Note: The work of photographer Linda Dawn Hammond, as referred to and presented in Spasm, is from the THREE PART BODYSERIES- a series of triptych portraits. The "digitally remade face" which appears on the cover and throughout the book is derived from the triptych, "Francis".
Arthur Kroker, Spasm: Virtual Reality, Android Music, Electric Flesh. Montreal: New World Perspectives (CultureTexts Series), 1993. 177 pp.
EXCERPTS from a Review by: Steven Pinter, Division of Social Science, York University
In keeping with the emphasis on storytelling, Spasm blends several types of representation. Starting with the CD (sold with the book), and including the photographs in the book itself -- referred to as records of "the coming shape-shifters of digital reality'' -- to photos of a digitally remade face appearing with slogans on every page, Spasm writes through a multitude of layered stories. The text alternates between narrative description: Spasm is ... the story of the dark outriders of virtual reality. Three individuals -- Steve Gibson, Linda Dawn Hammond, and David Therrien -- who, like Old Testament prophets wandering in the desert, are the new rugged individualists travelling through the sprawl of the digital frontier ... It is this alternation between stories of rugged individualism and a critical reflection on technology that sets the ground for Spasm's unique contribution: crash aesthetics.
...Spasm contrasts spectacle with the photography and music of the "outrider Old Testament prophets.''... In keeping with the radical juxtapositions created by Kroker's crash theory, bodily organs are recombined into a new hierarchy, with the ear replacing the eye as the privileged site of virtual reality.
...The outgrowth of crash theory from bimodernism marks out the significance of Spasm as a text combining photography, music, and theory into an aesthetic stance which shifts the language in which technology and subjectivity are joined. Crash theory signals growth and change in Kroker's analysis, representing an addition to a growing vocabulary of impossible concepts. Kroker's work, and the work of the "outriders'' who are part of Spasm, inscribes an aesthetic approach on the everyday and simplistic references to the impacts of technology on individuals and bodies.
FULL TEXT: http://www.ualberta.ca/~cjscopy/articles/pinter.html