From different domains of technologies and philosophy, the concept of virtuality is emerging as a major field for the rethinking of time, space, bodies, meanings and, significantly, the image. Digitalization and cyber-networking form one axis. If the virtual is being celebrated as heralding a radically new era, rich with new possibilities and futures hitherto unimagined through cybernetics, networking and digitalization, such claims are also being viewed with deep scepticism and countered by renewed interest in the groundedness and referentiality of the indexical. Because of digital virtualities in the production of images, the concept of the index becomes relevant precisely in a digital world, as relations between signs, objects, references and bodies become the focus of sometimes anguished and sometimes enthralled critical rethinking. In this transdisciplinary book, major artists, filmmakers, film theorists, philosophers, literary critics, information theorists and cultural analysts examine the twists and turns of the contesting terms of virtuality and indexicality in contemporary cultural theory in relation to history, trauma, sexuality, textuality, anxiety, simulated lives, code, digital cinema, science fiction, and contemporary art. Antony Bryant, Juli Carson, N. Katherine Hayles, Anna Johnson, Mary Kelly, Brian Massumi, Claire Pajaczkowska, Griselda Pollock, Adrian Rifkin, Martha Rosler, Alison Rowley, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Samuel Weber, and Paul Willemen, draw on concrete practices, ranging from film, video and chatrooms to airport spaces, conceptual art and textiles, to offer critically engaged, sometimes sceptical, analyses of contemporary image worlds in the light of a continuing allegiance to grounded histories and critical practice.

Book jacket.