Mark Amerika is a critically acclaimed artist and new media art theorist who has been referred to as “a digital jack-of-all-trades.” Amerika’s network practice trades in images, text, code, sound, performance, comedy, pedagogy, and mobile forms of cyberpsychogeography. His innovative artist theories challenge traditional forms of scholarly writing and production. Even though his work is published with mainstream academic presses such as MIT Press, the University of Minnesota Press, and the University of Alabama Press, the university art department he is currently rostered in as a tenured Full Professor, has difficulty placing him in any conventional academic context. Is he a visual artist? A contemporary art theorist? A creative writer? A pioneer of electronic literature? A live audio/visual performer? The 21st century version of a cinematic auteur? A DIY polymath who hacks institutionalized forms of cultural production?
His recent print and digital publication / performance project, remixthebook (University of Minnesota Press, 2011), was created out of his very popular Remix Culture practice-based theory course and customized remix workshops that he has taught all around the world. Amerika loves working with talented PhD, MFA and upper division undergraduate students on the potential uses of digital processes to innovate new forms of theory. Amerika has made it a life passion to introduce students to alternative theoretical discourses and attempts to give students a hands-on approach to developing multimedia “close readings” of significant artworks and relevant theoretical texts that resonate with emerging art practices. The course continues to attract students from across a wide interdisciplinary spectrum (visual art, creative writing, dance, music, film, media studies, art history, computer science, psychology, business, journalism, etc.).
The list below contains a few links to selected writings composed over the last two decades:
remixthebook
University of Minnesota Press and online collaborative writing performance (2011)
Creative Evolution: natural selection and the urge to remix
Coventry University Living Books About Life Series / Open Humanities Press (2011)
Becoming a Remixologist : Art, Theory and Sound Practice
Centre international d’art contemporain de Montreal Magazine (2010)
The Renewable Tradition (Extended Play Remix)
Fibreculture 15 (2009)
The Postproduction of Presence
A Director’s Notebook (2009)
Source Material Everywhere: The Alfred North Whitehead Remix
Culture Machine (2009)
Portrait of the VJ
Fibreculture 7 (2006)
Teaching High TECHNE
European Journal of Higher Arts Education (2005)
European League of Institutes of the Arts
Expanding the Concept of Writing: Notes on Net Art, Digital Narrative, and Viral Ethics
Leonardo (M.I.T. Press, 2004)
Anticipating the Present: An Artist’s Intuition
New Media and Society (SAGE Publications, 2004)
Hypertextual Consciousness (Polish translation)
Techsty (2004)
Original English version here
Literary Ghosts
Culture Machine (2003)
Ozblog
The Iowa Review (2002)
Writing Cyberspace: Notes on Nomadic Narrative, Net Art and Life Style Practice
Leonardo Electronic Almanac (M.I.T. Press, 2002)
Practice-Based Research, Digital Art and Problem-Based Learning: A Dialogue (2002)
Leonardo Electronic Almanac (M.I.T. Press, 2002)
cinescripture.1 (2001)
An artist ebook commissioned by the ICA as part of the FILMTEXT project
How To Be An Internet Artist (2000-2001)
This conceptual art ebook puts the dot back into net.art
Amerika Online (1993-2000) Amerika’s popular Internet column
net.dialogues: conversations between Amerika and others on Rhizome Internet
