[SIGCIS-Members] NEW BOOK, Image Objects: An Archaeology of Computer Graphics (MIT Press, 2021)

[Bernard Geoghegan]

Dear Colleagues,

Congrats, Jacob, on your fabulous book on computer graphics! I wrote a review of it, that I might dwell on its work a little longer.  It’s been published today, here, and I thought I’d share it with the list:

https://criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/bernard_dionysius_geoghegan_reviews_image_objects/

It’s been harder keeping up on reading during the pandemic, I hope I’ll get a chance to read a few more reviews from colleagues in the coming months, to catch up with what I’ve missed.

I hope you’re all safe and well,
Bernard



From: Members <members-bounces at lists.sigcis.org> on behalf of Jacob Gaboury <gaboury at gmail.com>
Date: Friday, 8 October 2021 at 21:26
To: sigcis <members at sigcis.org>
Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] NEW BOOK, Image Objects: An Archaeology of Computer Graphics (MIT Press, 2021)
Some of you have very generously mentioned the book on the SIGCIS list already, but I thought it would be a good idea to officially announce the release of my book on the history of computer graphics from MIT Press. Image Objects: An Archaeology of Computer Graphics<https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/image-objects> examines the history of computer graphics from roughly 1950-1980, with a focus on the groundbreaking research program at the University of Utah. The book is based largely on archival holdings at Utah and elsewhere, and follows an "object-oriented" structure, with each chapter unpacking a particular technology that shaped the formation of the field of computer graphics, and which continues to shape the ways we use and interact with computational technologies today. SIGCIS has been a critical community for this project since the very beginning, and I am very excited to share this work with all of you.

The book is also available with a 20% discount<https://go.mitpress.mit.edu/en-us/4s2021?utm_campaign=FY22_Exhibits_4S&utm_content=181406244> for the month of October using the code 4S2021!

Image Objects: An Archaeology of Computer Graphics
Jacob Gaboury

312 pages | 6 x 9 | 133 b&w photos, 20 color plates
Hardcover Aug 2021 | ISBN: 9780262045032 | $35.00

Table of Contents

Introduction
Chapter 1:  Culling Vision: Hidden Surface Algorithms and the Problem of Visibility
Chapter 2:  Random-Access Images: Interfacing Memory and the History of the Computer Screen
Chapter 3:  Model Objects: The Utah Teapot as Standard and Icon
Chapter 4:  Object Paradigms: On the Origins of Object Orientation
Chapter 5:  Procedure Crystallized: The Graphics Processing Unit and the Rise of Computer Graphics
Coda:  After Objects

“With Image Objects, Gaboury has established himself as the leading voice among a new generation of visual culture theorists. This is a landmark contribution to the fields of digital culture, media theory, and science and technology studies." - Bernard Geoghegan, Senior Lecturer in the History and Theory of Digital Media, King's College London

How computer graphics transformed the computer from a calculating machine into an interactive medium, as seen through the histories of five technical objects.

Most of us think of computer graphics as a relatively recent invention, enabling the spectacular visual effects and lifelike simulations we see in current films, television shows, and digital games. In fact, computer graphics have been around as long as the modern computer itself, and played a fundamental role in the development of our contemporary culture of computing. In Image Objects, Jacob Gaboury offers a prehistory of computer graphics through an examination of five technical objects—an algorithm, an interface, an object standard, a programming paradigm, and a hardware platform—arguing that computer graphics transformed the computer from a calculating machine into an interactive medium.

Gaboury explores early efforts to produce an algorithmic solution for the calculation of object visibility; considers the history of the computer screen and the random-access memory that first made interactive images possible; examines the standardization of graphical objects through the Utah teapot, the most famous graphical model in the history of the field; reviews the graphical origins of the object-oriented programming paradigm; and, finally, considers the development of the graphics processing unit as the catalyst that enabled an explosion in graphical computing at the end of the twentieth century.

The development of computer graphics, Gaboury argues, signals a change not only in the way we make images but also in the way we mediate our world through the computer—and how we have come to reimagine that world as computational.

--
Jacob Gaboury (he/him)
Associate Professor of New Media History and Theory
Dept. of Film & Media, University of California at Berkeley
jacobgaboury.com/<http://www.jacobgaboury.com/>

Image Objects: An Archaeology of Computer Graphics (MIT Press, 2021)
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/image-objects
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