Full Description
The first comprehensive overview of Peter Weibel's visionary work, covering over half a century of artistic expression from material to machines to media.
Peter Weibel: Art as an Act of Cognition presents the first comprehensive overview of the work of Peter Weibel (1944-2023), an influential artist who anticipated key developments in the art of the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries and evolved new utopian visions of a free society and individual freedom. As one of the first artists to create VR installations, Weibel was also a leading figure in the expansion of the arts into other modes of reality. His work revealed the perceptual mechanisms by which reality is constructed not only socially, but also neurologically. This publication, insightfully edited by Jens Lutz and Philipp Ziegler, covers over half a century of his artistic expression, and traces his groundbreaking migration from material to machines to media.
This book follows the trajectory of Weibel's work with various media—from literature to photography, from performance art to video to expanded cinema, from sculpture, sound art, and light art to digital artworks. It presents more than 400 distinctive creations by Weibel. Insightful essays and texts are accompanied by over 1200 illustrations, many never seen before. Analyses by acclaimed scholars contextualize and situate Weibel's works within art historical and philosophical discourses, elaborate on his pioneering contributions, and establish his immense influence. The book draws on the artist's large personal archive, presenting early draft concepts as well as personal historical statements, many of which are published here in English for the first time. Additionally, 35 videos can be accessed via QR code—featuring original works and commentaries by the artist himself.
Contents
Jens Lutz, Philipp Ziegler, Preface
Siegfried Zielinski, Cognition with Conscience:"Those who understand have wings"
Hans Ulrich Obrist The Eleven Dimensions of Peter Weibel
Friederike Mayröcker, The Artist
Peter Sloterdijk, Peter Weibel: Premature Encounters with the World Spirit
Peter Weibel, Material Thinking , Context Theory of Art
Peter Weibel, Machines of Some Kind
Peter Weibel, Photography and the Administration of Data
Ontological Leaps
Photo-Fak
Siegfried Zielinski, Transverse - Dissymmetrical - Interventional/Epic: Work Gestures from Peter Weibel's Tool Kit
Terry Smith, Art against Media: Early Works by Peter Weibel
Hans Belting, Peter Weibel: The Tele-Actions
Peter Weibel, Video as Spatial Art
Wolfgang Kemp, Peter Weibel: The Audience as Exhibit
Pamela C. Scorzin, RE: Peter Weibel Polyperformer
Peter Weibel, Postontological or Digital Art: Virtuality,Variability, Viability
Two Levels of Reality: "Exo" and "Endo"
The World as Interface
Boris Groys, Images of Thinking
Peter Weibel, Articulations of Space
Construzione Legittima: On the Principle of Perspective
Scaling and Scanning: Intrinsic Properties of Media Transposed onto the World of Objects
The Liberated Object: Coding as Design
The Symbol-Processing Ability of Man and Machines: The Emancipations of Tools
Disability as Design Avant-Garde
Peter Weibel, Actions and Performances
Bazon Brock, Peter Weibel: The Master Artificer
Wolfgang Kemp, Underground Explosion: W.A.R.
