Close Modal
0 0
Download high-resolution image

The Cory Arcangel Hack

Digital Culture and Aesthetic Practice

Part of Leonardo

Author Eivind Rossaak
Preface by Alexander R. Galloway
Paperback
$45.00 US
The MIT Press
6.06"W x 9"H x 0.64"D   (15.4 x 22.9 x 1.6 cm) | 15 oz (437 g) | 26 per carton
On sale Nov 04, 2025 | 274 Pages | 9780262552547
Sales rights: World
Add to cart Add to list Exam Copies

View on Edelweiss
The first in-depth exploration of the work of artist Cory Arcangel, a pioneer of DIY-new media art whose influential “hacks” subvert the confines of Big Tech.

Cory Arcangel (b. 1978), perhaps best known for Super Mario Clouds, the most referenced artistic game hack in art history, became one of the first artists from a new generation of punk DIY-new media geeks to capture the attention of the art world.

Combining the hands-on skills from the 1990s net art scene and the 2010s post-internet art’s fondness for memes and the generic image, Arcangel demonstrated the way cultural expressions are intimately connected to media technologies and how these technologies can be pranked for cultural critique. In The Cory Arcangel Hack, Eivind Røssaak shows how Arcangel’s body of work defines a particular strain of post-conceptual art that is fundamental for understanding the digital world we live in.

Today, the question is not what comes first, humans or machines, but what the forces regulating expressive flows are. Arcangel’s aesthetic and micropolitical critique of mediation at the level of codes and chips enables us to think critically with computational articulations through specific aesthetic clashes and disjunctions, identified in the book as critical “flow-cut arrangements.” This book explores three dominant arrangements in Arcangel’s work—the flow-break hack, the flow-remix hack, and the flow-parody hack—which pinpoint areas of both creativity and concern before and after platform capitalism.
ENDORSEMENTS

“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
Eivind Røssaak is Research Professor at the National Library of Norway’s Department of Research, Visual Media Section. A former Visiting Scholar at Cinema and Media Studies at University of Chicago, Cinematic Arts at USC, and Tisch School of the Arts at NYU, he has published and edited several books and articles in English and Norwegian.
Eivind Rossaak View titles by Eivind Rossaak
Available for sale exclusive:
•     Afghanistan
•     Aland Islands
•     Albania
•     Algeria
•     Andorra
•     Angola
•     Anguilla
•     Antarctica
•     Antigua/Barbuda
•     Argentina
•     Armenia
•     Aruba
•     Australia
•     Austria
•     Azerbaijan
•     Bahamas
•     Bahrain
•     Bangladesh
•     Barbados
•     Belarus
•     Belgium
•     Belize
•     Benin
•     Bermuda
•     Bhutan
•     Bolivia
•     Bonaire, Saba
•     Bosnia Herzeg.
•     Botswana
•     Bouvet Island
•     Brazil
•     Brit.Ind.Oc.Ter
•     Brit.Virgin Is.
•     Brunei
•     Bulgaria
•     Burkina Faso
•     Burundi
•     Cambodia
•     Cameroon
•     Canada
•     Cape Verde
•     Cayman Islands
•     Centr.Afr.Rep.
•     Chad
•     Chile
•     China
•     Christmas Islnd
•     Cocos Islands
•     Colombia
•     Comoro Is.
•     Congo
•     Cook Islands
•     Costa Rica
•     Croatia
•     Cuba
•     Curacao
•     Cyprus
•     Czech Republic
•     Dem. Rep. Congo
•     Denmark
•     Djibouti
•     Dominica
•     Dominican Rep.
•     Ecuador
•     Egypt
•     El Salvador
•     Equatorial Gui.
•     Eritrea
•     Estonia
•     Ethiopia
•     Falkland Islnds
•     Faroe Islands
•     Fiji
•     Finland
•     France
•     Fren.Polynesia
•     French Guinea
•     Gabon
•     Gambia
•     Georgia
•     Germany
•     Ghana
•     Gibraltar
•     Greece
•     Greenland
•     Grenada
•     Guadeloupe
•     Guam
•     Guatemala
•     Guernsey
•     Guinea Republic
•     Guinea-Bissau
•     Guyana
•     Haiti
•     Heard/McDon.Isl
•     Honduras
•     Hong Kong
•     Hungary
•     Iceland
•     India
•     Indonesia
•     Iran
•     Iraq
•     Ireland
•     Isle of Man
•     Israel
•     Italy
•     Ivory Coast
•     Jamaica
•     Japan
•     Jersey
•     Jordan
•     Kazakhstan
•     Kenya
•     Kiribati
•     Kuwait
•     Kyrgyzstan
•     Laos
•     Latvia
•     Lebanon
•     Lesotho
•     Liberia
•     Libya
•     Liechtenstein
•     Lithuania
•     Luxembourg
•     Macau
•     Macedonia
•     Madagascar
•     Malawi
•     Malaysia
•     Maldives
•     Mali
•     Malta
•     Marshall island
•     Martinique
•     Mauritania
•     Mauritius
•     Mayotte
•     Mexico
•     Micronesia
•     Minor Outl.Ins.
•     Moldavia
•     Monaco
•     Mongolia
•     Montenegro
•     Montserrat
•     Morocco
•     Mozambique
•     Myanmar
•     Namibia
•     Nauru
•     Nepal
•     Netherlands
•     New Caledonia
•     New Zealand
•     Nicaragua
•     Niger
•     Nigeria
•     Niue
•     Norfolk Island
•     North Korea
•     North Mariana
•     Norway
•     Oman
•     Pakistan
•     Palau
•     Palestinian Ter
•     Panama
•     PapuaNewGuinea
•     Paraguay
•     Peru
•     Philippines
•     Pitcairn Islnds
•     Poland
•     Portugal
•     Puerto Rico
•     Qatar
•     Reunion Island
•     Romania
•     Russian Fed.
•     Rwanda
•     S. Sandwich Ins
•     Saint Martin
•     Samoa,American
•     San Marino
•     SaoTome Princip
•     Saudi Arabia
•     Senegal
•     Serbia
•     Seychelles
•     Sierra Leone
•     Singapore
•     Sint Maarten
•     Slovakia
•     Slovenia
•     Solomon Islands
•     Somalia
•     South Africa
•     South Korea
•     South Sudan
•     Spain
•     Sri Lanka
•     St Barthelemy
•     St. Helena
•     St. Lucia
•     St. Vincent
•     St.Chr.,Nevis
•     St.Pier,Miquel.
•     Sth Terr. Franc
•     Sudan
•     Suriname
•     Svalbard
•     Swaziland
•     Sweden
•     Switzerland
•     Syria
•     Tadschikistan
•     Taiwan
•     Tanzania
•     Thailand
•     Timor-Leste
•     Togo
•     Tokelau Islands
•     Tonga
•     Trinidad,Tobago
•     Tunisia
•     Turkey
•     Turkmenistan
•     Turks&Caicos Is
•     Tuvalu
•     US Virgin Is.
•     USA
•     Uganda
•     Ukraine
•     Unit.Arab Emir.
•     United Kingdom
•     Uruguay
•     Uzbekistan
•     Vanuatu
•     Vatican City
•     Venezuela
•     Vietnam
•     Wallis,Futuna
•     West Saharan
•     Western Samoa
•     Yemen
•     Zambia
•     Zimbabwe
Acknowledgment
Preface by Alexander R. Galloway
Introduction: Cracking the Code
1. The Alchemy of Hacks and Flows
2. Flow-Break: Super Mario Clouds and ROM Hacking
3. Flow-Remix: From Supercuts to Working on My Novel
4. Flow-Parody: Bots and MonkeyRunners
Conclusion: Withdrawal or Social Innovation?
Notes
List of Works
List of Figures

About

The first in-depth exploration of the work of artist Cory Arcangel, a pioneer of DIY-new media art whose influential “hacks” subvert the confines of Big Tech.

Cory Arcangel (b. 1978), perhaps best known for Super Mario Clouds, the most referenced artistic game hack in art history, became one of the first artists from a new generation of punk DIY-new media geeks to capture the attention of the art world.

Combining the hands-on skills from the 1990s net art scene and the 2010s post-internet art’s fondness for memes and the generic image, Arcangel demonstrated the way cultural expressions are intimately connected to media technologies and how these technologies can be pranked for cultural critique. In The Cory Arcangel Hack, Eivind Røssaak shows how Arcangel’s body of work defines a particular strain of post-conceptual art that is fundamental for understanding the digital world we live in.

Today, the question is not what comes first, humans or machines, but what the forces regulating expressive flows are. Arcangel’s aesthetic and micropolitical critique of mediation at the level of codes and chips enables us to think critically with computational articulations through specific aesthetic clashes and disjunctions, identified in the book as critical “flow-cut arrangements.” This book explores three dominant arrangements in Arcangel’s work—the flow-break hack, the flow-remix hack, and the flow-parody hack—which pinpoint areas of both creativity and concern before and after platform capitalism.

Praise

ENDORSEMENTS

“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

Author

Eivind Røssaak is Research Professor at the National Library of Norway’s Department of Research, Visual Media Section. A former Visiting Scholar at Cinema and Media Studies at University of Chicago, Cinematic Arts at USC, and Tisch School of the Arts at NYU, he has published and edited several books and articles in English and Norwegian.
Eivind Rossaak View titles by Eivind Rossaak

Rights

Available for sale exclusive:
•     Afghanistan
•     Aland Islands
•     Albania
•     Algeria
•     Andorra
•     Angola
•     Anguilla
•     Antarctica
•     Antigua/Barbuda
•     Argentina
•     Armenia
•     Aruba
•     Australia
•     Austria
•     Azerbaijan
•     Bahamas
•     Bahrain
•     Bangladesh
•     Barbados
•     Belarus
•     Belgium
•     Belize
•     Benin
•     Bermuda
•     Bhutan
•     Bolivia
•     Bonaire, Saba
•     Bosnia Herzeg.
•     Botswana
•     Bouvet Island
•     Brazil
•     Brit.Ind.Oc.Ter
•     Brit.Virgin Is.
•     Brunei
•     Bulgaria
•     Burkina Faso
•     Burundi
•     Cambodia
•     Cameroon
•     Canada
•     Cape Verde
•     Cayman Islands
•     Centr.Afr.Rep.
•     Chad
•     Chile
•     China
•     Christmas Islnd
•     Cocos Islands
•     Colombia
•     Comoro Is.
•     Congo
•     Cook Islands
•     Costa Rica
•     Croatia
•     Cuba
•     Curacao
•     Cyprus
•     Czech Republic
•     Dem. Rep. Congo
•     Denmark
•     Djibouti
•     Dominica
•     Dominican Rep.
•     Ecuador
•     Egypt
•     El Salvador
•     Equatorial Gui.
•     Eritrea
•     Estonia
•     Ethiopia
•     Falkland Islnds
•     Faroe Islands
•     Fiji
•     Finland
•     France
•     Fren.Polynesia
•     French Guinea
•     Gabon
•     Gambia
•     Georgia
•     Germany
•     Ghana
•     Gibraltar
•     Greece
•     Greenland
•     Grenada
•     Guadeloupe
•     Guam
•     Guatemala
•     Guernsey
•     Guinea Republic
•     Guinea-Bissau
•     Guyana
•     Haiti
•     Heard/McDon.Isl
•     Honduras
•     Hong Kong
•     Hungary
•     Iceland
•     India
•     Indonesia
•     Iran
•     Iraq
•     Ireland
•     Isle of Man
•     Israel
•     Italy
•     Ivory Coast
•     Jamaica
•     Japan
•     Jersey
•     Jordan
•     Kazakhstan
•     Kenya
•     Kiribati
•     Kuwait
•     Kyrgyzstan
•     Laos
•     Latvia
•     Lebanon
•     Lesotho
•     Liberia
•     Libya
•     Liechtenstein
•     Lithuania
•     Luxembourg
•     Macau
•     Macedonia
•     Madagascar
•     Malawi
•     Malaysia
•     Maldives
•     Mali
•     Malta
•     Marshall island
•     Martinique
•     Mauritania
•     Mauritius
•     Mayotte
•     Mexico
•     Micronesia
•     Minor Outl.Ins.
•     Moldavia
•     Monaco
•     Mongolia
•     Montenegro
•     Montserrat
•     Morocco
•     Mozambique
•     Myanmar
•     Namibia
•     Nauru
•     Nepal
•     Netherlands
•     New Caledonia
•     New Zealand
•     Nicaragua
•     Niger
•     Nigeria
•     Niue
•     Norfolk Island
•     North Korea
•     North Mariana
•     Norway
•     Oman
•     Pakistan
•     Palau
•     Palestinian Ter
•     Panama
•     PapuaNewGuinea
•     Paraguay
•     Peru
•     Philippines
•     Pitcairn Islnds
•     Poland
•     Portugal
•     Puerto Rico
•     Qatar
•     Reunion Island
•     Romania
•     Russian Fed.
•     Rwanda
•     S. Sandwich Ins
•     Saint Martin
•     Samoa,American
•     San Marino
•     SaoTome Princip
•     Saudi Arabia
•     Senegal
•     Serbia
•     Seychelles
•     Sierra Leone
•     Singapore
•     Sint Maarten
•     Slovakia
•     Slovenia
•     Solomon Islands
•     Somalia
•     South Africa
•     South Korea
•     South Sudan
•     Spain
•     Sri Lanka
•     St Barthelemy
•     St. Helena
•     St. Lucia
•     St. Vincent
•     St.Chr.,Nevis
•     St.Pier,Miquel.
•     Sth Terr. Franc
•     Sudan
•     Suriname
•     Svalbard
•     Swaziland
•     Sweden
•     Switzerland
•     Syria
•     Tadschikistan
•     Taiwan
•     Tanzania
•     Thailand
•     Timor-Leste
•     Togo
•     Tokelau Islands
•     Tonga
•     Trinidad,Tobago
•     Tunisia
•     Turkey
•     Turkmenistan
•     Turks&Caicos Is
•     Tuvalu
•     US Virgin Is.
•     USA
•     Uganda
•     Ukraine
•     Unit.Arab Emir.
•     United Kingdom
•     Uruguay
•     Uzbekistan
•     Vanuatu
•     Vatican City
•     Venezuela
•     Vietnam
•     Wallis,Futuna
•     West Saharan
•     Western Samoa
•     Yemen
•     Zambia
•     Zimbabwe

Table of Contents

Acknowledgment
Preface by Alexander R. Galloway
Introduction: Cracking the Code
1. The Alchemy of Hacks and Flows
2. Flow-Break: Super Mario Clouds and ROM Hacking
3. Flow-Remix: From Supercuts to Working on My Novel
4. Flow-Parody: Bots and MonkeyRunners
Conclusion: Withdrawal or Social Innovation?
Notes
List of Works
List of Figures

Other books in this series

Penguin Random House International Sales

© 2025 Penguin Random House

Back to Top
0
    • 0
    Wish List (0)