[Commlist] New book: The Cory Arcangel Hack

Eivind Røssaak´s /The Cory Arcangel Hack: Digital Culture and Aesthetic 
Practice/, MIT Press, 2025, is out as Open Access.

_https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-monograph/6049/The-Cory-Arcangel-HackDigital-Culture-and 
<https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-monograph/6049/The-Cory-Arcangel-HackDigital-Culture-and>_

The book examines digital art strategies through the lens of 40 years of 
media history, centering on the punk-inspired DIY artist Cory Arcangel. 
Combining infrastructural analysis, media archaeology, and media 
ecology, it proposes a new aesthetic for the late-capitalist digital 
condition, articulated through the concepts of the ‘flow-cut 
arrangement’ and the ‘schiz-image.’


Praise:

Arcangel’s trajectory as an artist maps the palette of computing over 
the past decades. From beige to candy-colored and rainbow-hued to toxic 
orange and dollar blues, Eivind Røssaak captures this faithfully and in 
telling detail.

~Matthew Fuller, Goldsmiths, University of London

Like Duchamp, Arcangel is a sly prankster. His media hacks are serious, 
challenging, and deeply funny. Røssaak shows why these aspects must be 
thought together to understand Arcangel’s conception of a contemporary 
art practice. Weaving together the technical and social mechanics 
through which we are threaded, Røssaak’s infrastructural analysis 
reveals Arcangel’s jokes as a window into the unconscious of our 
21st-century media culture.

~Andrew V. Uroskie, Associate Professor, Stony Brook University

Any one of Cory Arcangel’s artworks could hardly have been produced a 
day earlier, because he conjures ideas and materials from the cultural 
and technological ferment of the now. Røssaak studies a quarter 
century’s worth of Arcangel's groundbreaking work in order to shed light 
on where we've been, how we were got here, and how one might resist the 
flow.

~Seth Price, artist

Content:

Preface

By Alexander R. Galloway

Introduction: The Milieu

Arcangel’s early career

Video Culture: the video art scene in Buffalo

Beige and Radical Software Group: Hacker collectives

Machine Art: The hack as machine art

 From Television to Computer

Inventory of Parts

Chapter 1: Flow-Cut Arrangements

Games and Cybernetics: MIT hackers, feedback loops, cybernetic control

Code and Infrastructure: an infrastructure approach to networks and 
computers

Assemblage Theory after Digitization: Deleuze & Guattari, flow theory

To Surgically Remove a Flow-Sample: the Cory Arcangel hack

Flow-Cut Arrangements: agencement, remix, parody, break

Media Archaeology: reverse engineering, actor-network theory

The Comedy Impulse: pranks, gimmicks, and the joke aesthetics

Alchemy: transcoding, iconoclash, KISS principle, minimalism

Chapter 2: Flow-Break — Super Mario Clouds and ROM Hacking

Reverse Engineering SMC: NES cartridge, PRG/CHR chips, EPROM, 6502 assembly

Installation History: CRT TV vs. projection

ROM Hacking Controversy: Altice & LeMieux critiques, authenticity debates

Authorship Dispute: lawsuit with Paul B. Davis (2021–2023)

The Digital Readymade: Duchamp, Warhol, deskilling/reskilling, ghost work

The Schiz-Image: the crash between cultural and computational layers, 
Deleuze’s time-image after digitization

Chapter 3: Flow-Remix — From Supercuts to Working on My Novel

Remix Culture & Web 2.0: Jonah Peretti, YouTube, Twitter, BuzzFeed, 
Eyebeam OpenLab

Google AdSense Hack: Punk Rock 101

The Supercut and the Gimmick: genre history, algorithmic humor, Ngai’s 
theory

The Web as a Musical Instrument: A Couple Thousand Short Films About 
Glenn Gould, Gould Pro software

The Demonic: Paganini Caprice No. 5, guitar culture, virtuosity, flicker 
aesthetics

Becoming-Animal: Drei Klavierstücke op. 11, cats, Schoenberg, Adorno, 
John Cage

Twitter as a Book: Working on My Novel (2014), mapping the networked 
human being

Chapter 4: Flow-Parody — Bots and Monkeyrunners

Century 21 Exhibition (2021): the apocalypse, Trumpism, enshittification

Key Works:

elleusa, equinor, equinox, etrade_financial (2020): bots and the 
likes-economy

we deliver / the king checked by the queen (2020): chess bots, Duchamp 
homage

/roʊˈdeɪoʊ/ Let’s Play: HOLLYWOOD (2017–2021): AI bot gameplay

Related to your interests (2020–2021): audiovisual gossip archive

Inspos (2021): the enshittification of the web

Platform Capitalism: surveillance, subjectivation

Subversive Affirmation: parody, overidentification, social bots

Documentation: web-episodes, screen-capture documentaries, archival art

Conclusion: The Hack as Social Invention

Arcangel as “mechanologist”, revealing human technicity

Resistance through “productive unworking”

Thousand minor ecologies: sharing culture, reprogramming as resistance

_https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262552547/the-cory-arcangel-hack/




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