Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality
by Randall Packer and Ken Jordan

New York: W.W.Norton & Company, 2001

Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality presents the untold history behind the interfaces, links, and interactivity we all take for granted today. This groundbreaking work traces a fertile and fascinating serried of collaborations between the arts and the sciences, going back to the years just after World War II -- and even further, to composer Richard Wagner, whose ideas about the immersive nature of music theater foreshadowed the experience of virtual reality.

Among the essential articles gathered here are the Futurists’ 1916 manifesto on cinema, which declared that the new medium would unite all media and replace the book; Vannevar Bush’s 1945 Atlantic Monthly essay that led directly to the hyperlinks in today’s multimedia; J.C.R. Licklider’s groundbreaking idea in 1960 that people and computers could collaborate in creative work; Nam June Paik’s 1984 essay proposing that satellite technology would encourage a global information art; Tim Berner-Lee’s 1949 proposal for a document-sharing network, which became the basis of the World Wide Web; and William Gibson’s discussion of how he came up with the word “cyberspace.”With an insightful introduction to the volume and critical commentaries on each article, editors Randall Packer and Ken Jordan lead us through the groundbreaking developments of the multimedia story. Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality is required reading for anyone who has built a Web site, studied computer graphics, or wondered at the rapid birth and evolution of the new media now changing every aspect of our lives.

Randall Packer is a composer, media artist, and leading authority on the history of multimedia. His work has been shown internationally at the ICC (Intercommunication Center) Biennial Exhibition in Tokyo, ZKM (Center for Art and Media) in Karlsruhe. Germany, and Radio France in Paris.He currently serves on the faculty of the Maryland Institute, College of Art, in Baltimore, where he teaches the history, theory, and practice of digital media.

Ken Jordan is one of the pioneers of Web-based multimedia; as founding editorial director of SonicNet.com, the Web’s first multi-media music zine; as creative director for Icon New Media, publisher of the award-winning Word.com and Charged.com; and, most recently, as cofounder of the public-interest portal MediaChannel.org. He lives in New York City.

An in-depth multimedia exhibition based on the book is available on www.artmuseum.net, sponsored and promoted by the Intel Corporation.