Presentation Data Table

The combination of art, satire, and advertising can create the opportunity for people to suspend momentarily their disbelief, responsibilities, and for a moment, to laugh – and to think. In this context, this melding of media – art and advertising – has the potential to disarm the audience and allow people to see the truths surrounding an issue. This brand of communication can break the ice, so to speak, and allow for new perspectives to surface. For this reason, I am investigating the use of satirical humour, art and advertising as ingredients in the creation of public dialogue.

Keywords: Multispecies Relations, Health Campaigns, Mosquito-borne Diseases, Coexistence, Public Experiments

In order to investigate the effectiveness of public health campaigns to reduce mosquito-borne diseases, I have designed a series of “public experiments” that combine ethnography and artistic installations. In these experiments, a collaborative team -including scientists, artists and patients- create relational art experiences using visual and sonicmedia and performance. People in these collaborations participate by attending “parasite” events in which they gather together as research partners, subjects and objects at the same time. These events provide a means for dialogic and experimental approaches, allowing the hybridisation of “research outcomes” and “the research itself.” My approach to collaborative forms of research aims at ethical and inclusive ways of understanding people’s knowledges and understandings. The best practices for successful collaborations are, therefore, derived from open-ended and process-based events that stimulate debate among the public and the intersubjective exchange of experiences. Based on these premises, I present Serotype, Vampires and the Mosquito Kite Project, public experiments in which the pre-established ways of working for designing health campaigns were put aside. By doing so, I argue that a new relationality, one that includes both the academic and public domain, is needed for thinking differently about mosquitoes and diseases.

How do art and science participate in writing a world of signs and symbols? What do these two human faculties and capaci-ties seek and how do they differ radically? Science has progressively freed itself from its purpose (the search for the why) to model, imitate and master a world in an increasingly abstract manner. If science and art are performative, what world do they draw and what do they tell us (in terms of discourse) about the human? As science gradually becomes techno-science and produced by industries, does art have a singular role to play in the interrelation of these two poles, science and industry, in order to reinhabit the ethical questions and meanings that were originally in these other two creative capacities? Can it and should it?

For over a decade my work has made visible the normally invisible microscopic life. Plankton, in their endless variety, stir my imagination and impulse to observe, draw, and create. Influenced and by scientists in the Menden-Deuer lab, as well as current events, my commitment to depicting plankton grew in the face of climate change. In addition to producing 50% oxygen we breathe they are at the bottom of the food chain.

As the explorations evolved, lessons of painterly abstraction crept into this work. I imagined the natural ocean environment of plankton filmed in the lab, which led to thinking about gesture drawing. If I could be loose and expressive in drawing humans, why not with plankton?
The bits of the Biblical Manuscripts present in this series are intended as signifiers, not as religious Text, but as reference to human history and general spirituality. In parallel with my investigations of plankton, I was creating imagery incorporating visual structures of Hebrew Manuscripts. The tradition of the manuscripts includes micrography (little writing) turned into decorative patterns and sometimes fanciful beasts. I sensed a convergence, and the moment I put the plankton and patterns of the Hebrew Manuscripts together the convergence instantly emerged. This series uses motifs from the Leningrad Codex, created in Old Cairo in 1008, likely by artists from the Asher scriptorium.

New technology facilitated this work. Scientific researchers working today use digital imaging, recording microscopic life for later study in format accessible to artists.  Much of the Leningrad Codex is  digitized and online. Inexpensive printing allowed for interim outputs of evolving digital imagery, subject to gestural drawing and redigitizing. Thus I am able to bring Nature and Culture together with the goal of stirring inner thoughts, recalling the continuum of human history while highlighting essential microscopic life.

ABSTRACT

Virtual Reality is a field that has attracted much interest from people of many different disciplines. This is not surprising, since there are so many applications for virtual reality, from architectural building walk-throughs, medical applications and scientific visualization, to performance art. The emphasis at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (USA) is on improving virtual reality technology and using it to solve real problems. Some of the current applications of virtual reality at UNC are: architectural building walk-through, radiation treatment planning, molecular docking, and medical X-Ray vision. This paper gives an overview of virtual reality techniques and highlights work in progress and recent developments at Chapel Hill and discusses this work’s relevance to art.

How do art and science participate in writing a world of signs and symbols? What do these two human faculties and capacities seek and how do they differ radically? Science has progressively freed itself from its purpose (the search for the why) to model, imitate and master a world in an increasingly abstract manner. If science and art are performative, what world do they draw and what do they tell us (in terms of discourse) about the human? As science gradually becomes techno-science and produced by industries, does art have a singular role to play in the interrelation of these two poles, science and industry, in order to re-inhabit the ethical questions and meanings that were originally in these other two creative capacities? Can it and should it?

The Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) in Potsdam (Germany) conducts research with the goal of understanding, advancing, and guiding processes of societal change towards sustainable development. Our researchers collaborate with diverse actors from science, policymaking and public administration as well as arts to develop a common understanding of sustainability challenges and generate potential solutions. Artists can work at the Institute for a year as part of the Fellow Program or get in touch with the platform “Art-Science Cooperations for Sustainability” if they are interested in a collaboration with researchers in a specific project. At the IASS we also conduct research with the goal of understanding the role and transformative potential of art in societal change.

Panel: Art(ist)s in Space

This meeting addresses difficulties typically encountered while undertaking art-science research, teaching, and when meshing curricula from diverse fields. Following a 20-minute introduction to various aspects of this theme, attendees will participate in one of the 90-minute working group discussions led by the panelists. Issues to be addressed may include: integrating the knowledge base and skills of different disciplines; evaluating the credibility of references and key arguments; locating appropriate collaborators outside one’s field; forging models for interpretation, evaluation, and accreditation. To conclude, we reconvene as a group to identify and share ways to surmount some of the difficulties commonly encountered in interdisciplinary art/science practices and curricula. Our goal is to publish a guide to effective models and best practices.

Many things have changed in the world since the era of “globalization” was opened with the US-sponsored commercial twentieth-century trade agreements. A sharp shift in the economy from national to planetary markets, which also involved cultural changes and costumes: interdependence and interclassing of symbols, cultural homogenization, new wealth, but also progressive destruction of productive, natural, and anthropological diversity. And even more has changed with the global financial crisis started in 2008 and not yet over. For Europe and the North Americans this crisis was a disaster: for the workers and the middle class, in particular. Perhaps global wealth has been partly redistributed to China and some Latin American countries (just comparing Colombia’s GDP with that of Italy), but the system is not yet in balance. The crisis has not turned into an opportunity. Social inequalities have increased both in the planet and in individual countries: increased exploitation of workers and diminished rights acquired over time (even a significant percentage of slavery emerges), wealth was concentrated in 5% of the population of the planet , financial capitalism has shaken off its production and its consolidated dynamics of interaction with workers and society, commodity prices have collapsed and many developing countries are suddenly depleting (the value of financial capital now stands at 7 Times the planet’s GDP …), the power of the mafias and the illegal economy increased; And strategic resources for the balance of the ecosystem are being destroyed.

However, although the real power is not that of the governments but of the Banks and Web Multinationals, after the 2008 crisis, some of the myths that base the new post-ideological culture – myths exalted as models by the Mass Media and the Networks of social sharing developed on the Internet – are losing attractiveness and seduction. The “free market”, and Darwinian competition as its corollary, are no longer the only reference model in the economy or in other aspects of human interaction; “Winners” and heroes are not only considered entrepreneurs, strongmen, speculators; The Network itself is no longer considered innocent and neutral. Little by little, it begins to re-consider the importance (even economic, long-term) of ethics in the analysis of social phenomena; “Innovation” is no longer just synonymous with technological equipment but also experimentation at all levels; Even concepts such as “compassion” and “solidarity” in the management of social relations and between communities are emerging, despite the recent spread of reactions to globalization built on intolerance, racism and religious fundamentalism. It is discussed again, and it did not happen in the West since the 1980s, ecology, anthropology, “sustainability” and balance between natural resources, storage and use of raw materials, market. social sensitivity in the consideration of “diversity” is widespread: biological, cultural, natural, productive, gender. And despite the aggressive policies of multinationals and many powerful states with their “populist” leadership, The global economy and its most conscious elites are trying to trigger a virtuous transition from “free market economies” to “market economy managers”.

At this time of planetary chaos, what contribution could the University give, that is, the institution that has been par excellence for centuries to the conservation, transmission and production of knowledge? What role could the University take again – that “public” in particular, less tied than private to particular interests or constant funding research – for decades flattened in its functions? One must not forget that, on the one hand, only the professors – unlike politicians, industrialists and journalists – are in a position to communicate unpopular truths without putting (too much) at risk its position; On the other, only universities, academics and university researchers have the freedom and resources (albeit few) needed to draft impartial and objective studies. For this reason -in designing a new development model: global and interdependent, but sustainable and respectful of both differences and memory- the University and scientific research are strategic. And so the University must be considered – first of all by itself, even before politicians or peoples- as an institution that, in democracy, assumes an almost “constitutive role”: the function, irreplaceable, the preservation of liberties, and those of thought and dissent above all. A body of mediation, conservation and production of knowledge essential to the strengthening of a conscious, responsible and truly participatory democracy: therefore, in perspective, necessary for the strengthening and preservation of the Peace.

However, besides the necessary attention to the specialists and beyond the small logic of internal power, the universities must, again, learn, as in the Abbeys of 1000 years ago, the pride of forming leaders of not only specialized executives. We need to learn not only to think but to “think together”, to participate in a common “conversation” capable of engaging both students and teachers, both administrators and technicians and scientists, with different roles and functions. Architects, engineers, humanists, philosophers. One must learn – and it is neither easy nor painless – to link technological and scientific knowledge with the humanistic and critical one. In this perspective, it is very important to preserve, pass on, comment on and produce knowledge in search directions and in practices that are not immediately considered – economically – “useful”, that is, spendable on the market. Not only because the seemingly “useless” today could only be “not understood” by its contemporaries but very useful (even economically) tomorrow. And not only to cultivate, in a sort of ecology of knowledge, artistic, critical, philosophical, and anthropological “biodiversity” by linking them with the “hard sciences” of technological and scientific knowledge (from chemistry to computer science). Not just to learn to think and to act – both at the same time and necessarily – in strictly disciplinary or trans-disciplinary and trans-cultural terms.

How to ultimately make the company more resistant to such profound changes. Because the University (public, in particular) should not flatten so much in the function of training students as future workers, rather than trying to recover that of people’s education: to help students in their growth process, to help them recognize them as people , aware and responsible citizens; and therefore also, as intelligent and innovative workers. Again, like a time, even in the age of global interdependence, capable of interpreting, designing, and governing the future. With the necessary equilibrium and happy to do it.

Archeology of a Mother Tongue, a virtual reality installation, was a collaboration with Michael Mackenzie and was sponsored by the Banff Centre for the Arts as part of their Art and Virtual Environments seminar. It is an immersive interactive narrative piece. It combines interactive computer graphics, laser disc video and slides with interactive sound. The work sample is a compilation of short excerpts from the installation which takes approximately forty minutes to experience.

As a viewer you navigate the piece with a small plastic camera that allows you to ‘look’ around the spaces and a glove that allows you to start and stop and to touch objects. In the first segment, a dream sequence, touching an animated figure takes you through a path in the architecture which has a narrative segment attached to it. You are in the point of view of the Coroner, one of the two main characters. It is her dream – a memory forgotten in waking life – of being adopted as a child from the city to which she is returning to investigate the murder of a child. There are three environments. The first (the dream) is based on a Piranesi prison drawing, the second is a human rib cage that functions as the transport plane which brings the Coroner to the city. In this second environment orienting your virtual body in the space causes you to collide with invisible planes. These become cloud banks that trigger sections of narrative and bleed through memories of a child, the violinist, who has been murdered. The third environment is a copper wire hand. The hand is a short term memory construct built by the Pathologist, the other main character, who is overwhelmed by memory and can’t function in the present. The objects in the hand are memories – some are of forensic details of the autopsy of the child and tell the story of her life in the city. The skull, with its wire frame brain inside, is the Pathologist’s long-term memory. When you touch these objects they grow large and you enter them, moving around while you hear accompanying sections of narrative.

The electronic arts derive their energy and fascination from the relationship between artist and machine. Attempts to automate art are increasingly successful as developments take place in artificial intelligence, artificial creativity and artificial life. However, it may take artificial consciousness to create a totally artificial life. This in turn requires the resolution of a the question: is quantum mechanics inextricably linked with consciousness? If it is, then a computable consciousness may be impossible – and the future of a totally artificial art may hinge on this.

Intro

James Gleik points out in Chaos’ that the 20th century will probably be remembered for three great scientific revolutions: relativity, quantum mechanics, and chaos theory. We are seeing, in embryonic stage, the first scientific revolution of the 21st century: studies in consciousness. The claims for chaos theory are that, unlike for the preceding two revolutions, it relates to the more immediately tangible world of our experience. Studies in consciousness relates in turn to an intangible but infinitely more intimate world: our being. The discoveries by Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler that showed the Earth to revolve around the Sun became a metaphor for the growing realization that Man was not at the centre of the Universe, but an insignificant by-product of the forces of nature. One can characterize the universe that grew from this classical physics as anthropo-eccentric, that is a universe in which man is no longer at the centre, in contrast to the previous anthropo-centric universe. The more recent discoveries of chaos theory show a less ordered universe, with room for ‘emergent’ properties, however – rocks, weather, organisms, society, the economy: these become non-linear systems with unpredictable developments, but they are still deterministic. The individual is a system of
organs and cells, the result of a gene pool system, embedded within social and economic systems. The individual is still alienated. Until quantum theory. Quantum theory completes the cycle of scientific revolution and renders the universe anthropo-centric once more.

Panel Statement

Panel: Kunstliche Kunst

When someone creates a computer program which shows in its behavior some similarity with humans, and the creator asks the auditorium, whether this shows that the program is like a human or, vice versa, that therefore a human person is not more than a kind of a computer program, we will get the known discussions without clear results. When humans start to make the most adequate descriptions from themselves including feelings, wishes, ways of thinking etc. and they construct a computer program based on this self description, things are by far more difficult: in the ideal case such a program would show everything a human knows about (him/her)self. This is the case of an artificial consciousness. The creation of such an artificial consciousness has to do with art; it is an art to construct such an object and the object itself is an art object. The art object will not need any longer the artist. What does this tell us about the artist? Is the time of human artists gone? Or, is there something more in the story which only has not yet being revealed to us in the course of the game of life so far?

In order to investigate the possibilities of co-creation between performer and interactive virtual system, we have developed a scenic installation composed of two parts: the virtual environment and the interaction interface. We offer an analysis of our creative experience from the point of view of the artist researchers in the field of real-time generative synthetic image. Our results show that the creation depends on how the performer perceives the virtual system as well as how he perceives its influence on this system. The creative potential of the system depends on the mechanisms generated and implemented by the artist in a metacreation context and his interpretation of the interaction data. Our perspectives point towards the conception of a scenography-character.

You may remember experiences from your childhood, such as playing with your fingers in the flow of a river, or in the path of small marching insects, to alter the emerging patterns. Such play is a direct interaction with complex systems, provoking deep insights and aesthetically fascinating natural patterns; ludic investigation may be considered as an infinite game. We approach this subject as cross-disciplinary research through the development of a media-art project: “Artificial Nature.”

The project is an audio-visual art installation bringing forth a world of aesthetic play through the embodiment of complex multi-layered and inter-modulating systems. The installation consists of a projection of a virtual world, with touch-screen and additional sensor interfaces. The virtual world is a visualization of information flow in open dynamical and dissipative systems, interweaving geological, physico-chemical and biological strata. Within this world, evolutionary developmental (‘evo-devo’) growth is modeled to evoke truly autopoietic virtual lifeforms. Spectators can witness, control and create beautiful, complex and generative patterns evolving from the behaviors of the species, while the organisms in turn interact with their open dynamic environment. As a spectator gives his/her input through the touch screen or other sensors, he/she may change local fields of the environment, landscape or physical laws, and actively observe how the feedback systems produce new behavioral patterns.

As an endlessly generative system of abstract images and sound, the locus of artistic authorship (the artist, the participant, the system) is not easy to place; we consider this to be but one aspect of its nature as an infinite game. Our presentation explores the numerous layers of this notion in the embodied art project, discussing its ludic features and artistic, technical and philosophical potentials.

The use of animals within contemporary art is politically and morally divisive. How can an art practice be used as a navigational tool to explore the harmony and discord between symbiotic animal-human relationships? This talk will present artworks in progress that reimagine cultural exchanges between species and the ethical dilemmas they conjure.

How can contemporary art be used as a navigational tool to explore the harmony and discord between symbiotic animal-human relationships? The use of animals within contemporary art is politically and morally divisive. This project seeks to investigate the ethical quagmire of humananimal relationships through a contemporary art practice and is influenced by CoVA’s Art + Ecology residency at the University of Melbourne’s Dookie Agricultural Campus.

The paradoxes associated with our relationships with animals and the use of animals in artworks is where my art practice is positioned. As much as anyone, I am conflicted in my moral standing towards and relationship with animals. I have not eaten meat for over twenty years; however, I have used leather and animal lard in the creation of artworks. Animal matter, such as a cow hide vessel or cattle gut strings strung on a harp, often do not evoke critical discussion when used in artworks. On the other hand, a disfigured or augmented taxidermy specimen of a
cow or calf in the gallery may provoke public outcry. Why?

This artist talk will call into question interspecies relations and present artworks in progress that reimagine cultural exhanges between species.

Artificial Intelligence is present in the generation and distribution of culture. How do artists exploit neural networks? What impact do these algorithms have on artistic practice? Through a practice-based research methodology, this paper explores the potentials and limits of current AI technology, more precisely deep neural networks, in the context of image, text, form and translation of semiotic spaces.

In a relatively short time, the generation of high-resolution images and 3D objects has been achieved. There are models, like CLIP and text2mesh, that do not need the same kind of media input as the output; we call them translation models. Such a twist contributes toward creativity arousal, which manifests itself in art practice and feeds back to the developers’ pipeline. Yet again, we see how artworks act as catalysts for technology development. Those creative scenarios and processes are enabled not solely by AI models, but by the hard work behind implementing these new technologies. AI does not create a ‘push-a-button’ masterpiece but requires a deep understanding of the technology behind it, and a creative and critical mindset. Thus, AI opens new avenues for inspiration and offers novel tool sets, and yet again the question of authorship is asked.

Keywords: Neuroesthetics, Specialized Linear System, functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), Brainwave Art, Brainwave Sonification, Complex Nonlinear System, Encephalography (EEG)

This paper explores brain systems that neuroesthetics and brain-wave art have experimented, in order to consider a complex non-linear system of a brain in terms of art, science and technology. Semir Zeki created a field of neuroesthetics by trying to study the relationship between art, aesthetics and brain through fMRI technology. Since then, neuroesthetics has attracted the attentions of cognitive neuroscientists and elicited the vigorous discussions of aestheticians and artists. Nevertheless, recently neuroesthetics confronts lots of criticisms and skepticisms. It is involved in a problem that regards a brain of the most complex structure as a functionally specialized linear system. In contrast, artworks that use brainwaves view a brain as a nonlinear system rather than a linear system. In particular, brainwave sonification experiments a brain as a complex nonlinear system, focusing on sound generated from neural impulses caused by the complex interactions of neurons in a brain. Interestingly, EEG and auditory feedback are appropriate elements for exploring a complex nonlinear system of a brain.

This paper analyses the use of Immersive Experiences (IX) within artistic research, as an interdisciplinary environment between artistic, practice based research, visual pedagogies, social and cognitive sciences. This paper discusses IX in the context of social shared spaces. It presents the Immersion Lab University of Malta (ILUM) interdisciplinary research project. ILUM has a dedicated, specific room, located at the Department of Digital Arts, Faculty of Media & Knowledge Sciences, at University of Malta, appropriately set-up with life size surround projection and surround sound so as to provide a number of viewers (located within the set-up) with an IX virtual reality environment. The set-up is scalable, portable and provide easy to use navigation and allow the user to move around within the virtual environment. The paper discusses how ILUM combines and integrates three research strands that are part of a major, sustained artistic or scientific focus of the partnering academic institutions, namely the Visual Narratives Laboratory (VNLAB at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research, Filmschool Lodz), the Instytut Kultury at Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland, and the Spatial Media Research Group (SMRG) at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. In those labs researchers, artists, film-makers investigate and create different kinds of IX. ILUM provides the opportunity to situate artistic research in the context of scientific. The thematic backgrounds of these research strands and the infrastructure of ILUM serve as starting points from which the partners collaboratively create new communication content, exhibition settings and research as well as teaching materials.

This paper is an account of Future Forest Diorama, an artistic research project and residency taking place at the experimental station of Can Balasc. Written from the artists’ point of view, it reflects on the challenges and opportunities that arise from inhabiting scientific environments, and the specific type of situated knowledge such environments afford. It advocates for more systematic accounts of the methods and tools invented on-the-fly by artists during art-science residencies to respond to the growing demand for methods of trans-disciplinary collaboration.

This paper aims to enrich the knowledge of artists’ residencies in digital companies, both to understand their particularities and to help develop methods to evaluate the processes and effects of these initiatives. The popularity of artists’ residencies has increased since the 1990s. This can be seen in the funding organizations that develop support programs but also in the diversity of the host institutions, community organizations and private companies that want to welcome artists and develop links with the art worlds. What explains this growth? What are the different parties involved looking for? What are the effects of these residencies on artistic careers? This research brings a particular attention to artists’ residencies in digital companies. Acting as a precursor in Quebec, the Conseil québécois des arts médiatiques (CQAM) set up its first residency in 2016 at the interactive media company Turbulent, followed the next year by another at the audiovisual entertainment company VYV and in 2018 by Milieux, an Institute of Arts and Technologies. Our research explores the ten residencies that have taken place to date, based on interviews with artists and company employees. A literature search was also conducted to better understand this growing phenomenon. Our work allows us to better understand what artists’ residencies in companies are, do and allow. The host companies seem to seek, in the presence of the artist, a force of reflection and change for the practices and rhythms of work. For artists, the main interest of residencies is the possibility to devote time and resources to a project. However, the link between these two worlds is not automatic and requires a strong commitment, which in turn requires the involvement of intermediary organizations.

In Husserl’s “Phenomenology of Embodiment,” the body is not an extended physical substance in contrast to a non-extended mind, but a lived center of experience, and both its movement capabilities and its distinctive register of sensations play a key role in his account of how we encounter other embodied agents in the shared space of the life-world. The phenomenological maxim – to the things themselves – as well as the concomitant task to reveal the world, has to be done by observing the forms of media and the life-world of communication. This multi-levelled experience includes the electronic flow of information as wavelengths and physical particles as part of the equation. Thus, Generative Art offers a unique opportunity for the recapturing of the relations between humanity, technology and the environment as we find today that the phenomenological folding of embodied and mediated space into felt space or experienced time represents a multi-nodal structure of space, bodies, time, and otherness simultaneously.
Generative Art has gone through multiple transformations, referring to noise art, fractals, glitch, robotics etc. It has affected video, the Internet, and every possible technological form. Marshal McLuhan once said, “Each new technology is a reprogramming of sensory life.”

Panel Statement

Summary:

While there seems to be little space available in conventional education for anything more than a craft approach to digital arts, cyberspace offers an entirely new perspective on the what, why and where of art education.

Abstract

Art education is in crisis. It is not simply the impact of new technologies on art practice that has put the academy into a spin, but political, economic and commercial priorities have put the very idea of the creative arts at the bottom of the academic agenda. In place of art education we have multimedia training. In place of developmental curricula we have market modularity. Universities hire fewer and fewer artists and more and more administrators. Computers are academically ubiquitous but connectivity is universally constrained. Corporate accountancy has replaced personal accountability. An aesthetics, the dumbing of the culture, has replaced aesthetics, even as aesthetics has moved from the veneration of surface appearance to the generation of complex systems. What strategies might usefully be employed to return art education to artists? How can the skills and insights of one group of practitioners be shared, questioned or absorbed by another group? Can we talk about learning communities rather than academic classes? Is Web space the only place left to go? Do the new forms of artistic practice and collaborative creativity in cyberspace require new protocols and new criteria? Is education for ‘Art in the Net’ radically discontinuous from past pedagogies? If the site of art education is in the interspace between the real and the virtual what role does the intelligent agent play? We look at a number of strategies in which the panelists are variously involved: masterclasses in electronic art, doctoral research online, a cyberspace collegium, the local/global paradigm. Examples of work produced within these frameworks will be shown and discussed. We seek both to enliven the debate about art education on a broad front and to inform that debate with some useful specificity. Art education for, through and in cyberspace; digital dialogue; the intelligent interface; networked consciousness; in short, various approaches to teaching and learning, research and development, collaboration and co-production are amongst the issues which will be addressed.

The paper begins with an outline about technical progress and our information society in so called “developing” countries and constructs a set of relevant questions for the future of art and science collaborations. These questions focus on the role of the artist in relation to the business of scientific knowledge. Is empirical knowledge only situated in a specific time or place or can it co-exist simultaneously in two parallel lucid fields of practice: media art and the visual sciences? In this light *Lucid Fields” are comprehensible and factual fields of realities and paradoxes that exist today rather than the fictional illusions of tomorrow. The authors claim that the potentials of the cogent and the coherent communication are increased when media art is mixed with scientific research, particularly if the aim is to make critical scientific issues more articulate and transparent for the general public. The authors will arrive in Singapore early and cull information from interviews with Asian media artists (some who have been resident in science departments at NUS Singapore) with prior interviews that have already made with Swiss media artists who have been resident in science labs. The results will compare the role of an artist as a critical enquirer within the scientific field to that of an artist as a valuable outsider from the field of new media. The interviews with Swiss artists are related to an accompanying exhibition on at the same time in ISEA, about artificial Intelligence, physics and relativity, environmental science and biotechnology. In relation to knowledge, a set of critical issues are addressed in the questionnaire about the relation between utopic and dystopic interpretations of humans and their machines; the visual/acoustic augmentation of real space as a factual information, genetic engineering and the paradox between energy and progress. Through this methodology the authors hope to shed light on the different roles of media artists in relation to situated knowledge and cultural difference and if this information-reality is evenly shared across art and science fields of practice.

New authoring technologies and presentation media are giving us novel ways of experiencing representations of familiar objects in the physical world. Similar technologies have also extended the long history of scientific visualisation of dynamics, particles and other material not visible to the human eye. These technologies have also provided visual information for the interpretation of conditions at great distances and time in space.

Current science visualisation switches between pictures and numbers or fuses pictures and numbers into a manipulable image. According to Peter Galison the sciences have always been caught in an endless struggle, between dismissing the pictorial and claiming that science was about the visual. (Galison, P. 2002. Images Scatter into Data, Data Gather into Images In Iconoclash, ed. P. Weibel and B. Latour, 300-323 Karlsruhe: ZKM.)

This paper will explore the ambiguity of the visual through a discussion of the use of old and new technologies for the visualisation of rock and mineral samples. We will consider examples of mineralogical visualisation within pioneering European collections of minerals from the early years of the industrial revolution and colonialism and compare them with current 21st century visualisation using digital imaging and 3D stereo display systems.

This contrast of technologies used for mineralogical visualisation, spanning over two centuries, will show how the process of visualisation of minerals and rocks is also a history of wider shifts in scientific knowledge; as the history of ideas and as pragmatic solutions.

The paper will discuss how 3D mineralogical images created within a scientific context for the mining and resources industries can be integrated into an arts and cultural heritage context for a broad-based audience. This study will therefore inform wider considerations of collaborative knowledge production across the arts and sciences.

Arts for Young Audiences aims to support projects exploring how digital technologies can be used to i) distribute a portfolio of digital artistic projects to all Norwegian pupils, ii) develop explorative art works that utilize the digital languages and interests of young audiences, and iii) use mobile media and smartphones to present digital arts in new areas and arenas.
For this purpose we have built our own, well equipped Digital Art Lab and development facility.

ZERO1: The Art & Technology Network is embarking on its 4th cycle of American Arts Incubator (AAI), an international creative exchange program. In partnership with the U.S. Department of State, AAI sends digital and new media artists overseas to collaborate with youth, women, and underserved communities to develop public projects addressing social challenges relevant in each location. Across 65 AAI projects in 13 countries, ZERO1 continues to refine its arts-based methodology for diverse groups of people to collectively explore and address social and environmental challenges in uniquely creative ways.

Arriving to ISEA fresh from facilitating the 28-day AAI exchange in Colombia, Kate Spacek and Nathan Ober will share how the program works and why arts incubators are uniquely positioned to tackle our most complex challenges. The focus of AAI in Colombia is Inclusive Peace, and Kate and Nathan will share successes and lessons learned in the Colombia exchange, as well as how the participants used digital and new media art to engage the public around the idea of Peace for All. Nathan will discuss his work, with an emphasis on his AAI project and how the AAI experience has shaped his perspectives on art as a tool for social impact.

In 2019 a team of multi-disciplinary researchers undertook a research project entitled Identifying Successful STARTS Methodologies (ISSM) (2019-2021) in order to analyze the innovative and collaborative strategies utilized by the global Science, Technology and Arts (=STARTS) Prize Winners and nominees. The aim was to identify and articulate successful STARTS Methodologies through a series of interviews and in-depth case studies of the recognized projects. The project culminated in a series of case studies and an exhibition at the Made in Wolves Gallery at the University of Wolverhampton, UK, and further presented at UK Garden of Earthly Delights at Ars Electronica in 2020. The project identified three emerging themes: the significance of building a new language of art and science through a third space, the process of anti-disciplinarity as an emergent form of practice, and the importance of different ways of knowing through art and science. A number of the case studies and themes are presented here alongside images from the exhibition.

ARTYPICAL archive is curatorial new media art archive of art, science and technology in post-Soviet perspective created in 2022. It is not published yet, but structured, carefully collected and conceptualised. Presentation of at the Third Summit on New Media Art Archiving at ISEA2023 would be the first public presentation of this archive.

This paper proposes a rethinking of art’s temporal mode of existence from ‘time-based’ to ‘intratemporal.’ It outlines three intratemporal dimensions of art – object temporality, worldly temporality, and deep temporality – to understand art’s future relation through temporal narratives of human co-existence and co-evolvement with technology.

This paper introduces an immersive augmented reality (AR) experience of interactively exploring a digital archive. AR[t]chive is being designed for an exhibition context but also to serve as a research tool, around the content of the Archive of Digital Art (ADA). Archive contents are presented as virtual elements arranged in real space. Users are able to walk among these, manipulate them directly using their hands and use virtual tools to create compositions in 3D space. This work is part of a larger collaboration and represents an exploration of future-facing ways to access and utilize ADA, but can also inspire work on other digital archives. The paper outlines the design of the interactive experience, including the different considerations taken. This is followed by a description of the current implementation, which constitutes work in progress. To conclude, we offer a brief outlook and future directions.

Out of Space (aka Aspirational Space) by Adam Nash is a playable abstract audiovisual virtual environment, using the Spacewalk system developed by Stefan Greuter (see below). Immersed in an infinitely self-producing virtual space made of nothing but colour and sound, the visitor plays, flying and falling, creating little melodies and rhythms of sound and colour. Out of space, out of thin air, out of nothing, music and memories are made with virtual visions and vibrations.

We explore the invitation to digital art inherent in the 21st century renewal of interest in so-called “virtual reality”, a renewal currently dominated by libertarian digital capitalist rhetoric. Digital art has a long history of practice and conceptual development in the field of virtual reality. As the philosopher of art, Friedrich Schiller said:
“But while in ecstacy we give ourselves up to the heavenly beauty, the heavenly self-repose awes us back. The whole form rests and dwells in itself —a fully complete creation in itself— and as if she were out of space, without advance or resistance; it shows no force contending with force, no opening through which time could break in.” (Letter XV)

Art now is for play, for playing with, for playing. Play in all its productive potential becomes the push and pull between artist and interactor (who is no more just a viewer or listener, spectator or audient) creating the work in real time, and in no time at all the interactor becomes the artist, and each interactor/artist creates a unique virtual work, unique to themselves and yet outside of themselves, in the world, virtually.

Schiller again: “The sensuous instinct wishes to be determined, it wishes to receive an object; the formal instinct wishes to determine itself, it wishes to produce an object. Therefore the instinct of play will endeavor to receive as it would itself have produced, and to produce as it aspires to receive.” (Letter XIV)

Spacewalk, designed by Stefan Greuter, is a low cost experimental platform that enables participants to experience full-body immersion in virtual reality. The platform combines a commodity Head Mounted Display, with a depth based camera capturing movement of body and limbs within the space and makes Virtual Reality in small environments such as people’s homes compelling, easy to setup and use. Spacewalk helps make Virtual Reality accessible to a wider group of users who do not have access to a professional virtual reality facility and may help to unlock new paradigms for work, learning entertainment and art.

COMDASUAR
In his book “La música electroacústica en Chile, 50 años” (The Electroacustic Music in Chile – 50 years) Federico Schumacher dedicates one chapter to introduce, describe and analyze the Asuar Digital Analog Computer: COMDASUAR, a personal computer dedicated exclusively to musical purposes built from scratch by José Vicente Asuar in 1978 in Santiago de Chile. At the end of that chapter the author writes the following about the composer and engineer:

“Hopefully these lines that we have written about everything done by him during more than thirty years of work in our electroacoustic music landscape, will pay a fair and perhaps forgotten tribute, to the person who has done more than anyone for electroacustic music in Chile”

The Dream Machine is a new collaborative work currently under development by the Interactive Cinema Group at the MIT Media Lab. The project forms a highly-distributed narrative presence which spans and interconnects three widely different modes of presentation: the World Wide Web, a network of pagers, and large-scale multimedia installations situated in “live” architectural spaces.
The Dream Machine uses the techniques of cinema, theater, and architectural space design to improvisationally craft a playful, lyrical, emergent story experience in close collaboration with its audience of”co-actors.” Interpersonal communications are enhanced as participants (individuals and groups) shape and navigate their way through personalizable, information-rich environments and dynamically adaptive, emergent stories. Social and narrative meaning emerges through interactions with:
•    interesting transcultural characters;
•    personal dream submission, processing, and presentation;
•    information ecologies, geologies, and geographies.

In this paper, we focus primarily on the purpose, structure, technology, and content of the live sites. Arrays of sensors alert the system to the presence and activities of passers¬by; large-scale rear-screen projections and sophisticated audio respond dynamically to the signals from these sensors, orchestrated by Isis, a new media scripting language.

The Journal Leonardo was founded in 1968 by artist-engineer Frank Malina. Many pioneers of digital art joined the adventure. The growing group advocated a more conceptual approach to art, closer to the spectator, a new form of art rooted in Constructivism and in symbiosis with society’s mutation towards technology.

Installed in the year 2000, Atlantis-2 was the first submarine fiber optic cable to create a direct internet connection between Europe and South America. One of its seven landing sites is located in an underground bunker in Conil, a small coastal town in the Atlantic coast of southern Spain, built in 1970 for the TAT-5/MAT-1 telephone cable that connected the Mediterranean to the United States during the Cold War. Next to the bunker’s main entrance there is a commemorative bronze plaque featuring a relief of the Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and United States flags connected by a meandering cable. In the background, there is yet another relief that shows three ships with crosses on their sails navigating through the Ocean, most likely referring to the three caravels used by Christopher Columbus when he first sailed to America: La Pinta, La Niña, and La Santa María. The image inserts submarine cables into a genealogy that originates at the European colonization of America, establishing a historical relation between colonial and digital transatlantic infrastructures.

Taking this image as a starting point, I am currently working on a video essay entitled “Atlantis”, which proposes a speculative myth around the internet’s material infrastructure, based on an ethnographic, archival, and creative research into the landing station of the Atlantis-2 submarine cable in the south of Spain. Starting with a contemporary interpretation of the myths around the lost city of Atlantis and its relation to oceanic technology, this video essay will weave and interpret a network of historical, material, and semiotic relations emerging from the Atlantis-2 undersea cable, seeking to shed light on the entanglements between coloniality, the internet’s material infrastructure, submarine ruins, and mythology.

This presentation extends the author’s earlier work on dance technologies and in/audible choreographies to delve into participatory sensory architecture and augmented virtuality, introducing concepts of the material affects of textured, temperamental aural environments, and discussing the design of wearables used in immersive environments (kinetic atmospheres or ‘kimospheres’).

Kinetic atmospheres are conceived as formative, not built/constructed in a stable form but responsive to movers or even ‘wearable’ themselves. Basing its investigation of such porous interactive environments for wearable performance in recent installations of the DAP-Lab, as well as acoustic-theatrical installations and contemporary choreographic architectures and objects, the paper explores the impact of sonic and tactile wearables on movement and role-play within such kimospheres.
Finally, it sketches more speculative developments of how bodies and wearables come to affect, and be affected by, kinetic, sonic and Virtual Reality interfaces – in the sense in which the composer Xenakis had envisioned reverberant multimedia architectures and spatial intensities to be live instruments, not static objects or envelopes.

Birringer proposes to rework architectural, cybernetic, and hydrogeological theories of the liquid, and shift attention to liquid aurality and virtuality derived also from anthropological concepts of understanding the
movement of water, mist, and vapor (immersion, animation, animateriality).

Audio and video installations requiring audience movement and participation pose a unique set of problems. These works are realized through physical action within a responsive environment. Participants may become part of the work itself, as others outside of the sensing area view the spectacle of their interaction while seeing the results. Those inside the sensing area (if more than one person is allowed) share in a collaborative ‘performance’, their social interactions contributing significantly to their experience of the work. What is the psychology of this participation? How can installation artists engage, prompt, and empower amateur ‘performers’ who have no prior knowledge or particular expertise? How does the computer program and content facilitate action and encourage response? This paper examines factors contributing to the audience experience, with special attention to non-digital concerns. Strategies to engage audience participation will be shown in several of the author’s interactive audio and video installations.

Intro
Movement-sensing installations offer audience members an opportunity to become actively involved in the creative process by influencing image and sound output from a computer. These works typically use various types of sensors to analyze human activity, location, and gesture, so that natural movement can be used as primary input to a responsive computer system. Interactive installations are often presented as environments open for exploration, with each “realization” determined by individual action, curiosity, and play. What separates interactive installations from other types of art installations or interactive performances is that the work is only realized through a participant’s actions, interpreted through computer software or electronics, and those actions do not require special training or talent to perform.
All of this suggests a new social and artistic dynamic that is unique to interactive installations, requiring the audience to physically participate in creating their own artistic experience. Rather than create finished works, interactive artists create the potential for many works to be realized through anonymous collaboration. With the audience’s acceptance of this new responsibility may come a greater acceptance and ownership of the results: participants seem to enjoy, accept and pay great attention to the results of their own responsive actions.
The term “audience” may ambiguously refer to anyone viewing or participating in an installation. To clarify those roles, person(s) activating an installation will be referred to here as the “player(s),” as in a musician playing music or someone playing a game. Audience members simply viewing the players will be called “spectators,” implying a group’s role in a live event.

audioTagger is a mobile-phone-urban-intervention-sound-art-project. audioTagger is wireless phonography, exploring sound in urban space with locative recordings using a mobile phone. A momentary event is captured as sonic snapshots of urban life, using the most ubiquitous networked tool at present, in a seamless computing environment, between mobile phone and the Internet. audioTagger is using the sound recorder in the mobile phone to capture sound, mail the audio file to audioTagger, and view the result on a Google Map. audioTagger’s sound files can also be listened to on the mobile phone via a downloadable networked java player. audioTagger is part of research in sonic applications of wireless devices in a mobility context. The mobile phone, is used to explore hybrid mediated space. audioTagger can be defined as wireless phonography bridged with network mapping. The participant signs up to audioTagger, and receives instruction on their mobile phone on how to proceed. The participant records a sound file and emails it to audioTagger. Location and its geo-coordinates are calculated using street addresses.

Field recording have been used for various purposes, scientists collecting bird songs, musicologists recording music, or as sound effects for film, radio, and television. Field recording generally means it has to be planned ahead, to bring the recorder, microphones and batteries on location. Using the mobile phone, already sitting in a pocket has different set of characteristics from regular field recording. It can be used instantly, and might capture something quite different than a planned field trip with a high quality audio recorder.

The artistic context of audioTagger can be traced to telephone art, mail art, and location based art, dating from the 1950s. This includes artists such as Constant Nieuwenhuys, the Situationists, and Vito Acconci’s explorations of public space.

Keywords: Augmented Virtuality, Augmented Reality, Software Assemblage, New Materialism.

An analysis of the material-discursive practices surrounding Augmented Virtuality and Augmented Reality reveals the sometimes digressional, sometimes convergent positions taken by computer science and media art on the issue of embodiment. Mapping out some of those positions, this paper considers Mixed Reality as a topology that has an entangled and material relationship with the body, that goes beyond an analysis of Mixed Reality as a technology of augmentation: rather, a topological understanding of Mixed Reality explores the patterns of diffraction ( Barad 2007: 29) that ripple and disrupt the material thresholds between physical and virtual, troubling the over simplified real/virtual dichotomy that permeates much Human Computer Interaction (HCI) research. Tendering an argument for Mixed Reality as a continuous topology operating between physical and virtual spaces, I will address the contrived duality of embodiment/virtuality embedded in much of the literature surrounding Mixed Reality. Then, I will offer a contrasting view of Mixed Reality as a contiguous topology where virtual and physical are interwoven by contingent and conditional ‘meshworks’ (De Landa, 1998) of augmentation, involving technicity, devices, bodies, and objects.

In this paper we present the creative process of the art installation, titled “Augmented Abstraction”, in which the previously established and accumulated knowledge about abstract painting acquires new aspects by means of its translation through the digital media and AR (Augmented Reality) computer technology, and involvement of the audience in the process. The key challenge of the installation is to detach color (sensations) from form (representation) and make the creative process aboveboard i.e. to deal openly to the audience.

Subject of this paper as well as of the installation is the interspatiality in art, the new understanding of human presence, inhabiting both the real (uncomputed, corporeal, actual) and virtual (computed) worlds at the same time. The objective is to investigate and point out some of the new aspects to the concept about image as a secondary manifestation of the primary vehicle of creativity – the abstract code, emerging from the interaction between the
virtual objects and the real world.

Creative arts organizations are constituted by intricate symbiotic relationships between diverse stakeholders, including creatives, technicians, software programmers, and producers. These thrive when facilitated by clear, seamless and swift communication. Cyber/physical systems can support such exchange, yet require careful aesthetic design. Inspired by Manuel DeLanda’s philosophical framework, the paper introduces iModel, a new networked modelling system that facili- tates operatic rehearsal design via an interactive cyber/physical spatial aesthetic. After mapping its conceptual framework, we detail iModel’s architecture and functionalities that provide a shared workspace for distributed teams. iModel is capable of assimilating diverse data formats and enabling real-time manipulation and seamless previsualization of complex interactions between all components of operatic production including orchestration of set ensembles, video content, cast movements and lighting design, all synchronized with the musical score. The paper reflects on iModel’s real-world application in 2022 in the design and technical production departments at Opera Australia, Australia’s largest performing arts organization. We conclude with a reflection on the coalescence of philosophy, art and technology as a powerful conduit for catalyzing creative practice toward realizing new symbiotic imaginaries on and beyond the screen.

Some years ago I started creating wallets from empty Tetrapak packages. More than ten years I had been working with computers, but now I was making a living from creating products from trash, completely without the use of a computer. I developed a whole range of products: wallets, notebooks, lights, clocks and more, all made from empty supermarket packages.
At that time I was living in a small village on the countryside, where I was transforming an old farm into an art center. In these new surroundings there was only little interest for my qualities as a web designer, but the people around me were very enthusiastic about my recycled objects. When they saw my wallets made from empty milk cartons, they would say ‘That’s what I call true recycling!’. They would call me a recycling artist. From now on, I would call myself a recycling artist.

Abstract

There is something perversely appealing about a Truman Show, like fiction engineered around you: a false, but plausible reality in which the inconsequence of your actions invites you to attempt daring play. But in order to maintain such a world, you must remain trapped in it, suffer under its direction and pretend to believe it is real.

In this paper I will discuss three examples of participative works that are related in their dictatorial control and perceived captivity of their participants as well as by their blurring of traditional distinctions of art, reality and fiction. Tracing the emergence of this strain of participative works’ from conceptual art, performative practices and relational aesthetics from the last century, as well as their relation to noir cinema from the late 1990’s, I will tackle the ethics of these antagonistic experiences that deliberately blur distinctions of reality in public places. Central to this paper is my contention that these works do not generate adverse or enduring ontological confusion in participants, but instead, they encourage individuals to exercise critical judgment towards all mediated information.

How is an Interactive Media Arts practice placed to explore what is often considered a scientific field of research? This paper is a discussion on the main areas of study situating an observational PhD study on non-verbal children with autism. The author suggests that in fact an arts practice allows for more sensitive research and allows natural emergence to explore and facilitate the expression of Theory of Mind and physical consciousness.

Intro
When an arts practitioner moves across disciplines that are considered scientific in nature, such as empirical human research, the rigor of artistic practice may be questioned. If they are not gathering scientific results, what do they consider their research purpose to be? This strange desire for a structured role or title may actually involve overlooking one of the great strengths of the artist; there is a sensitivity associated with an arts practice that allows the practitioner to be flexible and responsive to participant engagement.

We humans are all weather men, constantly cultivating and modifying the climates that surround us at every conceivable scale, from the miniature local excretions of our subcutaneous cells to our operatic military manoeuvres in weather modification. Each adjustment acts as a form of architecture – a sheltering moment in our unending project of climate control, submitting the chaos of the external climate to the controlling and organizing tendencies of humanity.

This paper surveys an extremely brief history of architecture’s relationship to both weather and media, probing both the climate as culture, and technoartistic experiments as new weather systems.

John Richards and Tim Wright discuss their work Auto, Crack, and Slimework. These pieces explore the juxtaposition of old and new technologies, and new artistic possibilities produced by collaborative creation. The systems developed for these pieces are looked at in detail. These include: the Cymatic Controller (a DIY mechanical wave driver that vibrates conductive material across a ‘prepared’ Chladni plate); the Automaticiser (a copper plate etching that doubles as a touch controller); and the Pure Data (PD) patch, Seven Leg Spider (a performance tool that acts as a nexus between digital and analogue domains). The design of these systems draws on the different disciplinary knowledge of Richards and Wright. The presentation includes a discussion on Richards’ use of the term dirty electronics, physical objects of desire and fascination, the post-digital and the relationship between the visceral and virtual; and Wright’s use of the ‘studio’, dance music techniques and computer algorithms. Furthermore, the works presented in this discussion reveal a symbiotic relationship between sound, image, found art and sculpture. This relationship is also discussed as a point of departure for further investigation into hybrid technological systems.

Some of the issues raised by the collaboration are: to what extent there is a synaesthetic connection between the visual representation of the objects, the prepared Chladni plate and sound; the use of sound as a controller for visual phenomena; the relationship between object, system, and human interaction; and how such systems as the Seven Leg Spider can be used as a conduit for creative work using old and the new technologies.

Pixelache Helsinki is a Finland-based creative association on emerging creative practices with almost 20 years of activity in 2022. As part of their 20th anniversary, various strategies were taken to engage with the associational history: 7 processes or events were planned, produced, and reflected upon which engaged with membership involvements, what was left behind in the production office, guided walking tours through the festival’s past venues 20 years before, podcasts, as well as inviting an internationally respected external perspective for ‘another story’. Each offers a reflection on what it might mean to try to archive and narrate an association’s own history from multiple and diverse angles. This presentation is the start of a new story.

Deep Learning is becoming increasingly more accessible for artists, leading to generative and discriminative models being used for artistic expression. We distilled approaches found in research and installations relating to GANs into a live VJing program. We propose an interactive tool for visualizing music using live audio feature extraction and a MIDI controller to allow artists to accompany live performances. Following previous approaches for offline audio-reactive visuals using GANs, we map the amplitude, onset strength and notes in the music to influence the images generated. Furthermore, we use findings in interpretable GANs and techniques in Network Bending to incorporate a MIDI controller that is common for VJs. This allows the artist to adjust the visuals with a known interface.

Automata is the working title for a counter-surveillance internet bot that will record and display the mutually-beneficial interrelationships between institutions for higher learning, the global defense industry, and world militaries. The proliferation of automated spying techniques on the part of government and corporate institutions has created an unequal flow of information. This bot acts to subvert these techniques in the most relevant way – by making data about the confluence of economic and violent power visible to the public at large for research, activism, and examination.

The author has demonstrated computing tech-niques which allow high-level, mathematical descriptions of geometric structures to directly drive hardcopy devices that produce three-dimensional sculptures. Juxtaposing Stewart Dickson the resulting objects with their original mathematical descriptions can be philosophically compelling. In this paper we present extensions of this idea in forms of new technology that can be combined with the previous system as well as an expanded philosophical basis for this work. Some current industrial design systems (in support of a design, prototype, evaluate and redesign cycle) include devices that can simultaneously digitise the surface coloration and the three-dimension-al geometry of a prototype. This is an example of a transformation of abstraction into physicality and then back to abstraction. Consider an artificial intelligence system that assigns abstract identities to objects (such as the pat-tern recognition involved in robot vision). Processing high-level mathematical symbols into a geometric representation using substitution rules is another use of a traditional artificial intelligence language.

By combining these two systems it may be possible to extend inference rules operating on visual identities to include the philosophical basis of an object’s identity. As an artmaking tool, a three-dimensional colour digitiser coupled with a three-dimensional color out-put device is a system of object facsimile or “photosculpture”. CAD tools exist with which 3D collage may be constructed using the comput-er. This paper will demonstrate a system for combining identity attributes attached to com-positional elements in order to arrive at a cumu-lative philosophical statement describing the completed visual composition. With these new methods, we are not only able to compose three-dimensional structures; we can also express, analyse and develop the reasons they are meaningful to us.

autonomX is an “open source desktop application [that] allows multimedia artists and students to easily and quickly experiment with lifelike processes via a graphical interface in order to generate dynamic, emergent and self-organizing patterns and output these patterns via OSC to control light, sound, video, or even robots in real time” [1].

The article begins by presenting the background that motivated the production of autonomX. In particular, we describe some histories of artistic and lighting practice involving stochastic systems and the role of vitality in the time-based arts.
We follow with the presentation of the three core design paradigms of autonomX: generator, signal, and drawing. The generators are the algorithmic encapsulation of complex dynamical systems (systems that model the temporal evolution of a deterministic set of parameters) in a format that gives rapid and intuitive access to their parameters, without resorting to coding, and visualizes the inner workings of these algorithms on a 2-dimensional lattice. The generators send and receive time varying signals from the implemented algorithms in real time, making the system appropriate for temporal expression and interaction with any computer-driven media. The manipulation of signals is made intuitive to the user by drawing directly on the visualization lattice so that they can easily specify which parts of the system serve as signal inputs and outputs.
The article then gives an overview presentation of the current version of the software by discussing the main elements of its interface.

To the Vector the Spoils.

January 26th, 1988: It was a strange experience, watching those sailing ships, simultaneously entering Sydney Harbour and entering my living room — and many thousands of others via the live TV broadcast. It was a re-enactment of the white invasion of the Australian continent, performed 200 years later for the cameras. As with the first arrival of the first fleet, on this second coming the invaders parked their boats and thanked their sponsors. This time they didn’t fly the Union Jack and thank God and the monarchy. This time the sponsor was, of course, Coca-cola.

1995 was the year the Internet was opened to commercial use. The NSF officially stepped down and began planning Internet-2, aimed at creating a network whose primary goal would be to facilitate research and education missions of universities in the US. It is envisioned that this network will be 100 to 1000 times faster than the existing Internet. Applications like tele-immersion and digital libraries will change the way people use computers to learn, communicate and collaborate. Although the universities are taking the lead in the initial development and research of this network, this is a collaborative effort between federal government agencies, private corporations and non-profit organizations. This means that it will probably be first accessible and tested in research institutions, then made publicly available. Corporations such as IBM that have already invested in this venture are most probably having long term plans for the commercial potential of such a super fast network.

Opening the Internet to the public had meant opening Pandora’s box, and there was no way anyone could even attempt to put a lid on the activities that were increasingly taking place. Conceptualized as having only machines ”talking to each other”, developers would have never guessed that this network of machines would transform itself into a network of humans using the machines. Exponential growth in the number of Internet users, the number of hosts connected to the World Wide Web, and the number of companies establishing a Web presence has created a gold rush mentality among firms and investors. This euphoria is largely fueled by electronic commerce, and many companies are putting significant resources towards figuring out the most effective ways of buying and selling everything from groceries to clothing to movies over the Internet.

Keywords: Algorithm, Cinema, Creative Coding, Digital Art, Film, Generative Art, Generative Cinema, New Media Art

Generative artists have started to engage the poetic and expressive potentials of film playfully and efficiently, with explicit or implicit critique of cinema in a broader cultural context. This paper looks at the incentives, insights and implications of generative cinema by discussing the successful and thought-provoking art projects that exemplify the complex connections between the creativity in cinematography and the procedural fluency which is essential in generative art. It states that the algorithmic essence of generative cinema significantly expands the creative realm for the artists working with film, but also incites critical assessment of the business-oriented algorithmic strategies in contemporary film industry. These strategies of commercial film seem logical but they are creatively counter-effective and generative cinema is becoming the supreme art of the moving image in the early 21st century.

AVOL (AudioVisual OnLine) is an interactive audiovisual project for the Web, installation and performance by Video Jack (Nuno N. Correia and André Carrilho). AVOL was one of the four winners of a competition by the Portuguese Ministry of Culture to develop artworks for their net art portal. Further to the launch of this portal, AVOL has been presented as installation and as performance.

In AVOL, users manipulate seven “objects” composed of different elements: a sound loop; an animated visualization of that sound; and graphical user interface elements that facilitate the integrated manipulation of sound and image. Each of the objects has four main variations, allowing for multiple audiovisual combinations. The objects may interact with each other, creating additional diversity.

The main research question that the project addresses is: how to develop a project that allows for an integrated musical and visual expression, in a way that is playful to use and engaging to experience. The methodology used for the evaluation of the project is practice-based research.

In this paper, the project and its motivations are presented, as well as prior work from the same authors in the field of interactive audiovisual art. A short discussion of the state of the art follows. The development of the project and the different modes of presentation (Web, installation and performance) are discussed, as well as feedback gathered. Conclusions are then reached, and possible future developments are outlined.

ISEA 2018

This paper presents Awkward Consequence, a massive virtual reality performance that explores and expands the limits of audiovisual performances, offering alternative paths of exploration of the aesthetics of virtual reality. Using mobile phones and cardboard–like viewers, together with a centrally–controlled architecture, Awkward Consequence immerses its audience in a virtual journey that is simultaneously individual and shared. By joining the rich tradition of musical performance with virtual reality, the piece investigates the future role of virtual reality, while simultaneously celebrating the immense artistic richness of this new medium.

a_m_m_s is a tele-epistemological investigation of South Asian and Japanese notions of akasha, ma, mu, sunyata, and the inter-relating pertinence in a contemporary trans-local art context, beyond immediate specifities of culture, religion or nation.

The Japanese term ma has multiple meanings and resonances, including space-time, an emptiness that has presence, interval, and pause. It corresponds partly to a Sanskrit term, akasha: which also signifies a space that has presence. Sunyata in Sanskrit means void and has correspondence to the Japanese Zen term mu, which also could be understood as void or nothingness.

It is a unique and particular tele-epistemological process through an intersection of Japanese, South Asian, Anglophone and Francophone cultural inputs which will allow us to deal with experiential technologies in ways that enable the emergence of different conceptions of borders.

On an experiential point of view, two areas of research are being explored:

1. space: architecture and materials constraints
2. technology: hardware, sensors/actuators triggered by software

Specifically, in relation to Buddhist concepts, research on sounds and vibrations will allow to generate “sensible events” in the “immersive” space designed.

The aim of a_m_m_s is to construct a conceptual intersection zone, where ancient and historic South Asian and Japanese concepts are revisited in a tele-dialogue by an Anglophone and a Francophone, hence confronting different points of view on the notion of space, stillness, emptiness, void, time, distance, … with technologies to engender novel art manifestations. Both researchers are also of the South Asian Diaspora, and both have a highly developed interest in Japanese art and philosophy – cultivated by numerous previous research projects – hence allowing a unique and particular trans-national epistemological process through an intersection of Japanese, South Asian, Anglophone and Francophone cultural inputs.

As a new media curator, I work with artistic practices that engage multi-sensory media environments. Baby X is a digital artificial intelligence mixed reality installation created by Dr Mark Sagar. It is concurrently a neuro-behavioural computational model with emergent behaviours actively being used for neuro-scientific research and, at times, a media art installation on public display. This paper will explore some of the diverse issues at play in this project from the perspectives of embodied cognition, emotional engagement and perception within a mixed reality environment and transdisciplinary research context.

Intro
In the Laboratory for Animate Technologies at the Auckland Bio-engineering Institute at University of Auckland, Dr. Mark Sagar and his team are building a computational model of the brain and face. The model is constructed using current neuro-scientific research sourced through collaboration with the university’s Centre for Brain Research.

Keywords: Horizontal Gene Transfer (HGT), Bioart, Biocreation and Heritage, Metagenomics, Helio Oiticica, B50 Bólide Saco 2 Olfático.

Integrating biological data and phenomenon in the creative process, and proposing a transversal reflection considering the sub- themes for ISEA 2017, “Bag-Bug: Adaptive Horizontal Transfer” is an invitation to reflect on the intersections between biocreation and heritage from a cross-scale perspective. Beyond media, does bioart have the capacity to preserve heritage? The ongoing project is a tribute to the Brazilian artist Helio Oiticica’s work “B50 Bo´lide Saco 2 ‘Olfa´tico’ (1967; plastic, and coffee)”, consisting of a series of apparatus designed as ‘performatic-lab-experiments’ exploring genetic information horizontal transfers due to the eventual molecular scale superficial ontaminations / transferences. Customized sleeping bags made of plastic, coffee beans and electronics (sensors, microcontroller and displays) – and the whole body of someone from the audience gets involved in a cross-scale conversation that can potentially consists in a “Horizontal Gene Transfer Session (HGTS)”!

Environmental problems, economic uncertainty and political complexity have been around for a long time. What was different before was the speed and depth of transformations compared with today’s sudden changes. The frequent occurrence and severity that certain weather and climate-related events are having around us is increasing, and the ability of human beings on modifying the environment have turn into a power capable of altering the planet. How can the electronic art play a role in helping to revert the current mass destructive tendency? Can we artists make a difference, participating with our electronic art of multi- inter- or trans- disciplinary teams, in finding solutions to complex problems such as climate change? Aiming to use electronic art as a catalyst with the intent of engendering a deeper awareness and creating lasting intellectual working partnerships in solving our global environmental crisis, some initiatives (e.g. Balance-Unbalance) are in development and will be discussed during the proposed panel.

We are living in a world reaching a critical point. The equilibrium between a healthy environment, the energy our society needs to maintain or improve its usual lifestyle, and the world’s interconnected economies have recently passed from a delicate balance to a new reality, where unbalance seems to be the rule. Traditional disaster management approaches are not enough to deal with the current problems and the rising risks. New forms of collaboration are needed to inspire people and organizations to link knowledge with action.

Artists could inspire new explorations and contribute with innovative perspectives and critical thinking to actively participate in solving some of our major challenges, such as the spiraling environmental crisis. We need to develop creative ways to facilitate a paradigm shift toward a sustainable tomorrow. Creative thinking, innovative tools, and transdisciplinary actions could produce perceptual, intellectual and pragmatic changes. One of the initiatives that aim to use the media arts as a catalyst, with the intent of generating a deeper awareness and creating lasting intellectual working partnerships to face the many facets of the environmental crisis, is: The Balance-Unbalance international project, which explores [art, science, technology] intersections between nature and society.

In this context of global threats: Can the [media] arts and artists help? Everyone has a role in the construction of the future, artists, too. We must search, investigate, reflect, and act. We can create, and we can also invite others to analyze, engage, envision and act. It is not possible to wait longer or to delegate personal responsibilities. By bringing people from very different sectors of our society to think together and facilitate multi and transdisciplinary collaborative project developments, Balance-Unbalance and its associated initiatives are turning feasible to connect artistic creation and tangible tools for change. Balance-Unbalance has been contributing to making social transformation happen.

The frequency and severity of certain weather and climate-related events around us are increasing, and the ability of human beings to modify our adjacent surroundings has turned into a power capable of altering the planet. How can the media/electronic/emergent arts play a relevant role in changing the escalating ecological crisis?

Society of Molecules was orchestrated by the SenseLab as an emergent and internationally distributed micropolitical event for research-creation carried out in several countries during the first week of May, 2009. This paper reports from the Montréal-based molecule named the Lack of Information Kiosk. It aimed at bringing attention to urban mobilizations on the frontierland between a traditional working-class distcrict (Parc Extension) bordering a bourgeois neighborhood (Outrement) in the northern part of the city. Université de Montréal has bought the 56.0000 m2 space between these two districts to develop their future campus literally closing off access from Parc Extension. The quotidian appropriations of this space (by walkers, dog owners, homeless) confront the multiple layers of a space that suffers from a lack of information. The focus was on this ever-present lack of information in both governmental and everyday dialogues about the future of the physical and social spaces.

Barcelona is an interactive installation. Its interest resides not only in its aesthetic proposal, but also in that it shows how media appropriation allows artists to reclaim and re-signify the technological production while reflecting on the relationship between DIY practices and state-of-the-art technologies. The piece consists on a two–meter tall Pentakis dodecahedron, with each edge independently lit using LED strips. The installation reacts to both to its environment – it senses movements and sounds produced on its vicinity – and to remote interactors via web and mobile real-time interfaces. Barcelona is also a performance instrument offering a control interface that allows for multi-user real-time audio-visual performances.
All the hardware in Barcelona is of the artist’s authorship. Moreover, every functional component is visible and contributes to its appearance. However, the cabling within the dodecahedron is concealed. Spectators can follow the data path from the controllers to the piece, but not inside of the structure, allowing for an organic perception of the piece.
We use twelve new LED drivers located on a table at the bottom of the dodecahedron. Ninety cables connect the drivers to every edge of the polyhedron. The structure consists of PVC pipes of two different lengths with 3D-printed joints that allow for its rapid assembly. On each edge there is a RGB LED strip surrounded by a cylindrical diffuser.

Barcelona reflects on ISEA2015’s theme of disruption within multiple axes. Allowing for simultaneous local and remote interactors contests the notion of gallery space and of exhibition. Also, Barcelona’s dual role of installation and instrument presents it as a communication tool where the Douchampian collaboration of artist and spectator towards the artwork is diffused yet highlighted by the uncertainty brought by possible remote interactors.
In addition, Barcelona explicitly reflects on the relationship between technology production and art. Its visible functional components and DIY approach to electronics contest the artists’ role in technology consumption while reclaiming the aesthetics of the components.

The artwork is, and should be, hard to classify. It is an interactive sculpture, an instrument, a political statement. It joins state-of-the art manufacturing techniques with manual assembly and manual construction of the diffusers. It amalgamates a highly sophisticated software architecture with the explicitness of the data paths. It interacts with the space where it’s installed, illuminating and casting playful shadows, while simultaneously being incorporeal, streaming its state in real-time over the Internet, and enabling remote interaction. It is reactive and generative, with many modes of interaction and expression.

BATVISION is a playful Virtual Reality (VR) Experience that immerses the users in the bat’s world of perception and allows them to interactively experience the principle of echolocation. The aim is to strengthen the relationship with foreign species by seeing them as part of our symbiotic ecosystem and stepping into their shoes ourselves. For this, the VR glasses visualise the auditory image of the bat in a way that we can understand. Surrounded by complete darkness, the virtual world only becomes visible through one’s own shout. Also, the users have to flap their wings in order to navigate the virtual space and catch mosquitoes to survive the night as a bat. BATVISION uses immersive technologies to make knowledge not only comprehensible, but also tangible through our own bodies. In this way, the VR experience sensitises us to disappearing habitats, noise pollution and an animal species threatened from extinction.

This paper presents and discusses the poetics and concepts woven in the conception of the interactive media art and science installation ‘Entrancer: Be Sicklecell Be a Hero’ (2018) inviting for a reflection concerning issues of race in science research mainly related to the sickle cell anemia. The work invites for the experience of a possible dance with a virtual moving model of a sickle-cell in AR (Augmented Reality) – mutated from the 3D model of a normal blood cell using morphogenetic algorithmic strategies. The experience is conducted by the rhythm of a Brazilian samba (live recording) distorted and combined with sonified fragments of sickle-cell image’s textures under the microscope (imported as raw data to Adobe Audition).

The samba metamorphoses into its distorted version resembles the mutant sickle-cell that changes shape due to a chemical alteration that can be a strategy against malaria – and not a genetic condition of black men and women. At the same time the installation is a tribute to emblematic works of Hélio Oiticica, bringing together in a conceptual combination or convergence the ‘Parangolé’ and the stencil ‘Be an Outlaw Be a Hero’ from the series ‘Marginalia’, proposing a piece that is a ‘cross-over’ of both referred works, that has adaptive qualities concerning the most diverse exhibition conditions and spaces, and that is itself a mutant work in relation to the body and the environment.

Second Life is a virtual world accessible through the Internet in which users (eloquently called residents) create objects and spaces, and interact socially through 3D avatars. SL is not a conventional computer game but a socio‑cultural environment in which anyone can create their own idea or perspective around what it means to have a second life.

My doctoral thesis was focused on this environment, particularly on certain artists who use the platform as a medium for art creation, using the aesthetic, spatial, temporal and technological features of SL as raw material. My avatar Lacan Galicia studied important resources, tools and artistic procedures such as object‑design, code and scripts applied to animate and manipulate SL features, as well as avatar design, performance art and installations in SL. SL artists, their avatars and artwork are at the centre of my academic interests in virtual world aesthetics, media and digital theory, as reflected in two     fundamental research questions: what does virtual existence mean for virtual practicing artists and what is their purpose when social interaction and aesthetic exchange stems from artwork created in SL?

In my thesis I designed a mixed qualitative research method combining distribute aesthetics, digital art and media theories, the goal is to examine aesthetic exchange in the virtual: subjectivity and identity and their possible shifting patterns as reflected in avatar‑artists performance in situ. A theoretical and methodological emphasis from a media studies perspective is applied to digital media and networks, contributing to the reshaping of our epistemologies of these media. This particular perspective was innovative in virtual world research at the time of my thesis, and contrasts to the emphasis put on the     communicational aspects in more traditonally‑oriented media research on virtuality.  I developed four case studies ranging from discourse and text analysis to interviews in‑world and via email, as well as   observation while immersed in SL. These ‘devices’ were used in the collection of data, experiences, objects and narratives, and from interacting with the avatars being analysed: Eva and Franco Mattes, Gazira Babeli, Bryn Oh and China Tracy. My findings confirm the role that aesthetic exchange in virtual worlds plays in the rearrangement of ideas and epistemologies on the virtual and networked self, subjectivity and socialisation patterns within the virtual. This is reflected in the fact that the artists examined—whether in SL or AL—create and embody avatars from a liminal (ambiguous) modality of     identity, subjectivity and interaction.  A complex process of mythopoeia (narrative creation) is developed, starting with the enigmatic experience of oneself as ‘another’ through multiplied identity and subjectivity. This is the outcome of code performance, virtual space and avatar identity ‘interventions’, and machinima (films created in‑world). They constitute a modus operandi (syntax) in which    episteme, techne and embodiment work in symbiosis with those of the machine, affected by the synthetic nature of code and liminality in SL. The combined perspective from media studies and distribute aesthetics proves to be an effective method for studying and extending the discussion of contemporary virtual worlds theory.

Abstract

In computer-based interactive media art, the artwork should be practiced in the installation: the show and the interaction establish and expand its meaning and interpretation, including discourses through and on technology. This makes the artwork alive and viable as a transformative practice of aesthetic object and experience.

For a long time, people have talked about art as alive: in the practice of art making, the artist has surely felt that art is indeed alive. When the artist makes an artwork, s/he does not always know what the result will be and often the artwork gives an idea back to him/her during the making process. Here, ‘contingency’ is an appropriate word for expressing the phenomenon. Contingency means the artwork is alive and responsive. With today’s computer-based artwork, the artist usually depends on the collaborator – an engineer or a programmer – to complete the system. The artist does not fully understand the system, and does not need to. However when the artist is simultaneously the programmer, – which happens more and more frequently these days – the contingency does not work effectively. When the artist knows too much about the system s/he does not allow ‘a bug’ to work, because it is not recognised: the artist wants to make the system perfect, and ignores and discards the contingent fault or bug within the work. If instead s/he allows the artwork go its own way, it could prove productive. This letting-go by the artist could be a new and viable venue for computer-based interactive media artwork.

Artist Statement

Bellows is an art installation and cinema project that uses a new animation process. I have combined the concept of the zoetrope, a pre-cinema optical toy, with rapidprototype 3D printing and fast-shutter digital video to tell a story suggesting the destructive and expressive potential of humans. In Bellows, anthropomorphized concertinas take the place of people. Concertinas serve as the metaphor for humans because both breathe and both have great expressive potential.

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, a creative and technical team used an emerging geological sensor technology to scan the subterranean landscape under a historic plaza in central France, originally the site of a Roman temple buried since Antiquity. This paper will present the resulting trans-disciplinary project that included artists, programmers, designers, archaeologists, geologists, academics, historians, cultural leaders and government agencies all working together to create a series of media works based on what has been hidden in the heart of Clermont-Ferrand for 2,000 years. Ground Penetrating Radar reveals through echo and its haunting visualizations were core to the foundational data used in the artworks but also its theme and metaphor. With the collected data, the team created a site-specific collage of trompe l’oeil anti-sculpture, virtual experiences, films, prints and performances. Place de la Victoire, a cultural heritage landmark, became the source and site of an inverted public experience for inverted times.

Driven by the concern that ICT (information and communication technologies) currently contributes 3.3% to 3.8% of global greenhouse gas emissions (Belkhir and Elmeligi 2018, Bordage 2020), surpassing the carbon footprint of the airline industry at 1.9% of global greenhouse emissions (Ritchie 2020), this dialogical and performative panel seeks to interrogate the question of “The Possible,” Natures and Worlds from the point of view of green computing and sustainable experimental media production. The panel responds to the problem of the pandemic rise in streaming media and its underlying capitalist articulation of the Possible by assessing the viability of the concept and practice of experimental small-file media as an sustainable alternative for the era of the Anthropocene. Small-file ecomedia are low-bandwidth experimental movies of no more than five megabytes in size and no more than five minutes in duration, which allows them to be streamed with no damage to the planet. Our proposal makes an intervention into the very concept of ecomedia and “nature.” Ecomedia is not simply a representation or visualisation of environmental problems but an immanent practice of responsible world-making indexical to the earth and the cosmos, as well an activist pedagogy and act of community-building. Our discussants will tackle small file media from a variety of perspectives: appropriate technologies in the global South; media philosophy, technical solutions for media sustainability, and a maker’s perspective on microcosmic media.

The Vision of Betaville – The new urban sculpture
Our vision of the new urbanity is the smart city, a city where you wish to live in, a city of art, a city designed by its inhabitants, for their dreams and their daily life. Betaville is a tool for the next step in such a mass participatory urban design and development reality. We have been inspired by connecting the idea of participatory design with social dynamics using the web, offering a mass player infrastructure for cultural expressions of live, architecture, city-textures, urban art, live-style, from group-design to ecological living. Our goal is to offer a mobile-stationary AR environment for smart cities – or such where citizens would like to change it into one. The Betaville system allows the participation of citizens and local groups in the local urban development from a very early stage on. We develop different types of interactivity and access, that accumulates the engagement of users to an new sort of urban sculpture.

To assume that immersive “VR is dead” is premature. It belies a lack of cultural, historical and technological knowledge, or signals the peculiar foggy hangover that results from a common conflation, frozen in time – entanglements of a giddy technological imaginary with attendant utopian and distopian visions, disappointments born of early technophilic hyperbole and the twinned forces of technological imperatives that march arm-in-arm with knowledge regimes that privilege the always-ever-new (Lyotard, 1985).
Although research in VR has waned in the realms of Computer Science and Interactive Art, a diversity of other disciplines have quietly but significantly expanded its scope and everyday use. Further, ideas derived from early work in VR continue to inform other practices in ways that remain invisible and under-examined.

Abstract

Writing this text I am located at the precise geographic co-ordinates of:
51° 30’ 46” N x 0° 04’ 15” W

Reading this text now you must be ‘somewhere’, be it in your office, home, train, bus, plane, tube. Whilst some texts, like tourist guide-books for instance, are written to be read when actively visiting specific places, their purpose being to inform, and guide us as we are visiting these places: the context and purpose of this particular text, it’s physicality as an object, personal circumstances, and social protocol, delimit where it might be read. Whilst Joshua Meyrowitz (2004) writes that we are ‘always in place…[with our bodies] dependent on the nature of the specific locality…[and] bound by the laws of space and time,’ the abstract numerical co-ordinates of my physical geographic location available through global positioning devices, online street maps, and satellite navigation systems for example, do not relay to you
anything about my immediate physical surroundings that might give you a sense of my ‘place’. Location, as Tim Cresswell (2004) explains, is a site without meaning, however if I tell you that as I write this I am in a flat in Aldgate, east London, surrounded by such objects as a 1960s hoop game-board hanging on the wall, a rustic Portuguese vase, a black and white photograph of my father standing outside the shop, ‘immediately many images come into our heads … as replacing a set of numbers with a name means that we begin to approach ‘place’.’ (Cresswell 2004: 2) With all that these culturally constructed signs imply, our imaginations begin to construct an image, a representation of absence to presence through which we begin to understand, for place, according to Cresswell, is a way of ‘seeing, knowing and
understanding the world.’ (Cresswell 2004: 11)

On the structure of Google Maps, species of the Asteraceae family in ex3nc3on in Brazil will be mapped, according to the “Red Lists” database of the Na3onal Center for Flora Conserva3on. And in combina3on with those scien3fic informa3on, personal stories will be located with the collabora3on of different web users’ stories, sent by email [short life story, photography, loca3on]. An affec3ve cartography is going to be installed, which intends to map and disseminate the context of these endangered daisies and Margaridas in their botanical and socio-poli3cal dimensions, respec3vely. The work-in-progress “entre Margaridas” (between Margaridas”) rescues a scien3fic archive to organize an affec3ve collec3on, which updates an urgent look at endangered species – an environmental and historical-cultural territory that has been gradually destroyed, to bring it closer to another socio-poli3cal reality, our Margaridas, which also have survived in different poli3cal and/or social Brazilian environments. A poe3c collabora3ve database is going to be created according to web-users’ contribu3ons and their Margarida’s personal narra3ves, that even they are not notorious ones, daisies and Margaridas share the same strength of adap3ng to survive. We understand that expanding and diversifying the actors involved in the establishment of this visual narra3ve implies formalizing technology awareness processes, which give visibility to the exercises and disputes of power in the technical choices that guide our technocra3c society.

No other term has worse connotation than the remake of an original film, inviting an unflattering comparison to the older original, a comparison it rarely survives. We immediately suspect a flawed and lukewarm aesthetic, and a dubious revisionist interest compromising whatever dear memory we might have of what only then becomes identified as the “original”. But prompted by media and contemporary art, this pattern has fallen apart. And maybe it was never true in the first place. The urge to go back to zero and do it again might be prompted by a much more complicated affair that emerges from the narratives of contemporary and media art.

ISEA 2018

This paper discusses how ambiguity can mean a virtue rather than a problem in Locative Art domain. Pervasive media, which has the clinical precision as one of its key features, can reduce the understanding of location to a pure residue of a Cartesian coordinate system. The author argues that ambiguity, when applied to good effect in artworks supported by such monitoring
systems, can encourage new mapping metaphors, which gives less emphasis to the point-to-point correspondence of the digital tracking. To orient the discussion, this paper focuses on Chronica Mobilis example. The qualitative analysis of this experimental artwork describes how it generates a dialogue between the determinism of geo-spatial technologies and the freedom of participants’ creative and performative actions.

Beyond Matter is an international, collaborative, practice-based research project that takes cultural heritage and contemporary art to the verge of virtual reality. The project is funded by the European Union and the German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media. The project runs from 2019 to 2023.

Despite being a project per se, the endeavour, specifically its online platform, can be understood as being a decentralized hybrid institution. Beyond Matter takes cultural heritage and contemporary art to the verge of virtual reality. It reflects on a condition of art production and mediation that is increasingly virtual with a specific emphasis on spatial aspects in art production, curating, and mediation. A plurality of possible solutions and options that are emerging alongside the development of computation is explored through numerous activities and formats, such as the digital revival of selected past landmark exhibitions, the curation of art and archival exhibitions, conferences, artist residency programs, an online platform, and publications.

Initiated led by ZKM | Karlsruhe, the collaborative endeavor relies on partnerships with the Aalto University in Espoo, Centre Pompidou in Paris, Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art in Budapest, Tallinna Kunstihoone, and Tirana Art Lab – Center for Contemporary Art. It understands practice-based research as a process within the museum context that encompasses the development and creation of museum experiences, their evaluation with the inclusion of the audiences in order to develop best practices for museum professionals who are increasingly required to apply digital tools.

In attempting to depict the virtual condition, the project probes the ways in which physical and digital space are interdependent and seeks to inhabit computer-generated space as an assembly—as a platform for exchange, for the contemplation and mediation of art—without approaching it as a virtual copy, a depiction or digital twin of actual physical spaces.

Panel Statement

Together we make-up an organisation entitled ‘Displaced Data’. ‘Displaced Data’ is an evolving association of artists and writers of color working with digital technology The association arms to encourage and foster debate concerning issues of cultural diversity, cultural democracy and digital technology and to encourage to the use and development of digital technology by artists of color.

The paper will use a visual illustration of my (Janice Cheddie’s) work on the net – which examines the intricate and complex system of hierarchy both in race and power – economic and the power of knowledge being developed within media/cyberspace. The work ‘Sweetness and Light’ produced for the project La Finca/The Homestead in April 1996 is the result. As the inevitable exploration of media/cyberspace, information networks and the use of new technologies takes hold I begin to look at analogies and comparisons. My thoughts and experience takes me to that of colonialism and the European expansionist past. While using the project as a example of some of the issues being raised and stated by black practitioners about and within cyberspace, I will expand these thoughts to look at ways in which the structures being put in place still presents a space time and new location for black expression and reasons why. In other words the issue of ‘leaky’ technologies’.

The application of mixed and augmented reality in large volume theatrical spaces and in live action performance.

This paper covers two aspects of a real world application of mixed and augmented reality technologies in theatrical performance. These are the Technological Framework and the implications of the use of such media technologies on development and presentation of narrative strategies in theatrical and entertainment performance experiences.

Within the technological framework, the paper discusses at length the processes and system architecture for mixed reality in performance, methodologies for creating 3d modeled and animated assets (virtual characters,) recording and lipsyncing of vocal tracks, creation of augmented reality environments where the virtual characters can interact with live action actors. These virtual characters are design to interpolate or “morph” through a series of “visemes” and facial expressions, thus creating responsive and emotive characters.

The technological framework also includes an in-depth discussion of the hybrid vision and sensor tracking system designed to accommodate mixed reality in large volume spaces and in the inconsistent lighting environment of the theatre stage. This process entails a custom designed extrinsic and intrinsic calibration methods for the use of 3 or more cameras and the 3 axis gyroscopic accellerometers to control and present the virtual characters in a runtime environment during theatrical performance.

The paper discusses the scripting and negotiation processes that mediate between the technology and the dramatic and artistic goals in the production of theatrical and entertainment experiences. For the dramatist or artist the application of the technology is in service of the narrative content or conceptual framework that defines the work. Process or methods for technological development are mostly secondary to the construct of the art work itself. In our project the technology and it’s application inherently modifies and mitigates the artistic or dramatic considerations. While we hold true to the narriative as the driving force of the work, the implication of injecting a altered state of character within the drama is impacted by the technology, the presentation and the juxtaposition of media and live action performance. Our paper attempts to reconcile, or at least recognize the tensions that occur in the creative process and how these can extend the potential of theatrical performance and enhance the audience’s experiences. To our knowledge, this is the first time augmented reality technology is used in theatre performance.

Bi0film.net, our open project, praises bacterial resistance in contrast to the reductionist discourse of war. We took one of the Hong Kong movement’s icons, the yellow umbrella, and adapted it based on an open resource created by Andrew McNeil, to be used as a parabolic WiFi antenna. Other than covering, hiding, and protecting the user, Bi0film.net helps them communicate. The umbrella can act as an antenna for a mini server, a repeater or a router, increasing the range, while building a nomadic network that accompanies the demonstration in the streets. In the move, the network connects and disconnects organically. Demonstrators can join the virtual Bi0film to chat, share files and store them. https://www.bi0film.net

From vimeo.com/688248959:
By late 2019 and early 2020, border closures and confinement measures abruptly interrupted the protests that were emerging around the world. This paralysis of widespread demonstrations during the pandemic generated the need to rethink and create alternative forms of civil resistance, while radically transforming our narratives, metaphors and understandings on the living systems and their ways to break through, especially in microorganisms.
Bacteria, which have been here long before us, have developed amazing technologies of distributed communication and self-organized collaboration. Large numbers of microorganisms can act in unison without any leader and their ability to communicate with other species also allows them to easily relate, skillfully responding to any situation in their environment.
However, these bacterial resistance technologies have been colonized by militarist narratives that have taken over all our spaces. Microorganisms are regarded as enemies, the entire world undertook a “war against the invisible enemy” – the SARS-CoV-2, the body is seen as a battlefield, a battle that today “we are losing against the bacterial resistance”, and the immune system is a supposed military intelligence, an idea that insults the real intelligence of the living.
Bi0film.net, our open project, praises bacterial resistance in contrast to the reductionist discourse of war. We took one of the Hong Kong movement’s icons, the yellow umbrella, and adapted it based on an open resource created by Andrew McNeil, to be used as a parabolic WiFi antenna. Other than covering, hiding, and protecting the user, Bi0film.net helps them communicate. The umbrella can act as an antenna for a mini server, a repeater or a router, increasing the range, while building a nomadic network that accompanies the demonstration in the streets. In the move, the network connects and disconnects organically. Demonstrators can join the virtual Bi0film to chat, share files and store them.
We aim at facilitating the connection to alternative networks, and at the same time acknowledge the importance of seeking autonomy in our communication technologies, now when internet censorship is used as a tool of repression on the part of authoritarian regimes.
This project opens a non-disciplinary conversation between activists, biologists, hacker communities, artists and everyone interested in co-creating other possible future communication systems. Besides the umbrella-antenna as a tool, the question and the processes around autonomous communication networks are still open for us. Together with those joining the conversation, the Bi0film.net community continues developing the possibilities for p2p, encrypted, decentralized and federated communication technologies, creating a biofilm itself that amplifies and enhances the connection of diverse communities worldwide.
Through artistic processes, we wonder about other politics of the living, other possibilities besides authoritarian and hierarchical political organizations, which by a long experience, we already know that don’t work for us. These collaborative practices, and not only biotechnologies created in laboratories or digital technologies, are the technologies of the living through which we resist more and more as communities of organisms and less as individuals isolated by capitalism. Biotechnologies as other living, evolutionary and mutant forms of resistance.
Self-organizing, collaborating, and communicating in a decentralized and distributed way are some of the wonderful actions of the living to break through, and that is what “resist like bacte

The Pixel has become the fundamental building block of digital New Media. It looms as large as Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square, 1913, Oil on Canvas Painting and it as expansive as Ray and Charles Eames’ Powers of Ten, 1968 film. The Pixel has become so ubiquitous that the very nature of visual language seems to exist on a near cellular level where it syntactically requires ever-increasing density to transmit detail and nuance. Yet in the Pixel’s ever decreasing size along with a corresponding increase in density, it can never achieve the reality that we need, so we continue, as in ancient times, to define ourselves through abstractions, symbols and icons which require less, not more data, to represent people as pictorial forms and to create pictorial forms from people.

ISEA 2018

This paper explores the identity of bio art in terms of trading between an artist and a bio lab and looks into the creation process of bio art through the concept of creolization, in order to consider bio art as a creolized art form of biology and art. The American physicist Peter Galison refers to the term ‘trading zone’ as the boundary binding together the heterogeneous subcultures and considers ‘creolization’ as the process by which the interaction among different disciplines builds a new interdisciplinary field. Galison’s concepts can be applied to bio art where art and biology interact. Bio art is a trading zone that leads trading activities between an artist and a bio lab. Within the trading zone, artists and scientists trade their own goals on the premise of a shared context. As a result, the creation process of bio art shows creolization occurring within the trading zone.

In this paper, we investigate how to augment a dance performance using a multisensory approach in a way that communicates the dancing process as an embodied experience. We collaborated with a dancer and a media artist over an 8-week residency to prepare and present a multisensory dance performance and a spin-off installation.

Enabled by leaps and bounds in the evolution of the information society, ‘data’ has become the most important economic resource of the networked economy, that is mediated by the co-located and instantaneous access, dissemination and sharing of information amongst people across vast distances. Central to these various transactions that occur in our network culture, there exist numerous policy propositions that seek to regulate the archiving, access, sharing, use and dissemination of data. These policy propositions are often enforced upon users, instead of being an organic creation of the very participants of the network. Furthermore, the design of most policy recommendations that have deep socio- economic and political implications have been restricted to reflecting the views of legal scholars and members of the technology industry, giving little or no room for a larger public discourse that is fuelled by trans-disciplinary and multi-stakeholder approaches. This panel seeks to explore how transdisciplinary creative art and design media practitioners can address the context of data ecosystems to re-imagine them and at the same time engage members of the general public to reflect and contribute to a larger inclusive discourse that may re-shape public policy surrounding data ecosystems.

This paper explores the relationship between biocybernetics, art, and information-based biological system, looking into several biocybernetic artworks, in order to propose the aesthetic potential of noise and mutation in biocybernetic art.

In 1982, Namjune Paik‟s Robot K-456 was killed in a car accident on the Madison Avenue, New York. The death of Robot K-456 paradoxically showed that a cybernetic device may become a living organism. It was a beginning of biocybernetic art that intends to combine „bio‟ related to an area of living organism and „cybernetics‟ associated with control systems. Then, biocybernetic artworks such as Garnet Hertz‟s Cockroach Controlled Mobile Robot, Arthur Elsenaar‟s Electric Eigen-Portraits, and Eduardo Kac‟s Genesis have suggested their own new communication systems based on the flow of information from biological factors to cybernetic artifacts, or vice versa.

They basically imply not only a negative feedback loop of cybernetics and a signal processing of biology, but also the unpredictable such as noise and mutation. Above all, the unpredictability of mutation increases the volume of information and shows the possibility to convert noise into meaningful new information. Ultimately, it leads to biocybernetic serendipity at which biocybernetic art essentially aims.

Abstract

“Things must be pushed to their limit, where quite naturally they reverse themselves and collapse. At the height of value, we are nearer to ambivalence”. _Jean Baudrillard, Symbolic exchange and death

The work looks at the recent progress in biotechnology and regenerative medicine and how it may change the way man perceives life and death. The objectivity and the rapidity of the science seem to prevent humanity from building any cultural meaning around it. Especially when man confronts himself with the new ways of experiencing death in the age of biotechnology and regenerative medicine, he seems not to be able to establish any symbolic exchange between life and death that could make the passing acceptable as a shade of life and as a reversible event of life. What if we could envision symbolic meanings of our new passing and build a material culture around them?

Nowadays the way we perceive death is quickly turning from the idea of a natural event in everybody’s life into the feasible possibility of controlling our passing through the intervention of science. I wonder how we would cope with death in the society we live in, where biotechnology and medicine seems to be able to neutralize human mortality. I try to foresee future rituals that man could perform around death. From setting different scenarios around the way we perceive death in our actual age, I build up social fictions and new objects that I design specifically for them.

What is art research and what is its methodology? Is there such a thing as art research and if so how can we define it, describe it or even draft some guidelines to evaluate it?

Part of this complicated process seems to be the incorporation of the art schools (which in many cases have always been separate from universities) in the official higher education system at an academic level. Well, it is exactly the art practice, and the research within, that concerns me the most as an artist interested in researching new ways of representation in the visual arts.

The panel undertakes a deep and critical reflection about the general usage of biomedical signals from the mid 1960s to nowadays and their inclusion in artistic work, in regard both to the artistic application of these signals as well as the consequent theoretical implications. The members of this panel discuss concrete applications of biomedical signals in dance, performance and installation, the role of the enacting self embodied in these systems and the implications interactive installations have for the self-perception through technology. They focus on the complex and hybrid relationships between body, technology and environment, the perceptual qualities emerging from it, as well as the ethical implications of employing these systems.

Keywords: Bio-data, Bio-feedback, BCI, HCI, New Media, DYI, Machine Ethics

The concept of a Biometric Visceral Interface originates from a search for an alternative to the visual presentation of biometric data. Departing from the habit brought by the spectacular society of seeing and understanding, Biometric Visceral Interfaces challenge the common practices of communication based upon visual memory and quantified abstraction of biological phenomena. The aim of such interfaces is to extend human perception of body information beyond visual paradigm and semiotic objects. A set of biomorphic designs of soft robotic prosthetics is introduced here to define a new human-machine interface that allows the users to have affective interpersonal communication. We describe how a multisensory immersive system can reconstruct a user’s body schema in virtual space and visceralize biometric data into the user’s body as a new way to perceive the presence of others.

BIOTEKNICA is a fictitious corporation, generating designer organisms on demand. Irrational and grotesque, our specimens are modeled on the Teratoma, a cancerous multi-tissue growth. Initially virtual, our organisms are now under laboratory development using living tissue. BIOTEKNICA both embraces and critiques biotechnology, considering the contradictions and complexities that these technologies offer the future of humanity.

Abstract

BIOTEKNICA is a fictitious corporation, which projects its viewers into the future, where designer organisms are generated on demand in a virtual laboratory. The organisms produced by BIOTEKNICA, however, do not adhere to the structures and functionality normally manifest in nature. Similar to mutations depicted in The Fly, Rosemary’s Baby, and Alien Resurrection, our specimens are irrational and grotesque. They are modeled on the Teratoma, an unusual cancerous growth containing multiple tissues like hair, skin, and vascular systems. Monstrous as this may seem, scientists today see the Teratoma as an instance of spontaneous cloning, and are conducting research on the Teratoma with the goal of developing future technologies. BIOTEKNICA both embraces and critiques biotechnology, considering the contradictions and deep underlying complexities that these technologies offer the future of humanity.

In the past, BIOTEKNICA has manifest as a purely multimedia production/installation. However, we are now taking steps to bring our theoretical specimens out of their virtual environment and in to the laboratory. In Summer of 2004 we were invited to work as Research Fellows at the Symbiotica Art/Science Laboratories at The University of Western Australia, where we began preliminary investigations into growing organic prototypes that serve as new representations of our product line. Here we commenced research with tissue culture protocols in the production of artwork as pioneered by Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr, of the internationally recognized Tissue Culture and Art Project, and SymbioticA founders. BIOTEKNICA: Organic Tissue Prototypes will be completed in 2006.

Abstract

Remote sensing is the act of measuring and observing an object from a distance without any physical contact. Interestingly, the term ‘remote sensing’ was coined by Evelyn Pruitt, a geographer for the Office of Naval Research at the start of the Cold War. This paper argues that remote sensing space satellites represent a contemporary interweaving of vision, knowledge and power and as optical devices have, like the telescope in the 17th century, changed how we think and engage with the world.

Space satellites provide a uniquely modern perspective of the earth in that they, as Hanna Arendt wrote in The Human Condition1 were, ‘the first step towards escape from men’s imprisonment to the earth.’ Satellites liberate us by allowing us to see ourselves from space while their instruments provide new insight into our global environment. Space satellites like telescopes extend human sight to make the imperceptible perceivable. Expanding vision beyond the eye’s capability allows for greater scrutiny. Even though phenomena observed through a satellite or telescope constitutes a perceived reality, these observations must still be discerned as true.

Verifying what is seen is entrenched in a scientific methodology created in part during the 17th century. This paper will illuminate how the principles of objectivity in scientific practice and metaphors of transparency have changed in relation to the development of new optical devices and digital imaging methodologies in the 21st century. This historical analysis of the telescope in the 17th century and the space satellite of the 20th century show how knowledge acquired through technologically enhanced vision has shifted both scientific and social paradigms that in turn profoundly influence cultural norms.

With around 5.5 billion requests per day, Google is the most used ‘search engine’ worldwide. Google Search identifies users online by collecting personal data––including an IP address, yet when using the Tor browser, a users’ IP address remains obscured. Black Box versus Black Bloc employs Alexander Galloway’s eponymous essay to structure the effects of Google Search (The Personalised Subject) compared to that of the Tor Browser (The Anonymous User). Departing from the ‘data subject’, I adopt the internet protocol (IP) address as an organisational hinge to show the effects of search on (us)ers––‘subjectivities of search’ and ‘agencies of anonymity’, organised into ‘collaborative collec- tives’ according to degrees of human-algorithmic interaction. The key difference is that I choose to be in the ‘anonymous Tor col- lective’, trusting my privacy to unknown human actors instead of putting trust in Google that assigns me to particular groups through their non-transparent process of collaborative filtering, without human agency.

The story of the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford and the rebuttal of Brett Kavanaugh as part of the Senate Nomination Hearings for Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court is retold using the split-brain interface. The design of the split-brain interface was first developed for the interactive documentary Anita und Clarence in der Hölle (trans. “Anita and Clarence in Hell”): An Opera for Split-Brains in Modular Parts. This project used documentary video from the 1991 Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the nomination of Judge Clarence Thomas to be Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

Borders between the real and digital worlds are blurred by a changed aura through a mediator: digital creative work. By introducing the history of the frame in art, this paper highlights a new perspective to unweave the relationship between the virtual image of an actor and its aura. Furthermore, the author expands the role of viewers who can gain independence and liberty while they participate in digital artwork. Based upon the reconfigured notion of aura in the digital environment from Walter Benjamin’s seminal essay, “Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” this paper argues that digital creative works can use a ‘screen-without-sound’ as a stage in the real world with participating audiences. The digital creative work example of this paper focuses on a network-based screen interactive performance, Telematic Dreaming (1992) by Paul Sermon.

I am a designer and artist researching and working in the area of digital media, textiles and surfaces, currently finishing my PhD at Bath Spa University in UK.

The subject of the paper emerges from my ongoing experimental and creative work, which focuses on conditions leading to the synthesis of digital imagery and physical surface, to the fusion of digital display and materiality. I explore how the interaction between both can be utilised to create ambiguous visual experiences (such as the effect of elusive depth), playing with our perception and evoking the confusion and interference of the real and the virtual.

The paper explains the progress of my work against the contextual background of recent developments in digital media and its impact on architectural spaces and the urban environment, as well as of current tendencies in Western culture, such as the increasing desire for the playful, the seductive and the illusionary. The notion of spatial illusions and our seeing of space and form, influenced by digital display technologies, is discussed.

Within my work, I achieve visual transformation and the overlap of realities by applying projection technology. Sequences of animated patterns are superimposed onto material of varying surface qualities, modified through printing. As a result, the projected image and the printed image/surface merge in such a way that it becomes difficult to distinguish between what is virtual and what is real.

During a recent exhibition at Bath Spa University, I presented aspects of my explorations within a spatial installation, employing multiple projections and layers of transparent, printed material. Further, I have been working in collaboration with choreographer Chrissie Harrington (UK), experimenting with projections on moving performers and textile panels, creating virtual worlds which either dissolve or emphasise the human body. My extended research also includes the investigation into the emerging OLED display technology. Thereby its potential of introducing materiality and tactility to the digital image, fusing the virtual with the physical, is of particular interest.

As feminist, black, and queer discourses have repeatedly emphasized, bodies matter, but have frustratingly been deprioritized in technology development and discourse. This institutional presentation will introduce a community and academic partnership that seeks to address this critical omission as well as outline activities to date. It will create networking opportunities for those interested and invested in equity-seeking research-creation in embodied interaction. The grassroots feminist methods deployed throughout this partnership to date have enabled a symbiotic relationship between partners as the project has necessarily shifted in response to the global pandemic. This presentation will reflect on key learnings garnered to date in this inter-sectoral context – across academic, community, and individual settings whether online or in person.

Configuring Space through Embodiment
With this project we propose that embodiment can be more emphasized and better supported in space-design frameworks. We present background on several theories of embodiment since the beginning of the twentieth century from different intellectuals to recent developments of the concept in tangible and social computing and anticipate that this reveals pathways for designing new embodiment framework systems for architecture. In this paper we suggest that architecture and interactive computing can share a common theoretical foundation in embodied interaction. The main thesis is for designers to use the body as an interface; to understand how the interaction between a person and his/her surroundings arises and how our embodiment reveals other rich spatial qualities during the conception phase of design. This paper proposes a conceptual framework for embodied interaction based on the creation of real-time systems in order to instigate a framework for interactive processes that can help designers understand architecture phenomena and the performance of space. We present a design experiment on embodied performance space entitled “Body Tailored Space” where the boundaries of the human body are metaphorically extended into surrounding membranes.

“Body Tailored Space” suggests a conceptual framework for spatial interactions that evolve their own expressive performance producing a continuous transformation. The system has a responsive membrane controlled by a genetic algorithm that reconfigures its behaviour and learns to adapt itself continually to the evolutionary properties of the environment, thus becoming “a situated, living piece”. Participants here approach the environment outside of a goal-oriented frame, aiming to experience a new social, ambiences or moods that will affect a physical wall in an evolutionary fashion. All the necessary and sufficient conditions are therefore present for a hidden dimension to be added to a phenomenology and a poetics of visual space.

Boundaries have provided humans a frame of understanding and foundation for social structures – like hierarchies, classes, and races. Acknowledging the development of technology has brought significant changes in human life, this paper explores a new model of boundaries that fits into a networked digital society and reexamines the idea of boundaries/borders as a solid wall that separates, segregates, isolates, and disconnects. Instead of a concrete wall, this paper suggests considering membranes as a model for boundaries in the technological era because of their semi-permeable and fluid nature, as well as their active engagements in relations/interactions between heterogeneous bodies. This idea of membranes in a technological society is exemplified in political borders, control mechanisms, and human-nonhuman cognition. Katherine Hayles’s discussions of cognisphere and nonconsciousness illustrate the semi-permeability of the boundaries between human and technological cognition, highlighting their interdependency and continuous inflows/outflows of information on the nonconscious level. The author introduces the process of creating an interactive art project Surrogate Being to demonstrate how the author experienced such a membrane-like boundary between heterogeneous yet interconnected modes of (digital and biological) memories about the same place.

The Brain/Body Digital Musical Instrument (BBDMI) will create a prototype for a digital musical instrument system that uses physiological signals from the human body: from the brain and muscles. The instrument system will be validated in a range of musical settings from concerts to the conservatoire, with a diverse range of musicians. The project brings together an interdisciplinary team of researchers, designers, musicians and engineers that will mutually inform each other through a mixed methods approach. The consortium represents the spectrum of research: from low- level technical development to innovative user-centered design, and the integration of state-of-the art methods integrating neuroscience and musical practice. The project will hold a workshop and concert during the ISEA2023 affiliated conference, the Journées d’Informatique Musicale (JIM) 2023 at the MSH Paris Nord, the week following ISEA, 24 May.

BrainRain is a community-based digital art project – or a walking, exploratory adventure game. Participants in the program, members of the public involved in the game, perform a series of creative exercises. As a result of the exercises, a group of 15-20 participants will work together, using their collective imagination, to create an artwork, a narrative, that has not been precisely outlined beforehand. At the end of the game, the story is told orally by the participants, recorded in writing and then presented together, using a medium of their choice. They make the artwork real, bringing the previously non-existent narrative into the context of the game.

The digital tools and group dynamics that support the game’s progress create a symbiosis of the participants’ imagination. The resulting collective imagination creates and makes real a previously non-existent narrative. The program breaks down walls between participants who initially did not know each other, as well as barriers to creative activity. Based on the collective creative imagination, it demystifies and promotes an artistic, creative approach, thinking and acting.

Keywords: Electronic Art, Pioneers, Brazilian Art, Digital Media

The pioneering ideas and artworks of three major Brazilian artists – Waldemar Cordeiro, Abraham Palatnik and Otávio Donasci – are discussed in this paper. Waldemar Cordeiro started working with computers in the late 60s and produced some of the most important artworks of the initial phase of computer art. Although his career was interrupted by his premature death in 1973, Cordeiro left an incredibly vast visual oeuvre, and a great number of reviews and theoretical articles – including “Arteônica”, a manifesto on Electronic Art. Over the last 65 years Palatnik has explored the fusion of art, science and technology in creative, dynamic and kinetic ways. Now in his late 80s, Palatnik is still actively working on the conception of new art forms with different media. Otávio Donasci has artistically explored the combination of human bodies and electronic devices since the 1980s. His pioneering works explored the psychological dimensions of interpersonal relationships, encompassing a great variety of media to create innovative theatrical performances and interactive installations. In conclusion, we argue that these Brazilian pioneers brought extremely important contributions to the field of Electronic Art, and deserve greater international exposure.

The Summit Break-Out session on Funding was attended by, among others, Oliver Grau (ADA), Isabel Meyer (Smithsonian Institute), Fabiana Krepel (Brasil), Rosalyn Chavarry (Lima Museum, Peru), Terry Wong (Hong Kong), Pablo Gobira (Universidade do Estado de Minas Gerais, Brasil).

Some of the suggestions for research funding opportunities include:

Asia:
Samdani Art Foundation (Bangladesh)
Dhaka Art Summit
Arts Council and Lahore Museum (Pakistan)
Asia Art Archive (Hong Kong)

Americas:
International Center For The Arts Of The Americas At The Museum Of Fine Arts, Houston
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada),
Canada Council

Europe:
START

Round Table Statement

Traditional wisdom has it that the successful art object should stand on its own, without the need for further explanation. Implicit in this statement is the understanding that the viewer will be initiated into the cultural codes of the artist, or, more commonly, that they operate with the same cultural codes. The “World Wide” nature of the Web, and of modern society in general, renders such assumptions out-dated. Furthermore, the very format of the World Wide Web is in opposition to the concept of the stand alone art object, as it invites links from image to related textual information to another image to sound and so on. Museums and galleries post information on the wall, performers distribute programs, and books include introductions, but seldom are these read with the same intensity as parallel information on the Web. How does the widespread use of the format of the WWW for viewing art liberate artists from the idea of the work of art as a stand alone creation? Will artists be able to operate outside of mainstream, public cultural codes and references, by providing the audience with keys to understanding the context? And how will these ideas carry over into non-Web exhibitions of either static or moving or inter-active works? Will the Web provide the impetus for artists to include sources and alternative states of a work as an integral part of artistic presentations, both on and off of the Web? Can it serve as the model in bringing audiences to expect artists to provide context?

Breathe – the air we wear proposes wearable and mobile technologies for reading and rendering in real time the air we breathe. The project proposes the ‘actioning’ for better air quality through individuals’ capacity to record air pollution. The project initiates a walk-able protest by taking air quality directly to the individual and through critical mass counter the massive problems facing our urban atmospheres. In particular, the article focuses on the pollution problems facing China today.

Abstract

Short Paper

Summary

This essay investigates theories and practices. sometimes very much at odds, of contemporary educational involvements in the arts and technology. It is based, in part, on my ongoing involvement with and research on various communities’ efforts to use education as just such a bridge.

Intro

The idea that education might serve as a bridge between technology and the arts is based on a metaphor, one connoting connection, and at the same time, separation. Following the physical logic of the metaphor, we locate technology on one side of the span, the arts on the other. Each have been perceived for centuries, in Western culture at least, as the antithesis of the other. The implied purpose of the bridge, a piece of technology itself, is to provide a ground upon which ideas from each of these areas of endeavor may travel to the other. A bridge’s purpose is to connect. It may also serve, however, to solidify separation. Far from being a stable, fixed entity, education is a highly contested area where the perceived and actual stakes, the forming of the future, are high. Education’s purposes and practices may encourage, discourage, or redirect the flow of ideas from one area to another. As individuals, communities, and the ideas they bring with them from either the arts or technology or their vast connected territories are filtered through the institutional bridges of education, they may be reshaped, thwarted or advanced. What is certain is that some form of mitigation takes place. This essay investigates the theory and practice, sometimes very much at odds, of contemporary educational involvements in the arts and technology. It is based, in part, on my ongoing involvement with and research on various communities’ efforts to use education as just such a bridge. What has constituted success or failure in these endeavors, and on what characteristics have various participants based these judgments? How have issues such as gender, ethnicity and race fared in these activities? And most importantly, how have the recipients of these efforts, the students, characterized their involvement?

The Connecting New Media Art Archives project has been developing a methodology to enable the sharing of information between currently ‘siloed’ online repositories of New Media Art. With representatives from collections across the globe, this panel will examine the design and technical implementation decisions required to actualize connecting information in the archives.

Creating connections between new media art archives involves technical, resource-availability and coordination challenges. To mitigate and adapt to such constraints, a clear articulation of the purpose(s) of connection can help to identify functional requirements and thus provide direction in technical choices. Accuracy, integrity and discoverability are our core principles. By creating an automatable methodology, the overarching goal to create a network of interconnected knowledge related to new media art is closer to realisation.

Abstract

Collaboration: background
A collaborative research project was advertised in the UK press in May 2006 naming two participating institutions, proposing the title: Visual Art Practices: Digital Literacies and the Construction of Identities in Northern Ireland, and stating that the research topic proposed must be in some area of visual art practice in the space of education.

The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) for the United Kingdom offers collaborative awards in an attempt to bridge the research divide between academic and non-academic institutions, such as museums and media organisations, both commercial and public. As a knowledge transfer initiative it aims to generate fruitful research and knowledge in an area where synergies between potential partners exist but where benefits to the non-academic institution may not be apparent. Funding was secured in the scheme’s second year by Interface, Centre for Research in Art Technologies and Design at the University of Ulster in Belfast, to develop a project with the Nerve Centre in Derry/Londonderry.

My own art practice had transformed in response to teaching fine art media and graphic arts – as digital technologies were introduced into art colleges in the early 1990’s. A project exploring the stories of one globally dispersed family became the spur for a wider-angled ‘multimedia’ work in 2000. Weird View explored the family’s wider social network in Lucan, Co. Dublin as a dual-screen, ‘interactive narrative’. It recounted the interlaced social histories of a terrace of houses, told by residents past and present, and shared with wider publics via art gallery, local town hall, and the web. My research proposal outlined a collaboratively generated, multiple platform piece to be developed with young people at the Nerve Centre.

This study draws parallels between the work of traditional craftsmen and the workflows of digital artists, and acknowledges both of them as cultural actuators and generators of ornamentation. Moreover, the elements of play and visual complexity are considered in the exploration of ornamental forms, as integral practices in both the analogue and digital realm. Play is a natural function, connecting intuition to actions, and specifically in the digital arts, it helps shape different notational systems bound to individual imagination. Visual complexity is explored as an ornamental quality that was forsaken in favor of minimalism and functional design, but nowadays is returning as an integral and desired quality in both traditional and digital ornamentation. It is, as well, a common feature of generative art, a field of digital art, which is interpreted as the augmented continuator of the intellectual and procedural heritage of traditional hand crafting.

The Halldorophone project creates an intersection or hybrid of instrument objects. The sound of the strings is picked up, amplified and retransmitted back into the body of the instrument thereby causing the strings to vibrate further. The result is a virtually endlessly sustained sound. Visually, the unique instrument objects are appealing, not least for the strangeness of the brutal integration of the speaker cone into the instrument itself, making them part instrument, part speaker.

Text by Rune Søchting

Panel:  Interface Play: Media Environments for Ludic Cyborgs

The term ‘ludic’ can be linked to many as­pects of play and games, but what does it mean to be play­ful and where and how does this play occur? Whereas the­o­rists write about dig­i­tal games ex­ist­ing as goal-ori­en­tated, rule-based sys­tems the act of ex­plo­ration, dis­cov­ery and plea­sure of the play ex­pe­ri­ence is often ne­glected or sec­ondary to this state­ment. In writ­ing about non-dig­i­tal games Cail­lois’ (1958) dis­tin­guishes be­tween “agon, alea, mim­icry and ilinx” and al­though com­pe­ti­tion, chance, make-be­lieve and ver­tigo can all exist within the dig­i­tal game world, the en­closed screen of the vir­tual realm mean some of these cat­e­gories often evolve in their in­ter­pre­ta­tions. How­ever, the ubiq­uity of mo­bile-phone tech­nolo­gies, in­te­grated GPS sys­tems and cam­eras allow for the ge­o­graph­i­cal land­scape to be trans­formed at the touch of the but­ton.

The growth of aug­mented re­al­ity (AR) tech­nol­ogy now al­lows the screen to dis­play fic­tional ob­jects lay­ered onto the quo­tid­ian world. Ap­pli­ca­tions such as Layar on the iOS and An­droid op­er­at­ing sys­tems cre­ate new plat­forms for play­ful ex­pe­ri­ences, often recre­at­ing our child­hood mem­o­ries of fic­tional worlds, imag­i­nary places and ideas sur­round­ing new rules of play. Through using AR we often no longer have to rely solely on our own imag­i­na­tions to cre­ate fic­tional worlds as the mo­bile in­ter­face cre­ates a win­dow for us to see through and in­ter­act with both the place we are sit­u­ated in and the cor­re­spond­ing layer placed on top. AR game­spaces are now dig­i­tally sit­u­ated in the real world land­scape, tem­porar­ily chang­ing our re­la­tion­ships with the space and form­ing portable play­grounds of ex­pe­ri­ences. Using ex­am­ples of games found in the Layar ap­pli­ca­tion, as well as aug­mented re­al­ity games de­vel­oped for the iPhone, this paper will re-ex­am­ine Cail­lois’ orig­i­nal cat­e­gories of play as a way of un­der­stand­ing the ubiq­uity of ludic in­ter­faces in light of our real world ex­plo­rations. In doing so, it will also high­light the im­por­tance of ex­plo­ration and dis­cov­ery in how we per­ceive, per­form and cre­ate spaces of play­ful in­ter­ac­tion.

Institutional Presentation Statement

Summary:

Presentation of a Toronto based artists’ centre focused on electronic art. Discussion of the challenges it is responding to and the implications of these In a larger context. Examination of the Inter-relationships of the electronic artist, artists’ centre, computer technology, the  multimedia Industry, and the Canadian public and cultural spheres. Where is the place for an artist-run centre In the digital world?

Abstract

Inter/@ccess is a non-profit artist-run centre, founded in 1983, which provides a community network and resource base to enable artists and the public to explore the intersections of culture and technology through the creation, exhibition, presentation and discussion of electronic art forms and new communications media. Located in Toronto, Inter/@ccess operates a bbs about electronic art, and offers access to computers to artists working in digital media, in addition to presenting events and exhibitions of electronic art. We also provide an on-going context for critical discourse, and present alternative views of the use of new technologies to those provided by the mainstream media and government policy-makers. The evolution of the centre illustrates recent developments in many interwoven wider spheres. Globalization has caused contempt for anything which does not contribute directly to the bottom line, while dwindling government funding for arts is reviled as philistinism by some, and hailed as a return to the good old days of elitism and artists’ patrons by others. At the same time, corporate sponsors are refusing the traditional “arm’s-length relationship” and demanding more decision-making power in exchange for their funding. CD-ROM manufacturers are eager to get their hands on cool multimedia content to move their products off the shelves, but few artists in this situation have creative control over their work. The potentials for electronic art creation are expanding constantly with the increased sophistication of hardware and software; however, this means even steeper learning curves for the electronic artist. In addition, rapid obsolescence makes it unfeasible to invest heavily in equipment. Computer Inter/@ccess has tried to respond to, maybe even take advantage of, these fundamental changes. One of our goals is to make this a place for the entire electronic media arts community of Toronto and beyond, to offer something for emerging artists, senior electronic artists, critics, students, and the public. Most policies of our organization have been re-thought: membership, the computer studio, the bbs, exhibitions and events, staffing. Is is possible to define a stable place for ourselves in this digital rush hour? What should be the position of the artistrun electronic media arts centre? What is the role of the creative artist in the digital world?

This paper presents an approach to expanding live music per- formance practices to encompass sonic media architectures. We demonstrate a method for creating a playable audio-visual synthesiser that incorporates the notion that the space itself is a medium for performance. We discuss the design concepts that inform this process, as well as detailing specific simulation tools and a creative workflow that facilitates development of performance experiments within architectural spaces.

The number of screens now manufactured has surpassed the number of humans on the planet. Mediated environments today have become so pervasive, it is difficult to think of a moving image that is not electronic; we rarely say ‘digital’ display anymore as the assumption is so ingrained in our culture. Electronic screens are always attached yet rarely integrated, usually added on after the fact. Hence most media understanding does not consider the relationship between the screen and its placement. Media is a skin that does not reach to the bones, the structure of our environment.

Smart materials are designed to react to changes in the environment. Even subtle shifts in light, temperature, noise, moisture, pollutants, and more can cause dramatic changes in color, form or structure. Natural reactions provide a starting point to introduce a new (yet ancient) context in which the schism of on/off is not applicable anymore but replaced by behavioral flux. These emerging material behaviors allow a rethinking of the relationship between “skin and bone” and ultimately between media and environment.

As part of an evolving post-digital society, artists and designers are exploring pre-digital dynamic effects. Through the ability to transform energy from an environmental input into a visual language, smart materials and their reactions can become a new form of reactive display design. This emerging media will shift from the independent to the integrated and yield opportunity for a new media art, free from the screen, yet still able to convey information, narrative and aesthetics.

The panel will consider how these new materials that reveal non-digital reactions are not a way to augment design by technology but instead integrate and evolve design with new manufacturing and material qualities. The presentation will discuss how these materials, when extended to a modern urban context, one can envision a more ambient, less aggressive form of display that still signals environmental variations in visually aesthetic applications within architecture, art, automotive, fashion and others. Smart technologies can offer alternatives to billboards, signs, public transport, way-finding, data visualization and a host of new art and design applications. While weaning a global culture off electronic screens may be impossible, allowing natural processes to communicate in both content and form will lead to increased recognition from the public in sustainable solutions and environmental concerns.

The Centre for Creative Arts and Technologies (C-CATS) is an interdisciplinary research and production initiative grounded in the media of moving images and related artistic forms.
We embrace film, animation, visual effects, games, interactivity, live performance, immersion, digital theatre and virtual production in all their current and future guises; without forgetting all the artistic and cultural forebears upon which all these modes of expression were built.
C-CATS combines creative expression with technological innovation: a ‘no barriers’ approach through which we can both make great work and facilitate the future of making great work.

Institutional Presentation Statement

-Section 1 : The ‘Real Space’

Upon general observation, the highly negated space that defines Malaysian art scene is strongly marked by a common chasm between commercial imperatives (that promise financial return) and the need to express genuine, relevant and innovative ideas (that may promise possible disappearance from the local art scene or space). An overview of this space will be the initial focus of the presentation. Major characteristics of the space as well as the defining regional, national and local factors will occupy most of this section. Other than outlining the scenario that leads to the formation of the studios, this section will also include the university’s vision and mission, philosophy, and approach.

-Section 2 : The Alternative ‘Digital Space’

This is where the main focus will be given to the Studio’s interest in providing alternative digital space to nurture the spirit of experimentation. The Studio, which is placed under the roof of the Faculty of Creative & Applied Arts, has taken a full commitment in setting-up a highly-equipped I.T.- based (Information Technology) environment for its’ arts programs. The Studio offers courses that compliment the Faculty’s integrated approach toward creative arts, technology and management. Model curriculum that meets the immediate national and regional demands for I.T-literate artists and designers will also be presented together with the challenges and issues related to the design of electronic/ digital-based art courses. Samples of students’ work will be included.

-Section 3 : The Studio Set-Up

This section will focus upon the physical and digital structure of the existing studio (and the future upgrade / expansion). Various available platforms or workstations as well as applications (softwares) and the supporting equipment will also be presented. This section will also present the operational structure of the studios which is inclusive of the studio’s roles in providing academic services, engaging in professional projects and consultation, establishing a communication and networking base, formation of a digital resource centre and providing production support to the rest of the University. Samples of the Studio’s portfolio will be presented. See videos.

-Section 4 : The Future

This section will outline the Studio’s future planning and operational action-plan.

Based on the notion of the Datacene, understood as the time when data directly affects the social, cultural, economic, political, and even affective structures of the present. In this article we propose how Big Data and Artificial Intelligence give rise to the Internet of Behavior; a new technological paradigm that has incredible potential to induce human behavior. Since ancient times, human beings have always wanted to predict and alter the future, but in the last ten years, this wish is beginning to become a reality thanks to great recent advances in the field of social engineering, raising serious doubts about social control and the loss of freedom. In this context of analysis, we present two projects developed within the framework of ACTS. Data Biography shows the enormous amount of digital traces that we generate daily and composes, from them, the biography of a person. On the other hand, Machine Biography investigates how current artificial intelligence techniques can predict and induce future human behavior. Both projects invite us to consider from a critical perspective the present and future of the social transformations produced by Big Data and AI.

The concept of human machine communication is a theme that has driven the plot of many sci-fi scenarios. It is a powerful overarching narrative, which allows us to question as an outsider, some of the most fundamental principles of what it means to be human. This includes but is not limited to our personal ethics, our political systems and our social interactions. When we communicate with technological others such as robots, or avatars in virtual worlds, by; plugging in, talking, texting, typing, touching et al we are redefining the relationship we have with the body as an embedded and entangled definition of self. It is this definition of self that allows us to be intimate with others, as we define both the relationship and the meaning of certain interactions. On the other hand, a non-anthropocentric approach to intimacy may give us new versions of the human, perhaps even introducing concepts of the Posthuman that have the potential to blur the boundaries between technology, the body and the self.

Artistic Freedom
Within this panel I would like to question whether being intimate with technology, in a non-anthropocentric way could provide new critical reflections on the self and give the developers of robots and avatars the artistic freedom to go beyond the human both in form and mode of interaction. Rather than aiming for AI or empathy-inducing features i.e. teaching technological beings how to be better humans, we may instead consider how the affordances and materiality of different kinds of technology and how they can augment and develop new and enchanting approaches to human interaction. When considered from an artistic perspective rather than a technological one, we may ask what are the affordances of robotics and virtual reality and what kind of experiences would define intimacy in these new forms?

Artists have always been pioneers in creating and experimenting with tools, processes and interfaces in the development phase, ahead of many industrial sectors. ISEA2023 will host the shared visions of several artists passionate about the explorations and experimentations made possible by computer graphics and algorithms, both through generative processes based on brain waves and through the sharing of creative practices using Open Source. Cap Digital, one of the largest collectives of digital innovators in Europe, proposes to lead an inventive and forward-looking round table on this subject.

Keywords: Art, Robotics, Play, Animal, Nonhuman, Behavior, Cute, Kawaii, Media, Zoomorphic

This paper examines issues related to playfulness, cuteness and the modeling of animal behaviors toward the designs of robotic art. Exploring historical and contemporary case studies of the playful ecology and creations of robotic art, as entry points to a multi-faceted
discussion of human-machine engagements considering the lenses of philosophical, art historical and curatorial methodological research this text tracks an abbreviated legacy of new media art production beginning with the animal modeled works of Canadian artist Norman White. In assessing characteristic features of a selection of robotic art works, such as its playfulness, use of humor, and critique / reconfiguration of cuteness as a mode of critical engagement, this paper aims to unpack the motivations behind artist’s aesthetically and behaviorally oriented merging of the nonhuman robot with lively, soft, emotive and fussy animal creatures. Case studies of animal modeled robotics point to the accessibility of employing animal behaviors and their powers to engage with humans on a level that is productive and non-confrontational. Animal behaviors and zoomorphic aesthetics appear to appeal to audiences in a way that would not be possible for confrontational and/or anthropomorphic bots.

Captured by an Algorithm is a commemorative plate series that looks at romance novels through the lens of the Amazon Kindle Popular Highlight algorithm. A passage in a Kindle e-book becomes a Popular Highlight after a certain number of people independently highlight the same passage. Popular Highlights show up as underlined when reading the book on Kindle. Each plate features one Popular Highlight from a romance novel and a landscape generated by running Photoshop’s Photomerge algorithm on romance novel covers. Over seventy thousand individual acts of highlighting were used to determine the content for this work telling the story of the loneliness, grief, vulnerability, and discontent felt by the readers. This work reveals a glimpse of a positive, anonymous social network emerging unintentionally through this Kindle feature. The project draws attention to this existing example of collective social support to change society’s vision for the future of social technologies.

Panel: Slowness: Responding to Acceleration through Electronic Arts

Global cap­i­tal­ism has been de­scribed as it­self an art of ac­cel­er­a­tion, and war today is fought less across spa­tial bor­ders than through the as­sy­met­ri­cal re­la­tions of vari­able speeds. In­for­ma­tion tech­nolo­gies and mo­bile de­vices en­able cor­po­ra­tions to ac­cel­er­ate pro­duc­tion by ex­tract­ing small pack­ets of at­ten­tion and cog­ni­tive labor; par­tic­i­pa­tory cul­ture has not merely been cel­e­brated as de­mo­c­ra­tic but also an­a­lyzed as a cap­i­tal­ist in­ven­tion for more flex­i­ble ex­trac­tion of value. The re­sults are so­cial spaces over­whelmed by in­for­ma­tion and stim­u­la­tion, and mass phe­nom­ena of sen­sory and cog­ni­tive ex­haus­tion and even vi­o­lent psy­chopatholo­gies. It is in­dis­putable that the ques­tion of slow­ness raises ethico-po­lit­i­cal is­sues at the heart of our sit­u­a­tion today. If art has tra­di­tion­ally pro­vided a space of re­flec­tion for think­ing through our col­lec­tive prob­lems as well as to en­counter in­spi­ra­tions for new ways of liv­ing by way of aes­thetic me­di­a­tions, then it seems that elec­tronic art might more im­me­di­ately en­gage the so­cial con­text through di­rect han­dling of the aes­thet­ics of time. Rather than pro­duce rep­re­sen­ta­tions for con­tem­pla­tion, elec­tronic art has the ca­pac­ity to ren­der new knowl­edge and to cul­ti­vate new ca­pac­i­ties for en­gag­ing the sit­u­a­tion of speed and ac­cel­er­a­tion. Slow­ness is a po­tent trope not only hear­ken­ing back to the value of con­tem­pla­tion but join­ing our view­ing of art with the ur­gent need to de­velop skill­ful nav­i­ga­tion of modal­i­ties of cap­ture, mea­sure, and rhythm.

These are at once aes­thetic and po­lit­i­cal—the means by which we are caught up in the ac­cel­er­a­tions of global cap­i­tal and also the means by which we might at­tain a sus­tain­able rhythm of ac­tive en­gage­ment with our world. I en­vi­sion not a utopian de­sire for tab­ula rasa, a slow­ing down to zero-point, but rather a prac­ti­cal, em­bod­ied slow­ness that might allow us to learn to move within this world with­out vi­o­lent panic. Elec­tronic art, I pro­pose, has the power to in­vent and teach us new prac­tices of liv­ing in the tech­no­log­i­cal speed of the pre­sent. Cor­re­spond­ingly there may be a use­ful­ness of elec­tronic art crit­i­cism in ar­tic­u­lat­ing the sig­nif­i­cance of these aes­thetic prac­tices, which need to be un­der­stood dif­fer­ently from from the ways in which the tra­di­tional arts have taught us to look and think about art. In this pre­sen­ta­tion, I pro­pose to dis­cuss a se­lec­tion of elec­tronic art—specif­i­cally in­no­v­a­tive uses of video, al­go­rith­mic de­sign, and ges­tural in­ter­faces—in order to ex­plore how elec­tronic artists cre­ate spaces for the gath­er­ing and hold­ing of at­ten­tion, new ways of tak­ing mea­sure of our lives, and un­der­stand­ing the em­bod­ied rhythms of en­gag­ing elec­tronic art. Cap­ture, mea­sure, and rhythm are terms I use to mark the am­bigu­ous po­ten­tial­ity of what elec­tronic art makes per­cep­ti­ble and open to in­di­vid­ual mod­u­la­tion. Slow­ness is often ex­plored by artists through slow-mo­tion (often in con­nec­tion with close-up), time-lapse, in­stal­la­tion or video of slowly mov­ing ob­jects or ob­jects of vari­able vis­cos­ity; ad­di­tion­ally the use of al­go­rithims to bring vis­i­ble mi­cro- or macro- move­ments (evo­lu­tion, nano) into the human range of mean­ing­fully per­cep­ti­ble speeds. Many artis­tic at­tempts to use such strate­gies for ex­plor­ing the trope of slow­ness tend to­ward a cer­tain de­pen­dency on the modal­ity of cap­ture. Sim­i­larly, crit­i­cal dis­cus­sion of spec­ta­tor­ship also tends to draw on modes of cap­ture. For ex­am­ple, par­tic­i­pa­tion and in­ter­ac­tiv­ity em­pha­size ges­tures in re­la­tion to bod­ily move­ments tracked by sen­sors and we­b­cams, or se­man­tic and cog­ni­tive processes linked to rec­og­niz­ing pat­terns or ex­press­ing one’s will to choose, click, act. How­ever, I would argue that the modal­i­ties of cap­ture can­not ac­tu­ally give us slow­ness. Slow­ness can­not be achieved by re­vers­ing or re­duc­ing the speed of ac­cel­er­a­tion. Slow­ness is given dif­fer­ently. I will at­tempt to ar­tic­u­late these al­ter­na­tive po­ten­tial­i­ties of elec­tronic art.

Carbon Art Residence is an organization that has been promoting the art of new media in Ukraine since 2017. They organize training, festivals, and events aimed at creating interactive art objects, digital art sculptures, audiovisual performances, and other experimental art forms. They have trained over 50 artists who work on joint projects and have revitalized four post-industrial locations, attracting more than 10,000 visitors to offline events and 20,000 online. Their significant projects include the revitalization of the Coal Industry Pavilion, new media art laboratory, and revitalization of industrial zones. Currently, they are working on a project to create a safe space for artistic reflection and documentation of events related to the war.

In Villiers de l’Isle-Adam’s late nineteenth century novel, Tomorrow’s Eve, a fictionalized Thomas Edison unveils an astonishing technology: a precursor to cinema, which projects the singing and dancing image of a woman who has been dead for several years. “Her death mattered very little; I can make her come into our presence as if nothing had ever happened to her,” Edison declares. This literary moment is emblematic of how the advent of audio and visual recording media in the late nineteenth century were thought to constitute a triumph over death.

In the twenty-first century, the recorded images and sounds of the singing and performing dead are now unremarkable: my local supermarket sells Marilyn Monroe classic movies on DVD, next to the dishwasher detergent and air-freshener. During the 1990s, however, with the rise of what Lev Manovich has called a computer-driven “remix culture,” footage of dead stars and celebrities such as Fred Astaire, Lucille Ball, and John Wayne began to be repurposed via editing or compositing for advertising and guest appearances in films and TV shows. It is now also possible to bestow performance footage or digital likenesses of celebrity personas with new gestures and expressions that they themselves did not generate before the camera while alive. I call such images here, “re-animations.”

For scholars, the main import of such images has been for intellectual property law. However, more general speculation and commentary in the English-speaking entertainment and technology press, blogs, and viewer responses on Youtube, suggest ambivalence and concerns that go beyond the legal. For instance, in January 2007, American popcorn king Orville Redenbacher, who died in 1995, was re-animated to appear in a ten second television spot. A clay model was made of his head from video references, scanned and animated, composited or grafted onto footage of an actor’s body, while an impersonator provided his voice. The public face of his own brand, he was known for his popcorn advertisement in the 1970s and 80s. This new advertisement, developed by Digital Domain for the agency Crispin, Porter & Bogusky, was a homage featuring Redenbacher ostentatiously listening to an MP3 player and microwaving popcorn while live action workers in a kitchen gaped at him, apparently startled that he had returned from the grave. The result was widely assessed as “terrifying,” “gruesome” and “creepy”: the head bobbles strangely on the body, the eyes are dulled and unseeing behind his spectacles, and the mouth movements are slightly out of synch.

The Center for Advanced Visual Studies of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was founded in 1968 by Gyargy Kepes to advance interaction among artists, scientists, engineers and to restore the environmental scale of art toward social discourse with society at large_ Otto Piene was its Director from 1977 to 1994. Definition of new media — video / computers, laser, holography — expanded into global communication, sky art and electronic art as social agent. In 25 years, 250 Fellows resided at CAVS and 100 graduates received an MSVS degree. CAVS was the only A-S-T institute during its first decade. After the worldwide proliferation of A-S-T programs —where is CAVS and where is A-5-T now?

Desktop CD-ROM burners capable of making individual discs has attracted the attention of visual artists and created the opportunity for computer artists to make their work more widely available. During the development of the exhibition, ‘Burning the Interface <Artists CD-ROM>’ for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, in March 1996, some 130 artists sent-in work for consideration. The paper previews the range of strategies employed by the artists in designing the screen interface and some of the issues raised by the artworks concerning the interactive and the immersive states of engagement are considered.

Intro
During 1993, various manufacturers marketed desktop CD-ROM burners capable of making an individual compact disc – read only memory, a desktop technology initially intended for the archiving of company accounts and records. Besides attracting commerce however, the technology has also attracted the attention of artists. This medium of storage could be said to mirror the impact of the arrival of bronze casting on the development of the art object – plasticity and permanence. By directly working with clay and bronze, such as those in 5th Greece, or in a developing technology such as digital data and CD-ROM, the artist will reveal more quickly than the technical specialist the fir11 range of a new mediums potential together with the distortions that the technology can bring within the broader spectrum of communication issues. The ephemeral and fugitive nature of much computer-based work has restricted its exhibition potential to one-off installations or playout through video/film  recording, and so on. The option to acquire work and thus experience it over a period of time has been restricted. More recently, parking art on a Web site has become a most intriguing option, particularly as lack of bandwidth has tested the ingenuity and patience of artist and
audience alike and introduced fresh nuances to the term ephemeral, the subject of much intelligent research by artists alone. In this context, contemporary artists are using the computer/CD-ROM medium for the storage of work needing frequent acquisition to large files. The development of this medium has addressed several of the earlier ‘problem areas’.

Resulting from a scientific and artistic cooperation, this project questions the way to set up symbiotic relationships between interacting systems, so that they can cohabit together. It questions the way to (re)present these relationships on stage through a performance between a dancer, a HRP robot and an Evolutive Virtual Ecosystem that surrounds them.

In this paper we present Celebra, a massive, sitespecific, interactive installation comprising two hundred balloons, LEDs, custom electronics, and custom software. The artwork allows for different interaction modes: visitors can interact with the piece locally via sound and movements, and remotely via smartphone apps and a dedicated website. The piece can also become an audio-visual performance instrument, allowing its users both direct and high-level control. We will discuss the motivation behind Celebra, its implementation, and technical details.

Intro
In this paper we present Celebra, a massive, interactive, site-specific and remote installation and performance tool. Celebra comprises a suspended network of two hundred balloons. The balloons have a diameter of one-meter and are lit from the inside by LEDs. The installation presents an organic aesthetic that combines the grunginess and DIY style of the underlying electronics with an elaborate visual output and interaction scheme.

‘Today it is becoming increasingly common for the composer to turn to the sciences to supplement his or her compositional model’. On the other hand scientists also seem to show interest in the organisational principles found in music. We are particularly interested in promoting such interdisciplinary activities. Our motivation is twofold. On the one hand it is believed that scientific models carry an important component of human thought, namely formal abstraction, which can be very inspiring for music composition. On the other hand we would Iike to raise certain questions like: ‘What can be the justification for using science as a compositional tool’, or ‘Which aspects of science are applicable to music and how it can be done’. Obviously there are no simple answers for these and indeed we do not intend to provide any here. We believe though that each artist should be able to make her or his own judgements. As far as these questions are concerned, the work introduced in this paper is to be regarded only as a contribution for empirical experimentation. Our research work attempts to identify correlation among different disciplines such as biology, crystallography, and computing, in order to investigate the possibility of composing music inspired by a framework of interdisciplinary knowledge.

CISR is an independent non-profit organization which supports research and development of technologies for the fine and commercial arts, media-based entertainment and live performance. An interdisciplinary organization, CISR supports applied research in the technological and artistic aspects of image and sound, contributing to product development and to the evolution of Canadian art and culture. Some of the projects recently completed or currently under development at CISR, include: interactive interface design for the Cunningham Dance Archives, interactive system design for Restless Machines: The Art of Industrial Noise and Music, Ariel/Watcher (interactive control of sound and visual displays), Audio Computer System, and DADY (a data acquisition system which translates signals from sensing devices to MIDI).

The Centres for Doctoral Training in Media and Arts Technology Centre & AI and Music are hosted by Queen Mary University of London, UK. Students in these cen-tres research ISEA themes of Electronic Arts and sen-tience producing world class outputs, impact, and public engagement.

Most European cities, large and small, face the challenge of transforming industrial heritage sites. Industrial areas, once hotspots of infrastructure, workers, knowledge, and innovation, have often been abandoned, reduced or relocated due to urban changes, and a shift towards a global extractive economic model. As a consequence, not only historical buildings are being demolished, but neighborhoods are losing elements of their cultural identity and traditions.

The importance of preserving aspects of the local identity combined with the necessity of developing a more resilient and sustainable productive model requires innovative strategies for sustainable urban regeneration.

Within the CENTRINNO Horizon 2020 European Project, Fab Lab Barcelona explores an alternative urban regeneration of Poblenou’s neighborhood in Barcelona as a creative, locally productive, and inclusive hub. The strategies tested by the local team, connected with the Fab City approach for globally connected and locally productive cities and regions, propose a new urban, economic, social and industrial model that fosters local sustainable production and  cross-collaboration with stakeholders and existing initiatives in Poblenou. Maker skills, industrial heritage, manufacturing practices and circular principles are being combined to test a collaborative and inclusive local economy model.

With this panel we propose a discussion of the narrative strategies in Virtual Reality and 360°-videos. Through the experience of our recent projects, we have identified certain prerequisites for effective plotting and successful worldbuilding in immersive environments. Storytelling,
even for the spherical screen or the headset, is all about targeting and capturing the recipient’s attention. However, whether these immersive environments should offer the freedom to move around and discover – or even create – a narrative at one’s own pace – or whether the line of sight should be directed according to the narrative depends largely on the project and its intention.

With the selected projects and panellists, different approaches to the symbiosis of 360° immersive environments, narrative storylines with all their offered choices will be presented and discussed.

Digital interactive art often demands a certain level of physical involvement in order to fully realise the artwork. Such an approach engages the audience and successfully provokes greater sensory awareness. However, the question of whether audiences are able to obtain Meaningful Experiences through predominantly physical interaction with art installations initiated this research.

In previous studies (Her and Hamlyn 2009, 2010), the authors selected Taipei and Kaohsiung MRT systems (Mass Rapid Transit) as the major research spaces and defined the research questions:

1. What experience does the audience obtains through interaction with the art installations?
2. How do audience experiences evolve?
3. How meaningful are these experiences?

Traditional channels for introducing intelligence in computer music systems are firmly rooted in the knowledge-based approach; methods and computational strategies borrowed from the field of artificial intelligence. Expert systems for composition and pattern-directed inference systems for real-time man-machine improvisation are exemplary. In general, the aim is to introduce independent creative decision making through computer simulation of human creativity. Impressive statements have been produced along these lines, in music as well as rule-based computer graphics. Two observations have led to the consideration of a totally different method.

First, expert systems become problematic if situations occur that were not anticipated by the programmer and sooner or later, the programmer is faced with a complexity barrier. Second, appreciation of the pattern making potential of nature led to the study of concepts like self-organization.

Complex dynamical systems are an alternative to the constructivist approach in composition, i.e. the critical assembly of architectures of time according to some explicit scenario. Complex dynamical systems, on the other hand, consist of many elements interacting according to very simple laws but giving rise to surprisingly complex overall behaviour: Composition becomes experimenting with attractors — instead of creating a rule-base — as well as designing tools that allow the topology of the composer to interact with the system’s internal activity. The idea is to critically push the system out of equilibrium using tactile motor control as to explore the various degrees of freedom of a given system. The implicit behaviour is then mapped to the musical problem domain. Improvisation becomes navigation in a hypothetical world of which the composer is both inventor and explorer: Strange and intricate imagery, in both space and time, is found in physics, biochemistry, fluid dynamics, ecology and nonlinear mathematics. We have implemented and evaluated various models for spontaneous pattern formation, including one-dimensional cellular automata, direct computer simulation of chemical instabilities as witnessed in the BZ reaction and a spatial model exploring equilibrium behaviour in a society of interacting agents moving in 2D space.

The present paper outlines a connectionist-like model, a regular structure of agents engaged in local interaction, using forces of activation and inhibition between neighboring agents. Randomness/determinism and chance/necessity seem at the heart of creativity and happen to be central to the music of our time. We propose to view emergent properties from initial random configurations as a subtle alternative for both constraint-based, reductionist handling of randomness as well as rule-based composition by way of some generative grammar; complex dynamics as a creative, generative principle and a channel toward higher levels of man-machine interaction.

ISEA 2018

Most 3D printing technologies excel in delivering geometric complexity, functionality and part precision. Yet, most are not designed to adequately articulate the surface of 3D printed elements with complex patterns, motifs, or colouration. The problem of synthesis between form and surface reaches back to the first forming of clay vessels and the added surface articulation as glazing after the firing of the clay form. In the long history of Chinese ceramics, craftsmen were able to balance an intricate knowledge of material reactions, form, and glazing during the firing process with curiosity and the will to innovate.

This paper presents the results of our investigation into transferring this ancient craft – it combines scientific, historical, cultural and technical considerations to analyze and reflect on the digital making process of a glaze for 3D printed objects. Through an experimental, yet inclusive interdisciplinary research method using a combination of material experiment as well as catalogue and design application, we created an index of suitable chemical reagents and developed robotic and software tools for their application on 3D printed surfaces. The resulting digital craftsmanship is able to extend the repertoire of today’s digital working artists and designers.

In Canada, healthcare and health professions education, in particular medical education, are grounded in structures of coloniality, oppression, heteropatriarchy and a variety of “-isms” (racism, sexism, ableism, classism). Like in other parts of the world, deep-rooted and enduring health disparities exist for many different groups. Change is needed urgently.

Multi-faceted approaches are required to achieve the required changes at both the upstream level– training new generations of physicians, as well as at mid- and downstream levels– providing equitable access to care and services needed to alleviate current health burdens faced by marginalized populations. To help address this challenge, we have conceived an approach that combines community collaboration, medical education, arts, humanities, and design. CHIME Design Lab aims to be a physical and social space where a wide range of stakeholders–members of marginalized groups, professionals from a variety of domains in and outside healthcare, as well as students and trainees, and other interested members of the general public– can together creatively and safely explore healthcare problems, test potential solutions and propose equitable, just alternatives to the status quo.

I like watching TV and collect scenes of China Made in Germany. These are scenes of contemporary German film productions that are set in Germany and portraits China.

My archival work on this topic started 8 years ago. Around 350 films form the body of this artistic investigation.

How does China Made in Germany look like? What do we Germans learn about China? Is it correct? Is it phantasy?
In the artist talk I will present parts of my collection. Together with the audience I would like to discuss and investigate the truthfulness of what is constantly delivered into German living rooms.

Abase my archive I will use 4 threads:

I will bring along a bunch of scenes to investigate and discuss and sure to laugh about.

Text Examples of China Made in Germany

1 – The Wise China – Hubert und Staller – (68) Fahr zur Hölle D2016 4:11 – Gedanken werden Worte, Worte werden Taten – aber ich wars nicht – alte chinesische Weisheit

-Thoughts become words, words lead to action … an old Chinese wisdom

– Mord mit Aussicht 34 frites speciaal D2014 43:25 – Scheffer, kennen Sie nicht das Chin Sprichwort ‘setz dich an den Fluss und warte bis die Leiche deines
Gegners an dir vorbei schwimmt’ – was denn für’n Fluss?

– Scheffer, don’t you know the Chinese saying ‘sit next to a river and wait for a corpse to float along’ – What river?

2 – The Evil China – Kommissarin Lucas – Der nette Herr Wong d2014 17:27 über den Umgang mit Dissidenten in China muss ich Sie sicher nicht aufklären

-No need to explain how China treats it’s dissidents ….

– Trennung auf Italienisch d2014 53:00 – (Skype mit Hund !) was meinste wie traurig der erst schaut wenn er in einem chinesischen Kochtopf steckt (Skype with dog)

-Imagine how sad he will look when he sits inside a Chinese cooking pot

3 – The Difficult China – Nichts als Ärger mit den Männern D2009 59:22 – na? Zurück aus China? 59:47 – China war die Hölle der totale Stress

-Hey – back from China? – China was hell on earth, pure stress

– Tatort – Die chinesische Prinzessin D2013 26:16 – Versuch Chin Namen auszusprechen. 27:21 Wang Ching Chang Chong ( plus korrekte Aussprache )

-Attempt to pronounce a Chinese Name – Wang Ching Chang Chong (including correct pronounciation)
– … and many many films in which Germans try to use chop sticks

4 – The Chinese – Sophie kocht D2015 8:33) .. Die Chinesen sind immer pünktlich

-The Chinese are always punctual

Background

Germany & China are both huge power players on the international stage, closely linked by mutual economic goals. 50 years ago China was hardly known in Germany. It’s name was merely limited to products Made in China and the knowledge that Chinese people use chop sticks as cutlery.

This limited information has ceased by now. It’s the very opposite – In contemporary German TV formats China is widely introduced these days leaving German actors with the difficult task to pronounce funny what-we-think-sounds-like-Chinese words.

*Popular entertainment products are an easy tool to introduce the culture of our ‘exotic’ business partners.
*Time based media allow artistic investigation.
*Discussions with real people increase knowledge in a pleasant way.

As a media artist I use found footage since 20 years to investigate and reflect upon popular film culture.

Cornell University’s Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art and its specialized collection, The Wen Pulin Archive of Chinese Avant Garde Art, include an extensive array of new media art from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. As the Founding Curator, have been struck by how these collections and the socio-cultural conditions of their production have expanded my sense of the mission of the Goldsen Archive as well as the cultural conditions and promises of digitality itself.

Novelist, essayist, critic, publisher, filmmaker, vidéomaker, drawer, mutimedia artist, musician even, there are few fields in which Chris Marker did not excel. This lecture will be mainly devoted to the series of works which, since Zapping Zone (1990) to The Hollow Men (2005), have developed as so called multimedia works (installations and CD-Rom), inventing new spaces and new constellations in a work wich has nevertheless been till its end faithful to cinema.

Chroniques Creations is a platform and an ecosystem that brings together operators from various fields of culture (visual arts, performing arts, music, audiovisual, virtual reality, etc.) who are committed to supporting artists who use and/or question new digital technologies. This commitment and collective work allow the production of original works by artists who are accompanied in their work from the thought of the work to its inscription within the current ecosystem of digital arts.

Every two years, a call for applications from international artists and producers is launched, with four categories: International transdisciplinary creation, Creation for the public space, Emerging creation, Live audiovisual creation by women artists.

Isabel Stenger warns that we are facing the “intrusion of Gaia” where we have caused significant biogeochemical disruption “capable of threatening our modes of thinking and of living for good”. Through my practice-based research I speculate on a possible future to prompt action to trigger change in how we live, our patterns of consumption, the way we see ourselves in relation to our environment and our respect for and interactions with nature for a sustainable future. Amitav Ghosh proposes that science fiction provides an ideal opportunity to explore our relationship to the world past and present to imagine the im-pacts that living on our planet today will make on tomorrow. Through my research I develop narratives based on speculative imaginings of the future, considering current scientific research, advances in digital technology and environmental factors, to imagine future evolutionary change that will take place if we continue on our current trajectory of global warming. I specu-late on the interactions and interconnections, the transformation of complex systems and organisms leading to new patterns of cellular composites of material and virtual worlds, where biotic and un-biotic beings inhabit a posthuman fusion of humans and machines.

The panel’s goal is to explore art/science/technology relationships amidst the proliferated production of scientific and artistic data and the various forms of representation beyond traditional two-dimensional static interfaces. This panel is interested in gathering an interdisciplinary intercontinental group that includes producers of biological data, artists, and producers of the moving image, scientists and architects to provoke a dialogue about how bio visualization is becoming an intensified avenue for scientific and artistic exploration and knowledge production that had not been possible until recently. This panel will explore the relationship between data and its imaging in interactive environments, mediated by biological concepts. The panelists will address how the representation of the big data in virtual or interactive environments have moved beyond metaphor and bio mimicry and how they provide a vital contribution to all living beings that must find creative ways to coexist and survive the Anthropocene.

Data visualization has evolved from a marginalized practice to a developing science whose ramifications are increasing daily. But, have we not historically been slaves of data, to survive, to organize crops, to determine the course of societies? Why this boom occurs at the height of the computer age? While it is true that the rhythms of life have accelerated, and with it the production of data, it is also true that the radical change has been in the way the data is obtained, the way they are interpreted and the spaces where they are published. And the novelty is that now data visualization is transversal to this chain: it is mediating all the moments and is present in all the scenarios.

Bio Visualization and Cinematic Experiences panel is a comprehensive approach to data visualization. From different perspectives the authors address the complex fact of grouping data and communicating ideas and messages through digital applications, in different contexts and disciplines, mediated by biological concepts: Grisales and Correa reflect on how to generate greater learning processes in bioinformatics combining multimodal ways of cognition and multimodal technology experience; Restrepo abstracts the problem of visualization and transfers it to visual realistic representations that translate the multiple and simultaneous data produced by body movements into scenarios and avatars, rather than hierarchical schemes, since computer-based interactive spaces in real time are defined as dynamic, iterative and organic processes; Brakke criticizes architectural representation systems based on movement mapping and simulation work, through concepts of warm behavior like silk worms that enrich and change the perspective of the concept of bio-visualization; Finally, Rivera explores the possibilities that result from understanding the visualization of data from the categories of moving image and how the union of these two universes could produce richer experiences, where its own logic would generate a new relationship of the user that navigates the data with the data navigated, creating a sensitive experience.
We hope that this panel will expand the horizons of those who attend the discussion, in a subject that is crucial to understanding and putting into practice the representation of the millions of data that we are seized today.

Keywords: cinematic, experience, cinema, digital, moving image, production, interaction, spectator, actor.

If the introduction of the digital into moving image production does not alter the cinematographic device, nor change any of the essential features of the cinema, then the production of digital moving images will not affect the essence of cinema. If any of the essential features of cinema are, in fact, superseded by the digital features of the moving image, they should be named as cinematic experiences, which are defined as moving image production, digitally mediated, that looks for its essence in the consciousness of movement and visual rhythms.

The System Within The System
It is interesting to admit that emotions play an important role in rational decision making and other sensible activities, though the emotional factor is easy to be naturally ignored by scientists when they model rational and cognitive human activities. Picard uses the rationale to found the affective computing theory that aims to make computing more intelligent via embedding the factor of emotions. She also pointed out it is a huge challenge for a computer to recognize human’s emotions without verbal communication, but after an extended period of observation with aid of sensors, the computer is able to recognize 80% accuracy of human emotions. This result urges us to move further to explore the possibility of implementing the real-time system for recognizing and reacting instantly within the narrative frame and context.

Making Space, Making Place: Community-Based Media Art as a Transformative Force.

Sitting at the nexus of art, academia and community, Cinevolution’s mission is to decentralize art while connecting people across cultural, political, geographic and linguistic boundaries in order to foster media literacy, stimulate critical discourse, and cultivate creativity. Based in Richmond, British Columbia, we are committed to bringing contemporary migrant perspectives and experiences into global conversations through film and media arts. By forging new connections between artists, researchers, organizers and the community, we seek to raise awareness about pressing social issues, empower diverse individuals to participate in the public domain, and stimulate critical discourse and innovative thought.

A grassroots, women-run and migrant-led organization founded in 2007, Cinevolution’s programs have focused on challenging conventional definitions of identity, facilitating community belonging, and increasing access to media arts amongst marginalized populations from the very beginning. We have a significant history of developing, producing and presenting site-specific, public-engaged arts activities for audiences of all ages.

Durban is the busiest port in Africa. Although the harbour is somewhat removed from the consciousness of the residents, it is well-positioned to become a driving force to propel Durban into a Smart City Eco-Port with linkages to the Esplanade that curves around the bay. The ‘Green Heart’ title can be anchored by constructing a giant green heart sculpture at the entrance to the harbour (North Pier) that links into the Esplanade. The sculpture will impact the skyline and serve as a prominent symbol for Durban. Apps, QR codes and electronic signage featured in the KulturWalk and ‘Heart2Heart’ Route guide people into the harbour area. The theoretical framework builds on place-identity and placemaking that foreground the branding of Durban as Green Heart City and include the residents in taking custody and care of the harbour. Renewable elements of the Green Heart Sculpture Sky Icon include wave power technology and solar film energy. An accessible Durban Harbour will foster an invigorated identity for the Eco-Port and endear the public with a sense of place attachment. As Durban firms its position on tourist maps, people will identify Durban through branding created by the Green Heart and the spectacular harbour.

Contemporary city is ultimately grounded in and operated by software-supported devices that become skillfully blended within the environment and our everyday lives to such an extent that they are probably more accurately described as ‘second nature’. Cities now operate through the use of mobile networks; sensors that are embedded not
only in our smartphones, sustaining and encouraging self monitoring, but also present within architecture and street furniture; and, of course, online delivery platforms that
facilitate information exchange. Software and code, therefore, as a kernel of pretty much every technological device today, augment, supplement and facilitate people in
their daily tasks and routines to the point, as Thrift and French argue, we may rather speak of automatic production of space. [5] Dodge and Kitchin define this software-mediated spatiality, the one in which code contributes to complex discursive and material practices producing eventually complex spatiality as “code/space.”

Keywords: Citizen Empowerment, Prototyping tools, Open Infrastructures, Data visualization, Data Narratives, Data Activism, Hacker Spaces, Democratization of Technology, Knowledge Commons

This paper is one of the contributions to an academic panel titled: “Bio-creation of informatics: Rethinking data ecosystems in the network economy”. The panel seeks to explore different approaches for trans-disciplinary media art and design practitioners in re-imagining data ecosystems and at the same time engaging members of the general public to reflect and contribute to an inclusive discourse that may re-shape public policy surrounding data ecosystems , from the lenses of ownership, privacy, transparency, openness and choice of individuals. The panel is moderated, coauthored and edited by Catalina Alzate.

A responsible data-driven environment must consider data as a political human construct, and be spaces for empowering citizens. One important aspect of citizen empowerment involves prototyping of tools and practices that challenge hierarchies, by blurring binary constructs like author / lector, developer / user, document / data, binary application / source code. On this line of thought, a set of tools and practices will be described that look at data from a critical perspective, contrasting the neutralized “Hello world” approach to technology learning, and allowing the emergence of diverse communities of authorship. The tools blend code, document, data, query and visuals, and propose strategies to make the source code and history of all digital artifacts open to share, for improving the traceability of data and data derived arguments. I call them “pocket infrastructures” because they are self-contained, work online and offline and run on modest common technologies, from USB thumb drives to modest laptops and anything in between and beyond. These infrastructures try to put data in “everyone’s pocket”, contrasting sharply the exclusionary ‘cloud’, ‘big data’ & ‘always connected’ discourses, where infrastructure can be owned only by the ones with “deep pockets”. This tool and its related practices are in dialogue with other approaches like the feminist data visualization (D’Ignazio and Klein 2016), literate computing (Perez and Granger 2015) and reproducible research.

The paper discusses the use of obsolete or out-moded technologies in object-based sound installations. Various approaches and strategies within this context are outlined and a number of significant cross-disciplinary works are surveyed. Developed by the first author, Click, an audiovisual sound-sculpture utilising Brownie Box cameras is presented as an example for this creative appropriation.

If traces of past media remain in contemporary forms of media, how can these traces be appropriated and applied in the creation of a sound-based installation? This paper presents Click::REVU a sound installation developed by the first author. The work blends physical characteristics of an early sonification device, the Optophone – a device that translated optical data to sound – to create an illusory presence through a scanner mechanism from a multifunction printer. The work’s compositional structure reduces the scanner’s image capture ability to an indexical relationship that is expressed as a minimal soundscape of drones and clicks. As a media archaeological sound-based artwork, the ideation of Click::REVU has depicted a form of optophonics through the interpretation of early 20th century Optophones. These forms, as archival sources of knowledge for reinterpretation, have informed the development and realization of this work, one that is expressed through a genealogically related contemporary form of media, the contact image sensor scanner.

In the mid-1990s, when access to the internet was on the rise, there were many debates about online interaction carried out in Internet Relay chats or chat rooms (and Multi-User Domains). The second, and the one hand there were some who celebrating the fantasy and pretense of role-play partly because it was faceless and any identity could be chosen. Sherry Turkle’s 1995 view was celebratory, “As players participate, they become authors not only of the text but also of themselves constructing new selves through social interaction”. On the other hand, there were those who were unnerved by the very lack of an ethical dimension to faceless identity: distance could lead to deception, intimacy in private projected on public display, a dissolution between private and public boundaries of safety and surveillance.

Shifting Representations of Technology

This short paper discusses 2 plays some 20 years apart to note the shifting representations of technology, what the implications are for experiencing feelings of intimacy and how ‘sexbots’ programmed to suit all your needs impact on the young and the not so young. Patrick Marber’s 1997 play (and then film) Closer (commissioned and performed Cottlesloe, National Theatre, London) illuminates this view through an exploration of new technology. It was probably the first play by a British playwright and produced on the British stage to explore the ways in which an on stage representation of two people communicating through the interest as well as the use of mobile phones. When one character is asked whether he frequently visits the online environment, the reply is specified as ‘Net’. [9] In one of the scenes most remembered by visitors, two main protagonists interact in an online sex chat while one identifies himself as Anna (another character in the play with whom he is in love [10]), then proceeds to play a practical joke on the other be arranging to meet in real life. Nearly 20 years later, another play, Jennifer Haley’s The Nether (2015) takes on the complexities of advanced technology where the darker side of the Net is explored. [11] How much of the web do we really know about? The Nether projects some of our deepest social fears with the aim of interrogating technology, projection and simulation in which a lucrative site called ‘The Hideaway’ hosts punters, retaining their anonymity by adopting avatars, are able to have sex with virtual children. What do young people think? Young people’s relationships in the early 21st century include a host of devices, social media websites across heart emojis on Instagram or instant messaging. A report released by the Pew Research Center in Technology (October 2015) includes interviews with Americans aged between 13-17. [12] It notes that many teenagers enjoy the anonymity of text messaging as a pleasurable aspect in all stages of dating. The negative aspects of technology, such as surveillance and trolling, are played out publicly on social media for all to see. Named after the wicked troll creatures of children’s tales, an Internet troll is someone who stirs up drama and abuses their online anonymity by purposely sowing hatred, bigotry, sexism, racism and misogyny. This is the world of Closer and The Nether as the move is made from the stage (literary) to the platform (social media).

Keywords: Ecological Aesthetics, Cybernetics, Electronic Music, Installation Art, Meteorological Art, Early Computer Art, Fluxus
This paper suggests that artworks such as Yoko Ono’s Sky TV (1966), Hans Haacke’s Condensation Cube (1963-65), and David Behrman, Robert Watts and Bob Diamond’s Cloud Music (1974-79) are ancestors to a significant strand of contemporary art practice that binds weather, emergent technologies and the observer-participant. Such projects freed technical instrumentation (meteorological devices, cameras, video analysers and circuitry) from their conventional usage in communication or science. It will be argued that the highly variable patterns of weather provide a live, improvised score, yet are still subject to restraints, where hierarchies between artist or composer and audience, as well as human and machine, became unsettled.

What could be the place of artists in the Metaverse? What could be the role of artists in the development of this new digital universe? Will it be a new tool for distribution and monetization or could it also become a platform for creating and imagining new artistic expressions?
To answer these questions, the round table will invite an artist, a platform and a gallery.

From the first stages of creation to the distribution of the artwork, how can the public authorities intervene in support of creators, producers, broadcasters, in order to strengthen the digital creation. In the particular case of Immersive Creation, what are the existing systems – particularly at the CNC – what roles do they play for creators.

CNC is the National Center Animated Image, a French public administrative establishment placed under the supervision of the minister in charge of culture.

This presentation explores a transdisciplinary approach that links art, science, and real-world issues. It does so using a case study of the Ēngines of Ēternity art project, which focuses on the concept of non-human agency. Specifically, it examines the Rotifer animal in the context of space.

With:

1. Dr. Angelo Vermeulen (Technical University of Delft, SEADS (Space Ecologies Art and Design https://seads.network)
2. Dr. Amy Holt, SEADS (Space Ecologies Art and Design, https://seads.network/)
3. Prof. Dr. Diego Maranan (University of the Philippines, SEADS (Space Ecologies Art and Design, https://seads.network)
4. Giusy Checola (EDESTA-University Paris 8, SEADS (Space Ecologies Art and Design, https://seads.network)
5. Prof. Dr. Mona Nasser (University of Plymouth, SEADS (Space Ecologies Art and Design, https://seads.network)
6. Jeroen Verschuren, SEADS (Space Ecologies Art and Design, https://seads.network)
7. Pim Tournaye, SEADS (Space Ecologies Art and Design, https://seads.network)
8. Oriel Marshall, University of Antwerp, BE, University of Copenhagen, DK

Abstract

In 1968 the writer, activist and curator Lucy Lippard was in Argentina trying to organise an exhibition of dematerialised art in which all the exhibits fitted into a suitcase: the idea being that the suitcase would be taken from country to country by ‘idea artists’ using free airline tickets. In some ways Lippard’s version of portable art – that can be accessed in diverse geographical locations easily and relatively cheaply – has been superseded by the online distribution and exchange of network art through social platforms. Valuable as these exchanges undoubtedly are, perhaps something of the specificity of the local is being lost in the process. Can another version of Lippard’s concept of portable exhibitions and events be imagined and realised: one in which artworks are distributed globally and enacted locally? What does it mean if an artwork is ‘distributed’? What does it mean if it is ‘enacted’ locally? What form does the work take, and which aspects of it are portable?

This paper’s goal is to present and discuss the proposal of “co-evolutionary affective wearable computer.” This machine’s practical application is to enable man-man and man-machine sensory-motor communication processes, specially the creation of voluntary and involuntary movements. The importance of this research lies in promoting another communication channel that transposes the speech and visual levels. This process encompasses the following operations: capturing the computer user movements (or the thought of a movement); coding such movements into sensory-motor stimuli and transmitting such stimuli over to the body of said user or another interactor. To this end, this computer is formed by an intelligent surface that involves it: electrodes for capturing myoelectric signals from the user’s brain; electrodes for electrical neuromuscular stimulation of the interactor in two technological communication systems; an associative one and an evolutionary one. Such surface changes its color and shape, coevolving with the person wearing it during the interaction process between them. Designed for use in two or more individuals, the computer operates this communication process among people who are physically close or distant. In both cases, movements (or thoughts) are sent from one body to another through a network. When the technological operation system is associative, the thought or the very movement made by the computer user is transmitted so that the same interactor or another one who’s connected to the net feels it as sensory-motor stimuli and fully executes it. That is, in this instance, that computer acts as a sensory-motor communication device designed specially for affection exchange among geographically separated individuals. While in the evolutionary instance the information (movement or thought) performed by the computer user is coded, learned and evolved in the technological system. So the stimuli to be received and executed as movements differ from the initial information introduced into the system, since it shows new patterns that characterize the co-authoring process between man and machine. Thus the computer works as an artistic movement creation device; with a view to dance, performances and theater practices – in this creative and collaborative process between man’s intelligence and the machine’s.

Co-Lab is a newly established transdisciplinary innovation centre located in Auckland New Zealand. It is based on communities, convergence and collaboration enabled through new technologies to support creative expression and innovation.

The initiative is founded on a partnership that spans the binary divides of art & science, academy & community, gallery and market place. It draws from faculty at the Auckland University of Technology , bringing together researchers and practitioners from the disciplines of Art, Design, Mathematics, Computer Science, Engineering and Communication Studies and is supported by the position of MIC Toi Rerehiko as New Zealand’s leading contemporary creative media and interdisciplinary arts centre. Co-Lab has established relationships across the arts and technology sectors including other arts organisations, community groups, creative practitioners, technology developers and suppliers.

The paper will present some current projects using mobile phone, internet, gaming and screen technologies that are being developed by multidisciplinary teams at Co-Lab. These will be discussed in terms of the methodology of collaboration as a dialogue, a process of experimentation and iteration which can lead to the development of more effective and affective works of art and to more creative software applications. Issues of intellectual property and authorship, and how they are being approached within this collaborative environment will also be considered.

The advanced video installation CO2nfession/CO2mmitment is an example of the use of experimental urban media to facilitate participation, encourage reflexivity and foster engaging conversations about complex environmental issues such as the climate change debate. CO2nfession/CO2mmitment was part of a range of experiments with interactive urban installations to enhance civic communication conducted at the national research center, Digital Urban Living (DUL), at Aarhus University.

The installation was developed as part of the exhibition CO2030 in Aarhus. The exhibition was organized by the municipality as an opportunity for the citizens of Aarhus to get inspiration and good advice on how to decrease the emission of CO2 on an individual level. As part of the exhibition, CO2nfession/CO2mmitment specifically aimed at putting a personal face on the climate change debate both in the exhibition space and throughout the city. The video setup encouraged and displayed the production of user-generated content and narratives in relation to climate change and environmental sustainability.

The codes used in augmented reality (AR) systems may act as signifiers of an alternative reality in themselves, prior to any technological reading. Mixed realities in urban settings are complex media ecologies that are often traversed in a transmedial manner by players and participants. Making AR markers a significant part of the urban landscape, by aestheticising them, results in an intervention into public space that signifies the presence of an alternative world situated within the real. Recent projects such as Urban Codemakers and noemaflux explore connections between formal abstraction, street art, pervasive gaming and virtual art, creating mixed realities with hybrid aesthetics, and multiple layers of meaning.

Codes and Cultures of Creative Delineation
Since a couple of years the codes of creative cultures have been put into perspective pretending globalized societies and city policies. Questionable terms like creative and cultural industries (Landry 1995, Florida 2002, et.al.) are not able to subsume the complex states of art in which new innovative operations have been pushed by artistic modes of delineation. Within the framework of CODED CULTURES, a platform established 2004 by the group “5uper.net”, the focus lays on ability profiles, knowledge cultures and projects of artists, researchers and producers departed from the digital realm. Working on the intersection of disciplines like Art, Science, Technology and Design, requires strong networks of cooperation between individuals, communities and projects. Beside the cultural diversities, which have been accomplished via the Festival CODED CULTURES during the “Austria – Japan Year 2009”, complementary issues are already applied trough socio-technological requirements and requests. Based on the idea of intermediation between heterofactorial cultures of delineation, CODED CULTURES as an interactional network, festival platform and research unit. We are interested in giving an outlook to creative clusters, questioning how contemporary cultures are shaping the conditions of complex media realities and polylogic artistic strategies in the age of post local and transclassic patterns of society and culture. Artists, researchers and curators
in this sense play a mayor role in developing test environments for upcoming cultural emergences in a prototypical sense. One importance is a deeper reflection on creative practices to bridge the gap between expert knowledge and educational approaches within artistic production processes. The sharing of knowledge leads to a communicational challenge and art as an idiosyncratic representation or idea can transform highly accumulated topics from fields like biotechnology, space research, games studies, informatics a.s.o.

The Quantified Self is best described by Gary Wolf as “self- knowledge through numbers.” William James’ theory of the consciousness of the self and the study of coping inspires drawings that retell personal narratives.   Codex Endogenousis a project that reveals and visualizes the beauty and morphology of a “self” and its environment. Here, “codex” refers to a collection of pages stitched together, and “endogenous” is a term in cognitive neuroscience used to describe phenomena that is spontaneously generated from an individual’s internal state. Every day, quantifiable information about the self is produced and collected like pages in a book. Daily data drawing is a method of journaling with naturally emitted data from the self, creating an oracle into an individual’s brain body connection. This paper evaluates the characteristics of what daily data drawings are, methods of collecting data, and the possibilities of using data collection and visualization as a mindful- ness practice for people who are diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

The Victoria and Albert Museum is the UK’s national museum of art and design. In recent years the V&A has received two major collections of computer-generated art and design, one from the Computer Arts Society, London, and the other from Patric Prince, an American art historian and collector. Together with more recent acquisitions, the museum now holds the UK’s national collection of this type of material. Our holdings continue to grow and now include some 500 art works, consisting predominantly of two dimensional works on paper. Alongside the art collection, the V&A also holds the archives of both the major donors. Patric Prince’s archive contains her ongoing correspondence with artists, details of the many exhibitions she organized for SIGGRAPH and the Los Angeles New Art Foundation, exhibition cards and press for most major computer-related art exhibitions and conferences from the 1980s onwards, as well as a substantial library of important books and texts. The archive also includes a selection of audio-visual material and computer files containing artists’ interviews and show-reels.

The live act Coding In Atypical Places implements concepts of the organization of the sound time in music to the cinematographic image, using the same logic when programming rhythmic patterns or the transversality of layers or instruments, to order in a non-linear or compositional way the moving image. For this we developed the Live Cinema Coding Engine for Tidal & Processing, a pseudo-protocol mounted on OSC connection that includes a dictionary of words and its corresponding syntax which allows creating analogous behaviors to the music for the video.

This same cinematographic approach comes from an extensive musical concept that, beyond being limited to a genre, reviews from the algorithmic possibilities and the manipulation of the live coding various moods and styles.

This essay considers cognitive assemblages, as represented in several recent works of digital and ecological art, which themselves reflect upon contemporary environmental crises. The investigation is framed by the work of theorists N. Katherine Hayles and Timothy Morton in considering ideas of assemblages of cognition distributed between humans, non-human lifeforms, and machines, and the hyperobjects thematized by the works. The essay explores how these concepts can be read through installation artworks by artists including Phillipe Parreno, Kobie Nel, and Pierre Huyghe. How are digital artworks helping us to think through ecologies of distributed cognition during the contemporary period of planetary crisis in which they operate?

Keywords: Cognitive Science, Cybernetics, Cognisphere, Brain Plasticity, Synapse, Posthumanism, Synaptic Self, Enactivism.

Cognitive science emerged from an interdisciplinary discussion of information theory, linguistics and psychology among many other disciplines. Since its emergence, it has not only been largely discussed in other disciplines but has also shaped our views and perception of the world. In this paper, I will examine how scholars in cultural studies and philosophers incorporate scientific theories about the brain into their work, and how they bridge scientific knowledge with immediate human experience. Through Katherine Hayle’s notion of the cognisphere, this paper examines the impacts of informatization of human body and cognition within a pyramid of digital data flows between machines. This paper also takes the French philosopher, Catherine Malabou’s observation of the scientific concept of brain activities – brain plasticity and synaptic connection – as a metaphor to identify what is needed in our social engagement.

Panel Statement

CoLab is a newly established interdisciplinary creative technology centre built on a core partnership between AUT University [Auckland University of Technology (New Zealand)], a public university and MIC Toi Rerehiko, a charitable arts trust. It aims tc facilitate and promote creative practices, research and development, knowledge sharing, innovatior and collaboration.

CoLab brings together arts organizations, practitioners, educational institutions, commercial enterprises, technology developers, industry bodies and communities. It supports the development and public dissemination of hybrid ideas, research and creative practices through converging technologies, innovative formats, modes and networks. In so doing, it forms a community of enquiry and a physical meeting-ground for creative expression, new media industries and trans-disciplinary educators.

CoLab is a core partnership research initiative between AUT University’s Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies which brings together Schools of Art & Design, Computing and Mathematical Sciences, Engineering and Communication Studies, and MIC Toi Rerehiko as New Zealand’s leading contemporary creative media and interdisciplinary arts centre. CoLab is working to build a strong social network of partners and associated organisations.

Key research strands include:

1. Interactive & Performance Technologies: engaging with responsive environments, audience interaction, pervasive, sensory and ambient computing, animatronics and virtual worlds.
2. Mobile, Spatial & Locative Media: focusing on social interaction with place and technology through the use of mobile devices, site-based systems and environmentally responsive installations.
3. Digital Storytelling and Community Media Practices: enabling diverse communities to access, develop and extend cultural and social dialogues through new media.
4. Visualisation: exploring modes of conceiving, organizing and representing information, knowledge and data structures, digital ontologies, collective intelligence and topological networks.
5. Realtime 3D: deploying graphical communications technologies and software applications for business, education and research, interactive web3D, rendering and real-time algorithms, complex virtual worlds for both real-time and offline domains.
6. Critical interfaces: interrogating the theoretical, philosophical, political and cultural implications of emerging technologies and forms of practice.
7. Cord: a networked group of researchers involved with and interested in graphic programming environments. It serves as a hub for development, dissemination and debate of issues and techniques related to interactive technologies and real-time audio and video manipulation.

Current CoLab projects will be discussed in depth in light of the hybrid model that is applied – moving across not-for-profit, academic and industry sectors as well as across multiple technology platforms.

Abstract

Jo Fairfax is a successful sculptor who has an established international reputation for his public artwork and in particular his holography work. He was awarded a Nesta fellowship to advance his aspiration of creating an increasingly emotional response to his artworks through the use of VR technology. A key attraction to Fairfax was the appeal of being immersed within an artwork. Fairfax did not want to make a virtual sculpture but rather an art environment that was the work itself, he referred to it as ‘being inside a 3D moving Pollock or Rothko’ (Fairfax 2007).

fm transposes non-metaphoric systems and grammar theory (of computer languages, abstraction and data containers) to the realm of expanded cinema. The base proposal concerns the development of a scripting language, data structures, and suitable filesystem for the automated production and grammatical expression of endless cinema.

Setting off from an action research approach, this paper identifies and analyses the staging strategy employed in Copenhagen art group Superflex so-called relational art; a strategy that makes use of the Internet in order to connect people and facilitate dialogue, change, development, etc., in accordance with the general aim of relational art. Following a typology of the arenas that this staging strategy amounts to, the paper finally discusses how concepts of network in relational art become influenced by technology, and vice versa.

The Peers Are Alright!, dealt with ways of harnessing the users of various decentralized peer-to-peer (p2p) file-sharing networks to contribute and mix parts of their music collections for broadcast over radio and the Web. My presentation dealt with a synopsis (and snippets) of the radio/Web broadcast and further research on the ways decentralized p2p file-sharing networks are turning into different kinds of entities altogether.

This article addresses community collaborative artistic practices in general, and, specifically, it reviews two projects within indigenous communities in Brazil and Mexico: “Affective DNA: kamê and kanhru”, a collaborative project developed with the Kaingang indigenous culture of  southern Brazil; and “La lengua del diablo” (The Devil’s Language/Tongue), an audio project aimed at the devalued Nahuatl language of the Cuauhtotoatla community in Mexico.

In these projects, theory and practice intertwine to delineate discourses concerning these experiences which constitute collaborative artistic practices of aboriginal peoples, and involve political and cultural issues activated by contemporary artistic and technological processes.

The development of the “Open Culture” social phenomena can be exemplified by initiatives such as the Open Source Software Development Community, Creative Commons Copyright Alternative Licensing, Fare Trade Cooperative Business Models, Crisis Commons Disaster Relief Web-Platform and Transition Social Network Initiatives (Ireland and the UK), to name a few.

Most of these social movements have emerged via the implementation of peer-to-peer self-organizational models, facilitated via modern communication technologies and motivated by the lack of contextualized, effective and lasting solutions to local social inequalities and concerns. This presentation analyzes and comments on the organizational interrelationships of three Latin American cultural initiatives from the perspective of the above mentioned, emerging parallel Open Culture social movements.

Computational assistants are now regularly used in creative industries, and their use in music dates back practically to the 1950s, and theoretically to the 19th century. The author describes specific instances of interactive and algorithmic music systems from the last 50 years as examples of artistic assistants, suggesting that such systems exhibit only a limited role in the creative process. True collaboration, as evidenced in traditional human practices, requires greater autonomy, independence, and potential influence; he describes his collaboration with his most recent metacreative system, Moments.

The ubiquity of interactive technologies has given rise to new forms and opportunities for interactive digital art. Collaboration has been identified as a way for artists to engage in complex technologically based projects. This paper considers different forms of collaboration in relation to two interactive art projects. Collaborative and participatory art practices operate on multiple registers. The findings of the research discussed in this paper corroborate previous work on co-creativity and interactive art and extend to considerations of institutional collaboration, materiality, prototyping and the advantages of creative collectives.