'In both classical Islamic art and contemporary new media art, one point can unfold to reveal an entire universe. A fourteenth-century dome decorated with geometric complexity and a new media work that shapes a dome from programmed beams of light: both can inspire feelings of immersion and transcendence. In Enfoldment and Infinity, Laura Marks traces the strong similarities, visual and philosophical, between these two kinds of art. Her argument is more than metaphorical; she shows that the “Islamic” quality of modern and new media art is a latent, deeply enfolded, historical inheritance from Islamic art and thought.

'Marks proposes an aesthetics of unfolding and enfolding in which image, information, and the infinite interact: image is an interface to information, and information (such as computer code or the words of the Qur’an) is an interface to the infinite. After demonstrating historically how Islamic aesthetics traveled into Western art, Marks draws explicit parallels between works of classical Islamic art and new media art, describing texts that burst into image, lines that multiply to form fractal spaces, “nonorganic life” in carpets and algorithms, and other shared concepts and images. Islamic philosophy, she suggests, can offer fruitful ways of understanding contemporary art.' (Front book flap)

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Onsite

Location code
REF.MAL4
Language

English

Keyword
Publication/Creation date

2010

No of pages

408

ISBN / ISSN

9780262014212

No of copies

1

Content type

monograph

Chapter headings

Getting Things Unfolded

Islamic Aesthetics and New Meida Art: Points of Contact

The Haptic Transfer and the Travels of the Abstract Line, Part I

The Haptic Transfer and the Travels of the Abstract Line, Part II

The Haptic Transfer and the Travels of the Abstract Line, Part III

Baghdad, 830: Birth of the Algorithm

Baghdad, 1000: Origin of the Pixel

Cairo, 972: Ancestor of the Morph

Herat, 1487: Early Virtual Reality

Karabagh, 1700: Seeds of Artificial Life

Enfoldment and Infinity: An Islamic Genealogy of New Media Art
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Enfoldment and Infinity: An Islamic Genealogy of New Media Art