Author: Francisco J. Ricardo

Francisco J. Ricardo, Ph.D., with the University Professors of Boston University, co-directs the Digital Video Research Archive (http://www.bu.edu/uni/dvra) and teaches digital media theory at the Digital+Media Department of the Rhode Island School of Design (http://dm.risd.edu). Recent publications include “Cyberculture and New Media” (2009, Rodopi) and “Literary Art in Digital Performance” (2009, Continuum). Critical writings are also online at http://postmediumcritique.org.

24 Jul

The Engagement Aesthetic – An Introduction

A new form of perceptual process, perhaps interactive and embodied, but more than both or either, connects contemporary art to the art of digital media. The title of this post is the title of my upcoming book.
08 Jul

Emergent Form in the Post-Literary Mechanism, From Exposition to Reflexivity

The argument begun with an historical and critical overlay of form in relation to typography is extended to examples of conceptual re-formation of structure where the work reflects its own content.
05 May

Emergent Form in the Post-Literary Mechanism, an Historical Argument

An historical and critical overlay of form in relation to sculpture, typography, and the geometric insistence of printed page serves as a preamble for a subsequent analysis of the Readers Project.
03 May

Marine Osprey at MIT

This is not a typical post, but as I’m sitting in my balcony writing, I hear this roar – not too unusual for the area, given that Back Bay is one of Boston’s most frequented helicopter zones. But living in Cambridge, so near to MIT has significant advantages; in addition to the views of downtown [...]
15 Apr

The Aura of the Distributed Moment

Walter Benjamin’s auratic aesthetic implies norms of creation that no longer reflect the pluralistic structure of transmedia art.
05 Apr

Cyberculture’s Perpetual “Until Something Else”

Cyberculture, whatever definition may address its structural characteristics, behaves as a social network of successive obsolescences.
25 Mar

Spatial Engagement’s Chronotope in Electronic Art and the Public Sphere

The architectural interventions that have come to the public sphere are not merely physical or sculptural. As public art, electronic works possess a unique chronotope, or spatiotemporal character, in Bakhtin’s term.
22 Mar

Optimizing Metaprogramming

A historical gloss ranging from the free software movement to a philosophy of empirical engagement.
19 Mar

Formalisms of Digital Text

A quantitative and critical analysis of four distinct communicative modes – speech, blogs, emails, and printed text (as fiction works) to examine some empirical distinctions.
17 Mar

Transversing Shamanism, Turing, and ELIZA

Every so often, scholarship returns to the problem of human dialogic interaction with systems designed with capabilities for patterned response. What archetypes does intelligence mirror?