Bridging histories of technology, media studies, and aesthetics, Electrographic Architecture forges a critical narrative of the ways in which illuminated light and color have played key roles in the formation of America's white imaginary. Carolyn L. Kane charts the rise of the country's urban advertisements, light empires, and neoclassical buildings in the early twentieth century; the midcentury construction of polychromatic electrographic spectacles; and their eclipse by informatically intense, invisible algorithms at the dawn of the new millennium. Drawing on archival research, interviews, and visual analysis, Electrographic Architecture shows how the development of America's electrographic surround runs parallel to a new paradigm of power, property, and possession.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Introduction: White like No Other
1. Synthetic White, 10,000 BC1700 AD
2. Edisons White Light Empire, 17501881
3. The Great White Way, 1880s1910
4. Douglas Leighs Times Square Spectaculars, 19301960
5. The Young Electric Sign Company and Las Vegas Neon, 19201970
6. Jenny Holzers Light Art as Urban Critique, 19701990
Conclusion: Chromophobia in the Smart City, 19922022
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Carolyn L. Kane is author of High-Tech Trash: Glitch, Noise, and Aesthetic Failure and Chromatic Algorithms: Synthetic Color, Computer Art, and Aesthetics after Code.
