Material Noise: Reading Theory as Artist's Book

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Anne M. Royston (Visiting Assistant Professor, Rochester Institute of Technology)

Material Noise

Reading Theory as Artist's Book

Anne M. Royston (Visiting Assistant Professor, Rochester Institute of Technology)

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English

MIT Press
17 September 2019

Theory of art; Advertising & society

Series: The MIT Press

An argument that theoretical works can signify through their materiality-their ""noise,"" or such nonsemantic elements as typography-as well as their semantic content.

In Material Noise, Anne Royston argues that theoretical works signify through their materiality-such nonsemantic elements as typography or color-as well as their semantic content. Examining works by Jacques Derrida, Avital Ronell, Georges Bataille, and other well-known theorists, Royston considers their materiality and design-which she terms ""noise""-as integral to their meaning. In other words, she reads these theoretical works as complex assemblages, just as she would read an artist's book in all its idiosyncratic tangibility.

Royston explores the formlessness and heterogeneity of the Encyclopedia Da Costa, which published works by Bataille, Andre Breton, and others; the use of layout and white space in Derrida's Glas; the typographic illegibility-""static and interference""-in Ronell's The Telephone Book; and the enticing surfaces of Mark C. Taylor's Hiding, its digital counterpart The Real- Las Vegas, NV, and Shelley Jackson's Skin. Royston then extends her analysis to other genres, examining two recent artists' books that express explicit theoretical concerns- Johanna Drucker's Stochastic Poetics and Susan Howe's Tom Tit Tot.

Throughout, Royston develops the concept of artistic arguments, which employ signification that exceeds the semantics of a printed text and are not reducible to a series of linear logical propositions. Artistic arguments foreground their materiality and reflect on the media that create them. Moreover, Royston argues, each artistic argument anticipates some aspect of digital thinking, speaking directly to such contemporary concerns as hypertext, communication theory, networks, and digital distribution.

By: Anne M. Royston (Visiting Assistant Professor Rochester Institute of Technology)
Imprint: MIT Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 19mm
ISBN: 9780262042925
ISBN 10: 0262042924
Series: The MIT Press
Pages: 224
Publication Date: 17 September 2019
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Anne M. Royston is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Rochester Institute of Technology.