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The Age of Earthquakes

A Guide to the Extreme Present

Author Douglas Coupland, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Shumon Basar
Ebook (EPUB FXL Other)
Penguin Adult HC/TR | Blue Rider Press
On sale Mar 24, 2015 | 256 Pages | 9781101982419
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A highly provocative, mindbending, beautifully designed, and visionary look at the landscape of our rapidly evolving digital era.

50 years after Marshall McLuhan's ground breaking book on the influence of technology on culture in The Medium is the Massage, Basar, Coupland and Obrist extend the analysis to today, touring the world that’s redefined by the Internet, decoding and explaining what they call the 'extreme present'.
 
THE AGE OF EARTHQUAKES is a quick-fire paperback, harnessing the images, language and perceptions of our unfurling digital lives. The authors offer five characteristics of the Extreme Present (see below); invent a glossary of new words to describe how we are truly feeling today; and ‘mindsource’ images and illustrations from over 30 contemporary artists. Wayne Daly’s striking graphic design  imports  the  surreal,  juxtaposed,  mashed  mannerisms  of screen to page. It’s like a culturally prescient, all-knowing email to the reader: possibly the best email they will ever read.
 
Welcome to THE AGE OF EARTHQUAKES, a paper portrait of Now, where the Internet hasn’t just changed the structure of our brains these past few years, it’s also changing the structure of the planet. This is a new history of the world that fits perfectly in your back pocket. 

30+  artists  contributions: With  contributions  from  Farah Al Qasimi, Ed Atkins, Alessandro Bavo, Gabriele Basilico, Josh Bitelli, James Bridle, Cao Fei, Alex Mackin Dolan, Thomas Dozol, Constant Dullaart, Cecile B Evans, Rami Farook, Hans-Peter Feldmann, GCC, K-Hole, Liam Gillick, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Eloise Hawser, Camille Henrot, Hu Fang, K-Hole, Koo Jeong-A, Katja Novitskova, Lara Ogel, Trevor Paglen, Yuri Patterson, Jon Rafman, Bunny Rogers, Bogosi Sekhukhuni, Taryn Simon, Hito Steyerl, Michael Stipe, Rosemarie Trockel, Amalia Ulman, David Weir, Trevor Yeung.

"It is a book not only inspired by the internet, but seemingly written by the internet. It is as if the internet gained not only artificial self-consciousness but wisdom – and then became your pal.” --Tod Wodicka, The National

“A new philosophy-cum-modern-self-help book.” --Vice

“Coupland is up to his new-old tricks, and this time he's brought some friends. It's hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. That's a good thing...The Age of Earthquakes is like the internet in book form. A Tumblr made of paper. Lots of interesting tidbits, philosophical musings presented as fact.” --LitReactor

"The Age of Earthquakes is a kind of philosophical Anarchist Cookbook for the online era, when we are in touch with everyone at once all the time, or at least like to feel that we are…It’s a book insistently engaged with the present tense. It is both a wave and a particle; content and form. Perhaps it is the 21st century’s first book-meme.” --Pacific Standard
DOUGLAS COUPLAND is a Canadian writer, visual artist and designer. His first novel is the 1991 international bestseller Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, still celebrated for its biting humour and cultural relevancy thirty years since initial publication. He has published fourteen novels, two collections of short stories, eight nonfiction books. He has written and performed for England's Royal Shakespeare Company, is a columnist for The Financial Times of London and a frequent contributor to The New York Times. In 2000 Coupland amplified his visual art production and has recently had two separate museum retrospectives, Everything is Anything is Anywhere is Everywhere at the Vancouver Art Gallery, The Royal Ontario Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, and Bit Rot at Rotterdam's Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, and Munich's Villa Stücke. In 2015 and 2016 Coupland was artist in residence in the Paris Google Cultural Institute. In May 2018, his exhibition on ecology, Vortex, opened at the Vancouver Aquarium. Coupland is a member of the Royal Canadian Academy, an Officer of the Order of Canada, an Officer of the Order of British Columbia, a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and a recipient of the Lieutenant Governor's Award for Literary Excellence. View titles by Douglas Coupland
Hans Ulrich Obrist View titles by Hans Ulrich Obrist
Shumon Basar View titles by Shumon Basar

About

A highly provocative, mindbending, beautifully designed, and visionary look at the landscape of our rapidly evolving digital era.

50 years after Marshall McLuhan's ground breaking book on the influence of technology on culture in The Medium is the Massage, Basar, Coupland and Obrist extend the analysis to today, touring the world that’s redefined by the Internet, decoding and explaining what they call the 'extreme present'.
 
THE AGE OF EARTHQUAKES is a quick-fire paperback, harnessing the images, language and perceptions of our unfurling digital lives. The authors offer five characteristics of the Extreme Present (see below); invent a glossary of new words to describe how we are truly feeling today; and ‘mindsource’ images and illustrations from over 30 contemporary artists. Wayne Daly’s striking graphic design  imports  the  surreal,  juxtaposed,  mashed  mannerisms  of screen to page. It’s like a culturally prescient, all-knowing email to the reader: possibly the best email they will ever read.
 
Welcome to THE AGE OF EARTHQUAKES, a paper portrait of Now, where the Internet hasn’t just changed the structure of our brains these past few years, it’s also changing the structure of the planet. This is a new history of the world that fits perfectly in your back pocket. 

30+  artists  contributions: With  contributions  from  Farah Al Qasimi, Ed Atkins, Alessandro Bavo, Gabriele Basilico, Josh Bitelli, James Bridle, Cao Fei, Alex Mackin Dolan, Thomas Dozol, Constant Dullaart, Cecile B Evans, Rami Farook, Hans-Peter Feldmann, GCC, K-Hole, Liam Gillick, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Eloise Hawser, Camille Henrot, Hu Fang, K-Hole, Koo Jeong-A, Katja Novitskova, Lara Ogel, Trevor Paglen, Yuri Patterson, Jon Rafman, Bunny Rogers, Bogosi Sekhukhuni, Taryn Simon, Hito Steyerl, Michael Stipe, Rosemarie Trockel, Amalia Ulman, David Weir, Trevor Yeung.

Reviews

"It is a book not only inspired by the internet, but seemingly written by the internet. It is as if the internet gained not only artificial self-consciousness but wisdom – and then became your pal.” --Tod Wodicka, The National

“A new philosophy-cum-modern-self-help book.” --Vice

“Coupland is up to his new-old tricks, and this time he's brought some friends. It's hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. That's a good thing...The Age of Earthquakes is like the internet in book form. A Tumblr made of paper. Lots of interesting tidbits, philosophical musings presented as fact.” --LitReactor

"The Age of Earthquakes is a kind of philosophical Anarchist Cookbook for the online era, when we are in touch with everyone at once all the time, or at least like to feel that we are…It’s a book insistently engaged with the present tense. It is both a wave and a particle; content and form. Perhaps it is the 21st century’s first book-meme.” --Pacific Standard

Author

DOUGLAS COUPLAND is a Canadian writer, visual artist and designer. His first novel is the 1991 international bestseller Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, still celebrated for its biting humour and cultural relevancy thirty years since initial publication. He has published fourteen novels, two collections of short stories, eight nonfiction books. He has written and performed for England's Royal Shakespeare Company, is a columnist for The Financial Times of London and a frequent contributor to The New York Times. In 2000 Coupland amplified his visual art production and has recently had two separate museum retrospectives, Everything is Anything is Anywhere is Everywhere at the Vancouver Art Gallery, The Royal Ontario Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, and Bit Rot at Rotterdam's Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, and Munich's Villa Stücke. In 2015 and 2016 Coupland was artist in residence in the Paris Google Cultural Institute. In May 2018, his exhibition on ecology, Vortex, opened at the Vancouver Aquarium. Coupland is a member of the Royal Canadian Academy, an Officer of the Order of Canada, an Officer of the Order of British Columbia, a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and a recipient of the Lieutenant Governor's Award for Literary Excellence. View titles by Douglas Coupland
Hans Ulrich Obrist View titles by Hans Ulrich Obrist
Shumon Basar View titles by Shumon Basar

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