The installation Electric Earth, which received the Premio Internazionale at the 1999 Venice Biennale, brought international recognition to the media artist Doug Aitken. In this video piece, a dancer roams a transitory realm of wasted landscapes. Here Aitken, whose subjects are natural landscapes and cityscapes, links the electrified structures of our urban world with the nervous system of the human body. At the same time, it becomes quite obvious that the American artist has developed the artistic visions he uses in his visual productions from the field of commercial video production: Aitken first directed a large number of popular music videos shown on music channels in America, Asia and Europe. The artist's book, laid out in a landscape format, grants fascinating views of natural and urban landscapes and structures. The character of the publication "is rather like a video installation than a film: you don't have to look through it passively from A to Z ... it offers up a space in which the reader can move freely ... in order to create a story in the here and now, in the flow of time." (Gijs van Tuyl.) The artist: Doug Aitken, born 1968 at Recondo Beach, California. 1986/87 student at Marymount College at Palos Verdes, 1987-1991 at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. Lives in New York and Los Angeles.