing a treatise on how technology can be used as an artistic medium. As he explains, up until the mid nineties digital art forms were reserved for the most Avant-garde circles. At first digital art was even seen as "outsider art". To some extent, this was due to how little both artists and audiences even knew about what computers would do to the world. Even back in 2006, no one could have predicted how "smart-phones" would play such a pivotal role in the massive uprisings in the Middle east and New York.
Bruce spends a bit of time discussing the merits of the digital medium. First, there is the incredible precision of computer facsimiles. The haunting exact-ness that gives artists un-paralleled control over their final products. He also gives some page space to demonstrate some examples of low-res digital art, such as Harmon and Knowlton's "study in perception" from 1966. Secondly, Digital art can cross genres. It can be purely visual, or auditory, or physical, or even a little of each. Digital art can even cross the mediums, for example and camera can take a picture and a computer can drive a set of motors to literally paint that picture. Finally, there is the interactive element of digital art. While music can be heard, theater enjoyed, painting examined; the digital medium gives the artist the power to create an interactive conversation with the audience. Some of these "conversations" can be held through interaction with physical props such as the animatronic sculpture of Collins' "Return to the Garden", while others can be maintained entirely through the internet. Then he really digs into the history of computers and their role in art over the decades leading up to the writing of the book.
I feel like Bruce was really missing something about the digital media. Namely that computers are not merely a curious tool for future artists to use as they stuff over-priced New York lofts with their "exhibits" and "works". No, computers are solving the far more vital problem of extending artistic literacy and expression to every echelon of society. Through video games, through web sites, and even through their use in all of the other mediums of art. Just as people are all rapidly becoming expert rhetoricians, identifying logical fallacies and thwarting opponents in every direction on social media, so they are also becoming connoisseurs of music and film. In ways that up until now only the most privileged in society could know. But I guess that's what happened since 2006. Streaming movies. Strong catalogues of music and information about each and every track, for free.
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