The Democratic Surround and the Forgotten History of Multimedia opens March 28

Press release

The Democratic Surround and the Forgotten History of Multimedia
by Fred Turner, Associate Professor of Communication and Director of the Program in Science, Technology and Society at Stanford University and author of The Democratic Surround: Multimedia and American Liberalism from World War II to the Psychedelic Sixties.

The Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center in downtown Asheville presents The Democratic Surround and the Forgotten History of Multimedia, a presentation by Fred Turner on Friday, March 28 at 7:30
Admission is $8 / $5 for BMCM+AC members & students w/ID

Today we find ourselves surrounded by screens – on our iPhones, our tablets, our desktop computers. Little do we know that we are living out the multimedia dreams of several dozen Cold War social scientists and propagandists, a handful of Bauhaus artists, and the musician John Cage. Stanford professor Fred Turner tracks those dreams from World War II to the psychedelic sixties and lays bare the long-buried cultural roots of an American media revolution.

Fred Turner is Associate Professor of Communication and Director of the Program in Science, Technology and Society at Stanford University. He is the author of several books, including the widely acclaimed From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism, and more recently, The Democratic Surround: Multimedia and American Liberalism from World War II to the Psychedelic Sixties. His essays have tackled topics ranging from the rise of reality television to the role of the Burning Man festival at Google and can be found online here: http://fredturner.stanford.edu .

This event is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Cynthia Homire: Vision Quest which received support from The Beattie Foundation and the North Carolina Arts Council, a division of the Department of Cultural Resources, with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.