2012

Sonvilla-Weiss Stefan Synthesis & Nullification.
Works 1991 – 2011
Publisher: Springer Wien / New York
ISBN: 978-3-7091-1028-7
Amazon
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-7091-1029-4

This book is the first retrospective covering the career of Stefan Sonvilla-Weiss as a visual artist, graphic designer, multimedia developer, writer, researcher, educator, and visionary conceptualist spanning twenty years from the early 1990s to the present. Synthesis and Nullification are used here metaphorically, as it stands for a complex and wide-ranging theoretical and practical exploration of visual culture, its quest for experimental probing and application perpetuating a state of permanent flux in the work of Sonvilla-Weiss. At the center of his work lie the multi-layered and multi-faceted social, technical, and aesthetic aspects of participatory media culture, along with its diverse modes and concepts of presentation and representation.
To better understand these processes as evolving media literacy, which is highly context-based and reliant on networked communication skills and techniques, Sonvilla-Weiss developed the concept of visual knowledge building, a framework for continuing research.
Synthesis and Nullification are divided into four main chapters, which bundle artwork, concept visualizations, installations, photographs, and multimedia work chronologically. This volume contains numerous previously unpublished texts and artwork from the last two decades, allowing the discovery of a whole universe of textual and visual material.
Synthesis and Nullification are written for media scholars, students, artists, cultural workers, art educators, designers, media artists, art historians, communication experts, curators, and interested laypersons.

Peter Weibel about this book, “Congratulations: excellent design, texts and artworks – and very inspiring!”