This book is a far more interesting United Kingdom (UK)-centric book than you might guess from its stark, generic title. From well-written chapters by 12 different authors flow the developmental fragments of a coherent idea in progress. To decide if this idea is for you, here are some nano-contemplations on art, computers, and their juxtaposition, with selected samples from the book.

What is art? Well, once upon a time in Paris, cheap garret apartments, shabby shops, and damp passages inconveniently lined the wrong bank of the Seine. From that obscure location, art launched a grand, nonstrategic offensive against the world’s “beliefologies,” attacking the mind through the senses, convolving the emotions, and bringing everlasting confusion to investors in “art as a long term financial instrument.” (Hey, I never said these are easy nano-contemplations!)

Our presumption is that cutting-edge art, which calls itself avant-garde, uses the unstructured side of the brain to provoke well-managed cognitive dissonances, to “leap and tumble” beyond their inherent thresholds of rational control. In our current terrestrial chapter of psycho-spiritual maturation, these aesthetic command posts of art-over-mind warfare have migrated into cyberspace, leaving the so-called warrior-priests of rational consciousness barricaded behind ramparts of once-sterile, software-savvy silicon--also known as computers.

This volume is inspiring--it’s just like listening to summary notes from clandestine reporting spies that broadcast from behind the lines (of pseudocode). The 12 authors of this volume are, as biblical spies of yore, politically incorrect catalysts of ongoing artistic warfare, autonomously conspiring to bio-energize the sterile information technology (IT) habitat of heartless, malevolent machines (again, known as computers). In simple language, this is a thought-provoking anthology, full of oblique lunges and tangential cuts at the very fabric of “tekno geekdom.” It is an impromptu merger of bureaucracies, all joining on a global cultural crusade (or jihad) to preserve sanity in a saline solution of boredom. Surely, art galleries and cultural museums should follow suit. (Nevertheless, first read on; later, you can turn the world over, set it straight, fold it into multidimensional origami, and refinance it as necessary.)

For my atypical review, I’ve included a metaphor and sample quotes from the book, for the illustrious reader to endlessly contemplate.

First, the metaphor: earthlings, on a family outing, find themselves lost in the postmodern cul-de-sac of sprawling globalization. Their propulsion vehicle is a jury-rigged hodgepodge of barely compatible systems. Their navigation sense is less than enlightened. Let’s listen in to their discussions as they vote to turn left or right, to walk or order a pizza, debate having a barbecue, and ponder other “learned” suggestions.

Next, creatively selected quotes serve to exemplify the book’s style: “The discipline is a new one; a medium perhaps still waiting for its time.” “A world seen through vector spectacles might prove a world seen anew.” And finally, “At the intersection between dailyness and dreaming, we will transcend.”

I’m sure the eventual third edition will exceed readers’ wildest expectations; it will, no doubt, be expanded to a coffee table over-sized format (from its current modest presentation) and include countless mind-boggling, breathtaking, jurisprudence-defying illustrations (all substantially absent from this second edition) drawn from the wellsprings of computers and art. But, alas, all these magnificent speculations are missing from this second edition, although it does include an enticing spectrum of bibliographical references.