Presentation Data Table

This paper is a sociological study of the process of mediatization of the cultural field of contemporary art. Its aim is to challenge the assumptions which saturated specialized discourses in 1990s in the context of media change. We can identify in then literature similar ways of expressing the claim that the Internet (and new technologies in general) will enable a radical social change [Holmes 2005].

In this paper I will focus on the emergence of the concept of new media in Czech discourse about contemporary art in 1990s. This period of Czech history was characterized by social and political transformation from communist to democratic regime after the revolutionary year 1989. In this historical situation the dominant narrative of information revolution [Winston 1998] was met with enthusiastic atmosphere of frequently discussed transformation. New media were considered as one of the tools that would help not only with constituting the new democratic social system, but also with democratization of contemporary art. With the emphasis on its interactive potencial, new media art was supposed to assist in „building a bridge between the contemporary art and the public“ [Hlavacek 1997].

The paper stems from sociology of technology and discourse studies. It is based on the assumption of social constructivist approach that technological change is driven by social processes rather than technological logic [Wajcman & MacKenzie 1999]. I will reflect the situation of media change as a social process, which has been already investigated in connection with electricity [Marvin 1988; Bazerman 1999],  wireless [Douglas 1987] or even aviation [Corn 1983]. I will analyse the Czech discourse about new media in specialized art journals from 1990 to 1999, focusing on narrative about information revolution in the context of social and political transformation. As I will argue, because of the assimilation of the concept of new media to the existing traditional discursive practices of contemporary art, the possibility of intended social change was in fact undermined.

 (Short paper)

Keywords: Thought form, mind-machine interface, thought-photography, thoughtography, science fiction, neuroimaging, neuroheadset, digital thinking.

Scientists and artists have attempted to capture thought in the form of images for over a century. In the early twentieth century photographic plates and nitrate film were used by scientists, artists and “spiritualists” to record thoughts or mental energy, including thoughts, feelings and dreams, through the process of making physical contact with fingers or foreheads on light sensitive plates. With the discovery of X-ray photography around the same time, the photographic image played a role in validating claims about the possibility of revealing the invisible. These claims were further extended with the invention of electroencephalography (EEG) in 1924. EEG allowed for new possibilities in the study of neuronal activities and for identifying new patterns of thinking. The formation of these image-making practices, in both art and science, laid the foundations for how we literally and figuratively re-imagine and express images of thought in the 21st century. In this short paper we provide an account of “thoughtography” and how it developed through the twentieth century as a cultural artefact. This account provides a framework to consider the recent trend to crowdfund and mass-produce non-invasive mindmachine interfaces for consumers, ready and willing to measure and directly interface cognitive and emotional relationships with and to our work environments and domestic social lives.

Immemorial deals with the functioning dynamics of our memory and its anticipatory prolongation through our imagination and the network of meaning that these functions continuously weave. Owing to the technical process of spatialization and sound trajectories and the foursided presentation of the images, the version “Rew’”projects the viewer into the heart of an environment, which is divided into 26 ambiances based on poignant experiences, in order awaken long-term memory. The discovery of our earliest emotions, our frustrations and our desire is treated as evidence through audio-video case-studies; reconstituting them like a nature study: analyzed, identified, and quantified…

This paper reports on a project that aimed to break apart the isolation of VR and share an experience between both the wearer of a headset and a room full of observers. It presented the user with an acoustically playable virtual environment in which their interactions with objects spawned audio events from the room’s 80 loudspeakers and animations on the room’s 3 display walls. This view into what the wearer of the headset was doing allowed the audience to connect their movements to the sounds and images being experienced, effectively allowing them all to participate in the installation simultaneously.

Immersive multimedia in its various forms –multiple and urban screens, large scale projections, specialised venues like 3-D cinemas, planetariums and also 3-D displays sets for home TV entertainment and gaming are on rise. Beyond audience adaptation to the novelty of the format itself, its technical advances, the new situation also demands for new type of content and tools.

During 2010 – Art Research Lab (MPLAB) and the Liepaja University has indented to run series of events, ranging from workshops to pilot projects using various formats of immersive multimedia, as tool for creativity and new type content research, specialising on live performance aspects.

Presented will be overview of several projects planned for 2010 in Liepaja University, RIXC – Riga, as well as partner institutions – the Norrkoping Visualisation Centre (Sweden), Aarhus Centre for Advanced Visualisation and Interaction – CAVI in Aarhus, Denmark, Tampere University, Finland.

Among projects would be Janis Garancs’ project series called ‘AVxD Etudes’, Project prototype RealityMixerTV and ‘VR4VR interface’ system prototypes for creative content during live events on stage, connected venues, and VR Theatres/Domes.   Description of theoretical intentions and experience with artist’s customised toolset – integration of software (realtime 3D/VR engine, VJ software) and hardware – (rack of surveillance videocameras, video mixers and several input devices) as interactive platform for immersive multimedia performances and 3D-Vj’ing.

The human body is a complex system of anatomical structures critical to normal function of existence. Doctors in training are educated in both normal and disordered anatomy and physiology. Given that the human framework, intrinsic and extrinsic musculature, and nervous innervation are not easily visualized, helping students attain that knowledge can be challenging. For the majority of students, viewing photographs and illustrations represents the norm, and may be augmented by videos. Further, simply viewing this form of material does not offer significant opportunity for students to “interact” with it, nor to adequately conceptualize it in three dimensions. The collaborative efforts of medical expert Jerry Moon, computer science specialist Joseph Kearney and 3D animator Peter Chanthanakone teamed up to develop an immersive reality tool for learning anatomy and physiology. Using Oculus Rift (Oculus VR, LLC), the proof of concept was created. Further development includes 1) improving user navigation through the vocal tract by implementing tissue boundaries, joystick control, 2) improving graphics to more realistically represent tissue walls, oral cavity anatomy, etc., 3) developing realistic animations representing vocal fold opening, closing, and vibratory patterns, and 4) exploring the use of the smartphone as an alternate app platform. This presentation will show the ways collaboration of science, technology and art are creating new, rich and undefined virtual future.

The sounds of the world’s musics are easily available on sampled disks, sound cards, and synthesizers, all as easy to emulate as an oboe, tympani, or car crash. What kind of music will be constructed out of material that sees the world’s cultures as sources for sound to be lifted from its context and combined at will? The presentation will take the form of a step-by-step examination of one example of this cultural imperialism: the Korg Ethnic Sound Card. An attempt will be made to determine if there are good ways to appropriate the musics of the world through sampling and synthesis. The implications of this appropriation of sound for multicultural understanding will be considered.

Artists and composers are sharing their work using the World Wide Web, which provides a means of sharing and interconnecting multimedia information on the Internet. In this presentation, I take a look at how art can be exhibited on WWVV, including still images, video animation, sound and text. I use an on-line gallery of my own computational artwork to illustrate how a variety of media can be published. Implicate Beauty includes several “rooms” displaying images as well as an on-line library, listening room and theater.

“Improvising Consciousness” is a lecture and presentation by Jennifer Årnstay, Professor of Material and Analogical Eco-Cognition. Visiting from an unspecified time and place, or, Aerea, Professor Årnstay explores the history of human and animal consciousness, introducing diverse and radical theories of mind through the ages. Elegantly consolidating the past, present and future of humanity, “Improvising Consciousness” provides unparalleled insight to our current Aearea and to those of future generations, who will very likely have radically different minds than our own…

On a planetary scale, the quality of communication, work, cross-cultural empathy, scientific and business development, health care, and leisure-time experience in the information society has been limited by the specific way in which English has been adapted as the global language. It is important to have at least one global language (Spanish and Mandarin Chinese are also candidates for this status), but it is also urgent that other languages be recognized and respected, and that the entire multi-lingual situation of the network society and the era of globalization be pragmatically treated with more awareness. The trend has been towards the unconscious creation of hybrids of English and a national language. We instead need to work towards restoring the separate autonomous integrity of both English and the national language. I will consider three areas, and present two empirical examples in each area.

I will make concrete suggestions for improvements to the language situation in the context of case studies. First, in software development in the IT industry, in non-English speaking countries, the quality of communication among programmers and other IT experts has been affected by the reality of hybrid language situations. I will mention the examples of the software industry in Germany and Italy. Second, in museums, the same question of English-and-national-language duality with respect to the presentation of museum objects and artefacts (both to physically present and online-remote-virtual visitors) requires serious attention. I will discuss the examples of some prominent museums in Germany and Italy. Third, I will consider how communication in online social media like Facebook, Twitter, virtual world simulations, and chat rooms is affected by the global use of loosely structured English and netspeak. I will propose measures to upgrade social experience and interaction through the educational amelioration of the English in circulation, an expanded role for national and local languages, and an appreciation of the value of colloquialisms, slang, acronyms, emoticons, and other “digital culture” socio-linguistic practices.

This paper presents the artwork In Pieces VR and its main design challenges and goals. It is a VR-based experimental documentary on political prison that uses micronarrative and abstraction as the main strategies in order to create a documentary and artistic experience that departs from conventional immersive journalism. The overall experience is one where much of the making sense of the piece is left open, so that the viewer has to fill in the gaps and piece together the story adding from her own experience. After introducing the work, these micronarrative and abstraction strategies are discussed, and connected to the ideas of intimacy, empathy and contact.

Panel: Signs of Life: Human-Robot Intersubjectivities

Ap­prox­i­ma­tion, fail­ure, frag­men­ta­tion, gaps, dys-func­tion­ing, whether they are wished for or not, are very human con­di­tions as well as part of  the knowl­edge process. We will dis­cuss how the re­sult­ing be­hav­iours in some ro­botic en­ti­ties re­veal emo­tion as a shared con­struc­tion. No­tions such as  “per­fect ma­chine”,  “au­ton­omy” and  “per­for­ma­tiv­ity” will be con­sid­ered through a se­ries of works by artists. These ro­botic works would often be bet­ter qual­i­fied as “pro­to­types”, which is by de­f­i­n­i­tion a sin­gle pro­duc­tion, with a po­ten­tial­ity of, let us say, a  “pos­i­tive dys-func­tion­ing”.

Abstract (Poster)

DomoNovus is a concept devised by the author, which attempts to explore the speculative futures of the domestic environment, and to conceptualize and define possibilities and limitations of the “New Home” that consists not only of routines, experiences, physical objects, and biological bodies, but also of a range of technological systems, digital networks, virtual environments, and local or remote cyberspaces in micro, meso, and mega scales; an accumulation of cells, things, memories, links, molecules. Thus, in this work a range of theoretical and practical explorations are presented that intend to investigate the domestic space as an ecological system that uses technological facilitation to extend methods and practices that tame and domesticate ubiquitous computing, while same time proposes ways in rethinking dwelling and achieving conditions for symbiotic mutualism.

Institutional Presentation Statement

“The Third Reality” is a Russian centre for computer-oriented art recently founded in St. Petersburg. The Centre was created with the administrative and financial support of CREAT Inc., a major Russian Company specializing in the field of high technologies.

Computer-based technologies took some time to reach Russia, the space and military industries being the first to adopt them. Within the last 3-4 years, however, computers started to penetrate into the mass media. Computer-designed opening titles and special effects appeared on the Russian TV screens. A number of private companies and corporations is currently specializing on computer animation for TV and computer-generated promotion spots for large corporations. CREAT Inc. has been and still remains one of the leaders in the area of multimedia and computer animation. Unfortunately, the application of computer technologies is today generally limited to commercial and advertising activities. These new technologies are not easily accessible to the artists – cinema workers, painters, musicians. While the theorists strive to comprehend the consequences of electronic technologies penetrating into the Western culture, the Russian artists suffer from the unavailability of this sophisticated equipment and sometimes, from the lack of information on the advanced technologies in question.

The purpose of the First International Forum of Computer-oriented Art “In Search of the Third Reality” held in St.Petersburg in September 1993 was precisely to bridge this gap. The Center for Computer Oriented Art born as a result of the Forum has the same main purpose: to publicize and promote new technologies into the sphere of Art and Culture. The objectives of the Center are to accumulate information related to computer-based art and audiovisual culture, to foster the R&D and artistic studies on computer-based arts and to study the peculiarities of the assimilation process of the new technologies into the Russian culture. When commercial firms operating in the sphere of electronic technologies, such as CREAT Inc. realize that it is not enough to possess these technologies, it is necessary to learn to CREATE with their help, we may hope for new outstanding results from this union.

Is ‘digital aesthetics’ a valid notion in the late 1990s? Using examples of Australian artists’ work in digital media, this illustrated paper contemplates the existence and nature of a media specific aesthetic. It considers where such an aesthetic might derive from —is it intrinsic to the hardware and software, or adopted from the language of existing art criticism, especially photography or cinema, or adopted from the media of popular culture? The search for a ‘digital aesthetics’ begins with a consideration of the appropriateness of art historical precedents such as Henri Focillon’s shifting, moving and ‘becoming’ of forms that can define and generate aesthetic space. The philosophical debate of Focillon, Georg Hegel and Theodore Adorno are considered alongside contemporary dialogues from advertising, news media and entertainment. The potential of locating and employing numerous digital aesthetics are considered in relation to certain media qualities (immediacy, artifice and unreality) through the focus of Gilles Deleuze’s reading of Henri Bergson’s conception of `virtuality’. The fluid, changeable and depth less nature of digital space allows the creation of new visual and tactile relations and invites imagining of conventions appropriate to an unnatural, alternative ‘real’.

Panel: Beyond Locative: Media Arts after the Spatial Turn

As our cities are be­com­ing dig­i­tal and phys­i­cal hy­brids, ob­servers have sketched techno-dystopian sce­nar­ios in which urban tech­nolo­gies would in­duce ‘fric­tion­less’ con­sump­tion, quasi-mil­i­tary con­trol, and so­cial cap­su­lar­iza­tion of city life. Si­mul­ta­ne­ously, artis­tic in­ter­ven­tions seek to re­claim the urban en­vi­ron­ment through vi­su­al­iza­tions, nar­ra­tives and by spurring chance en­coun­ters, me­di­ated through these same tech­nolo­gies. Still one can­not es­cape the sense that these dif­fer­ent views and prac­tices share an ide­al­ized mythol­ogy of urban life. How can thinkers and mak­ers come up with af­fir­ma­tive per­spec­tives on the po­ten­tial of lo­ca­tion-based urban tech­nolo­gies, in­stead of de­part­ing from an op­po­si­tional re­flex that longs back to an urban par­adise lost?

In silico et in situ proposes to takes the art out of the gallery and into the environment by creating site-specific installations through the use of 3D scanning and printing technology. After manipulating the source material virtually (in silico) with 3D software, the sculptures are physically manifested through the use 3D printing in a variety of materials and then placed back into either nature or the urban environment (in situ), where the source material was harvested (3D scanned) or inspired from. As the pieces become publicly accessible they allow for a playful discovery of the work. The landscape is intricately linked with the artwork, converging in the creation of contemporary voxel sculptures. In silico et in situ: fauna habitats: Pollinator waterers, Spider Rings and Turtle platforms are developed via 3D printing to co-exist as sculptures and fauna habitats.

What are the stories we tell today about the origin(s) and structure(s) of the cosmos? Is there a connection between cosmological models and the socio-political landscape in which they emerge and continue to be told? Do these stories affect our relationship to this planet and one another and if so, how? Must we be locked into a system of a singular master narrative in describing the cosmos, or can we imagine the possibility of the coexistence of narratives that are seemingly incongruous but allow us to embrace the complexity of information available?

Abstract (keynote)

We have, it seems, written on our body in mysterious characters something decisive concerning our person that we do not know ourselves. It is not our future in the lines of our hand but all our biases, hidden thoughts in the structure of activity of our brain. Could the machine of neuroscience have written itself those complicate signs in our brain, as the machine of Kafka short story writes the sentence on the body the convict? Do we live in a penal (neuro-)colony?

Composed simultaneously in ambisonic (live) and multichannel (fixed) versions, Lidia Zielinska‘s composition In the Rear (2010) is an acousmatic piece. The integrated system of different spatialisation methods was made by Rafal Zapala.

In the piece, piano keyboard becomes the interface between the inside of the instrument and accumulated experience of the listener’s life. The acoustic world inside the piano looks different to what we experience at a concert: it resembles the experience of a child sitting under the piano. The acoustic world outside the instrument is not only its real sound at concert, i.e. in specific acoustic spaces of different resonance, but also – or perhaps, above all – its sound in our long-term memory, in the tradition of piano literature, in various cultural codes and emotional reactions remembered.

The composition deals with sounds generated inside the instrument, at the back of the keyboard, so to speak: sounds of the instrument’s mechanics inaudible outside, as well as specific resonance inside the sound box. Symbolically, it also refers to what the instrument has experienced under numerous pianists’ fingers. The inside of the piano gets resized to the volume of a large concert hall, with all acoustic properties of the piano’s interior being preserved and intensified. Listeners experience resized sounds, as if they found themselves inside the instrument. Due to the scale shift, the aesthetic experience is accompanied by a more distinct physiological experience (increased changes of acoustic pressure). One also hears idioms of great historical piano literature reverberate; this, in turn, is the support structure on which musical memory of each individual listener rests. I also took the liberty of carrying out an experiment concerning our mental base. The piece originated in 2010, i.e. in F. Chopin’s Year, and had its ambisonic première performance at the “Warsaw Autumn” International Festival of Contemporary Music. Listeners expected references to Chopin, and – even though there were none – heard citations from Chopin’s works, instead of Brahms’, Rachmaninoff’s and Gershwin’s musical gestures quoted.

From the point of view of a composer witnessing performance of her composition, particularly important were observations of how different kinds of spatialisation influence perception of time and the piece’s dramatic quality. In particular, it is the middle episode of the piece, in which spatial dimension plays a very important role, whose stereo reduced version should require significantly shorter time proportions than the original ambisonic version.

In order to carry out the concept of sound space in full, a system of virtual devices had to be created. Their varied functions are generally subordinate to the ability to combine a number of spatialisation methods within one composition. Ambisonics proved to be the key feature: both in terms of coding the piano’s inner space to B-Format, and in terms of opportunity for the composer to compose-design “artificial” trajectories of sound object movements in three dimensions. Space is complete with “traditional” multi-channel projection of sounds ascribed to a particular place around the audience, with a possibility to adjust projection to any configuration of loudspeakers.

Rafal Zapala’s system incorporates modules and technologies elaborated by a number of research centres: Holo-Edit software module (GMEM Marseille), set of ambisonic objects for Max/MSP environment (ICST Zurich University of Arts), Jamoma Modules for Max/MSP.

Our paper shall present the method of integrating modules into one system, as well as conclusions drawn from our experiences during live sound projections at different halls and with different speaker configurations. Artistic reasons behind distributing particular sound layers by means of different spatialisation methods shall also be discussed.

Panel: From New Media to Old Utopias: ‘Red’ Art in Late Capitalism?

Whilst com­mu­nist utopi­anism per­me­ates the process of mak­ing and dis­sem­i­na­tion for many New Media Art works, it is the so­cial aims and prin­ci­ples of pub­lic ac­cess and the care of col­lec­tion for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions that, within a mu­seum con­text, drive the need for ex­panded re­search into the col­lec­tion and con­ser­va­tion of dig­i­tal art. This paper uses the V&A’s re­cently ac­quired born dig­i­tal works Shap­ing Form 14/5/2007 by Ernest Ed­monds, Study for a Mir­ror, 2009-2010 by rAn­dom In­ter­na­tional and Process 18, 2010 by Casey Reas, as case stud­ies to ex­plore ac­qui­si­tion, doc­u­men­ta­tion and preser­va­tion con­sid­er­a­tions and the chal­lenges of work­ing in new ways.  The V&A’s emerg­ing dig­i­tal art col­lec­tion builds on the mu­seum’s ex­ist­ing com­pre­hen­sive hold­ings of his­tor­i­cal com­pu­ta­tional work, pro­vid­ing a route for un­der­stand­ing the con­tem­po­rary sig­nif­i­cance of early com­puter artists’ work.

The V&A has been col­lect­ing com­puter-gen­er­ated art and de­sign since the 1960s, but it was not until more re­cent years with the ac­qui­si­tion of two major col­lec­tions and the Com­puter Art and Tech­no­cul­tures Pro­ject (funded by the AHRC held jointly by Birk­beck Col­lege and the V&A) that the mu­seum has so­lid­i­fied its sta­tus as the UK’s na­tional col­lec­tion of com­puter art.  The col­lec­tion pre­dom­i­nately con­sists of two-di­men­sional works on paper, such as plot­ter draw­ings, screen­prints, inkjet prints, laser prints and pho­tographs.  The ma­te­r­ial na­ture of these works sits within the tra­di­tional frame­work of con­ser­va­tional prac­tices and the art works are ac­ces­si­ble to the pub­lic through the Prints and Draw­ings Study Room. How­ever, the care and col­lec­tion of born dig­i­tal works poses a new set of ques­tions in­clud­ing:  What in­forms the col­lec­tion pol­icy; how are ac­cess rights me­di­ated; what are the sign­f­i­cant prop­er­ties of the soft­ware and hard­ware to be pre­served; what are the chal­lenges of em­u­la­tion, mi­gra­tion and repli­ca­tion; what meta­data and li­cen­cing struc­tures are needed; and if a more net­worked way of work­ing is re­quired what col­lab­o­ra­tions can be ideni­fied?

Guiding students in both thoughtful and proficient engagement with digital media as a mode of practice is hardly a new concept for art and design pedagogy. What is new, however, is a transformational role of digital media that positions it as an avenue for teaching art and design principles, and not solely as media through which art and design work can be executed. While relevant across an undergraduate art and design curriculum, the importance of this role is increasingly being recognized in relation to art and design foundational studies. The resultant efforts, such as Digital Foundations, a textbook by xtine burrough and Michael Mandiberg that “uses formal exercises of the Bauhaus to teach the Adobe Creative Suite” (http://digital-foundations.net/), represent a step in the right direction, but are not fully aware of both the current educational environment (valuable time spent on purely software-based instruction in the classroom is time that could arguably be better spent on exploring the broader conceptual issues of making digital work) and the potential of emerging technologies. Rather, this transformational role of digital media calls for a more comprehensive integration of code-based technologies, such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Processing/Java, openFrameworks/C++, and Objective-C, into art and design pedagogy. This connection seems natural, as many of the commonly identified principles of design, including emphasis/hierarchy, economy, and rhythm/repetition, could also be characterized as principles of code. Besides reaping the cognitive benefits associated with learning a language, a focus on promoting engagement with the tools used to create software (rather than simply on the use of software applications themselves) serves to empower students as they develop critical awareness of both the discipline and their individual practices.

(Short paper)

Keywords: smart materials, shape memory polymer, interactive artwork, interdisciplinary collaboration.

This paper seeks to explore the question of how to incorporate smart materials into a design to aesthetically demonstrate science and engineering concepts in an interactive way. This work introduces the development of interactive artworks using a shape memory polymer (SMP) material that changes shape based on an external thermal stimulus. In this paper we explore how interdisciplinary work between engineering and science is needed to create an artwork that mimics natural phenomena around us. This paper discusses fabrication and electronic implementation challenges associated with utilizing the shape memory properties of the material. Specifically, the paper explores some ways to obtain different geometric shapes of the SMP and to utilize different sources of thermal stimulus to create a shape memory effect (SME) in artworks.

Panel: Imaging Capabilities of the Future

This presentation will consider the current shift towards higher bandwidth/higher resolution imagery in the context of a range of sites and applications, from telehealth to urban screens and large-scale media facades. Drawing partly on audience research undertaken in the context of a project linking large urban screens in Seoul and Melbourne in live interactive media events, I will argue that the relevance and perceived value of high resolution imagery for artists and audiences is heavily context dependent. From this perspective, I will pose the following questions: Is higher resolution conducive to interaction and engagement? Does higher specification capture and display automatically mean scale and spectacle, or are there avenues for intimate relationships with high-resolution handheld image platforms? And how might high-resolution imagery change our relation to urban space? What are the implications of high resolution imaging when it shifts from being a tool for design to an integral and co-constitutive part of the urban fabric?

This paper focuses on the importance of using color to manufacture consumer desire and political ideology. Tracing color history from Cold War Berlin to contemporary color forecasts, the paper pays particular attention to recent trends in color use, where extremely specific colors can be indexed, collected and referenced in a streamlined approach that is more flexible and sustainable.

The questions on sentience we wish to explore in this paper have reference to the issues raised in the resume for the conference. We may restate these questions here in order to drive the discussion on how Fernando Palma Rodriguez, an indigenously inspired artist fom the eco-reserve of Milpa Alta, close to the historic southern districts of Mexico City, simulates sentient machines with actuator technologies. Rarely has aristic introversion been utilized in the production of such electronic art – which could be described more precisely as arduino based intelligent puppets that are fully indigenous in their congifuration.

From the robot to avatars, from the machine to information, from the movement to the interaction, the relation between man and technique evolves following the rhythm of innovations, between dependence and diversion, fascination and dismissal. To emergent needs corresponds the unceasing production of services and products that characterize the new economy of information. The man, as much as an inventor as a consumer of that new technologies is invited to reconsider the world that he lives, assimilated to a variable sum of information being able to constantly be rearranged, recombined, and maybe duplicated to create parallel simulated environments. The architecture is not without proposal to welcome the proliferation of new interfaces and to answer to the questions concerning the adequacy of the conventional conception of space to the new practices of this one. Since 30 years, architects multiply projects, employing as much the capacities of new technologies as the metaphors associated to information to establish the bases of a conception of space that would adhere to the paradigms of our present society, organised around the informational networks.

Are cultural industries an area for innovation and creation in the field of digital content ? If video games and the Internet currently represent the largest sectors for investment in interactive multimedia, they also make up a real ‘laboratory’ for experimenting with new forms of interactive languages. The role of cultural industries cannot be disassociated from that of the participants of contemporary creation, as the two fields are being brought closer and closer together.

Moderator:

• Claude Schiffmann

Panelist:

• Odile Fillion
• Gilles Braun
• Jean-Marie Duhard
• Marc Alvarado
• Atau Tanaka

A robotic live performance where the audience wears the machines

(Long paper)

Keywords: Tactical Media, Infiltration, Friction, Transparency, Détournement, Public Space, Appropriation, Medium Reflective Artwork, Electronic crowd.

This article analyzes different tactics used by contemporary artists usually interested in exploring our relationship with media and technology. It starts by acknowledging a desire for interactivity and transparency in contemporary society, art reception and in product and interface design. But it also recognizes a very particular techno-social context in contemporary occidental societies – the existence of an electronic crowd in which everyone appears permanently interconnected, receiving, producing and sending information. This context is considered here as a potential ground for artistic intervention and different medium reflective artworks/interventions are analyzed as examples of such aesthetic potential.

This is an updated and reworked version of a series of essays begun in the mid-1980s. Info/Eco attempts to provoke consideration of the new ‘information economy’ within an integrated, whole-systems understanding of ‘ecological economics’ and the role of the arts therein.

“Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts upon the unthinking.”
-J.M. Keynes

Art & Economics: Towards a Cultural Ecology
In this age, increasingly shaped by communications and technology, humanity is becoming acutely sensitive to its frail security. The rationalism of science continues to accelerate the conflict between global mind and local body. Energy and information are now our major exchangeable natural resources. They constitute the primary components of the value system in a newly emerging economic structure. Within the broad framework of information theory, the arts are recognized for their communicative efficiency and transcendence. The processes of creativity, though elusive, have lead mankind through historical mazes of uncertainty. In an information-based society, cultural development may assume an economic value comparable to that of military development in an industrialized society. Having learned to recognize the complex ecological interdependence of living systems and the environment, artists ought now to produce models of a sustaining cultural ecology.

Intro
State of the Arts
The arts, reflecting the state of the larger political, economic, and social environment, are in serious trouble. Too many artists are playing it safe, today. The role of the arts in this society, is now largely shaped by confused intellectualism; selfish, vested-interest capitalism; and absent-minded, fashionably crafted artificiality. There must be more. There is, of course. There are many artists and cultural institutions working with deep, sincere integrity and dedication. Their creative life, admittedly, is proceeding at odds with a more dominant social momentum. Their perseverance and efforts are to be encouraged.

The concept of the work and performance is to transpose the sensation of global infonoise into an audio/visual experience which is directed personally to each individual spectator. Infonoise is constructed dually: as an interactive gallery installation, and Online performance event. Based upon specially designed artificial intelligence software, the installation is conceived as an autonomous Organism that responds to an audience in the way that unfamiliar entities may respond to one another using non_verbal communication. An online performance event coincides with the installation opening, and provides a virtual theatre in which actors from around the world create a real time performance. The performance and the installation are linked by basic common threads – a central moebius strip, the ouroborous and international newspaper headlines, creating a theatre of infonoise.

When analysing the need for free information, it is usually addressed from an ideological stance rather than the perspective of efficacy.

When quoting Stewart Brand’s now legendary claim that ‘information wants to be free’, we often overlook the wider context in which it was originally made: ‘On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.’

Consequently, this need to be free does not respond to ideological concerns, but to a need to be effective. Shared information in circulation produces a performance or output that is the real value of information. Information that is not in circulation has no value and our duty is to identify the dynamics that best increases the value of information. The modes and structures of cybernetic thinking are based on the principle that shared knowledge allows us to move forward as thinking societies at an exponential rate. We generate knowledge, but it is in sharing it that we actually produce social capital and wealth.

The author will review the emerging paradigm shift currently taking place in the use of digital technology for the creation of art. As the technology of computing becomes further accessible and easier to use, we are seeing more artists engaging these systems to create art that moves beyond technical mastery to speak of critical, aesthetic and conceptual concerns.

The author will focus on the so-called ‘informed users’ who create meaningful works of art, which through their basis in the presentation of issues ranging from- the personal to the political, provide models for the effective utilisation of technology to represent ideas and concepts relevant to our ever-changing, multicultural ‘global village’.Much of what has been considered ‘computer art’ in the past twenty years demonstrated high levels of technical proficiency,’but often lacked much, if any, artistic merit. The author will focus on artists who move beyond previous notions of ‘computer art’, utilising digital systems to create works ranging from two-dimensional printworks, artist books (analog and digital) image projections, and public billboards in which the primary objective is to communicate ideas and concepts, presenting challenging, content-based artistic statements.

The objective is to create a context for critically understanding the approach of artists who are creating meaningful works through the utilisation of new tools. These artists are not hiding behind pseudo theories of engaging science. Rather, they are more concerned with critical examinations and representations of power and ideology in our mediated personal and cultural environments. The author will cull selected examples of contemporary artists using digital systems in the above described manner from an international call for entries, and from selected invited artists.

This presentation addresses media art practices within a geographic context of “exposure.” “Exposure” is a state-commercial context of illumination, one indicating not only the material illumination – the state-commercial lighting of the city – enabled by public screens, but also the everyday to spectacular politics and poetics that accompany them. In his discussion of recent developments in late capitalism, Jonathan Crary describes a “a contemporary imaginary in which a state of permanent illumination is inseparable from the nonstop operation of global exchange and circulation.” For cities such as Shanghai and Hong Kong, these paradoxes of global capital further impinge on the (trans/national) state. As Anna Greenspan reminds us, the “spectacle” of “future Shanghai” is not only materialized in its most prominently visible illumination – as with Hong Kong, Shanghai’s large-scale to street-level light billboards and LED screens and lights dominate central and transit urban spaces – but is also felt in the continued struggle between light and shadow that form the politics and poetics of everyday experience in urban China. In this state we might enquire into the disenchantment of the city, in the further phrasing of Crary, “in its eradication of shadows and obscurity and of alternate temporalities.” This presentation thus addresses media artists working in Shanghai and Hong Kong as they recognize the need for shadow in the illuminated city, and from here for if not alternative, at least adjacent durations, mobilities, spaces, and experiences for its inhabitants.

Keywords: Architecture; Mixed Reality; Innovation; Virtual Worlds; Media; Visualisation

Immersive visualizations can reveal the dynamic form of communication and transportation infrastructures as they facilitate the simultaneous occupation of digital and physical worlds across three networked spaces : online, 3-D immersive worlds, and physical geographical space. This paper presents a project of immersive visualisation, based on some of the findings of an ongoing study: mapping the form & structure, scale & extents of the metaverse based on usage data flowing through this complex network. A diverse community of users, whose presence can be consistently accounted for in geospatial worlds, social networks and virtual worlds, will anonymously contribute, feeding a database of “gesture data”. By focusing on their divergent/convergent qualities as revealed by the data, a visualization of their sustaining infrastructure will emerge.

The paper presents and discusses the work “Inhaling Consciousness” investigating the bioart potential to activate an ecological consciousness in the audience exploring the neologism molmedia introduced by the author. The work was recently installed in Porto, Portugal, as part of the Consciousness Reframed 2019 juried exhibition “Sentient States: bio-Mind and Techno-Nature”. Considering Portugal is a major cork-grower, the work explored possible integrations and information exchange between above-ground cork oaks microbiome and the human digestive system one.

Exploring sentience from a cross‐scale perspective, the artwork encapsulates influences from Brazilian Neo‐Concrete Movement (1960‐1970) such as the concept of a transobject – the intention of incorporating an ordinary object into an idea, making it part of the genesis of the work without losing its previous structure. The apparatus is adapted from a medical inhalation breathing system – a reservoir bag having a cork oak bark excerpt inside, from which a tube is attached to a nebulizer and another tube to a breathing mask, having a particles sensor system (Arduino, sharp dust sensor, LCD 16×2) attached to the bag near the mask’s tube. The work invites to reflect on the impact this dialogue that happens at molecular level can have in shaping behavioral patterns in humans.

For ISEA2020 in Montreal, a variation of the artwork is considered, addressing local ecological issues from a panpsychic perspective, replacing the cork oak by the Coffee-tree (Gymnocladus dioicus) – a relic of processes and environments driven by extinct large mammals and a threatened species in Canada. Facing the restriction imposed by COVID19 pandemic, leading to an online version of ISEA2020, an alternative version was developed, exploring the above ground trees microbiome from the city the artist is based at moment in Brazil.

The academies of art have failed to respond to the challenge of new technologies. They teach students how to push a mouse about and use ‘shrink wrapped’ apps, which emulate traditional media, whilst simultaneously undermining attempts to develop a curriculum that can address ‘significant’ issues and knowledge development. They are constrained by fear of the unknown and restrained by the new ‘rational’ economics of higher education which prioritise funding for developments that earn immediate benefits (like enrolment income) rather than for ‘prestigious’ developments like a reputable (albeit potentially subversive) arts program. The digital domain offers an emergent metamedium which has not yet consolidated and cannot therefore be named. Attempts to deal with long-term ‘pre-strategic’ research are often put aside in favour of programs that apply existing linguistic modalities and exploit historical media metaphors. Academic teaching is obsessed with late modernist rhetoric and the application of language where ‘scholarship’ replaces metalinguistic activities like creativity. The emergent culture questions and undermines the academy and it’s role in the initiation of new creative talent. Historical models like the development of photography, motion pictures or post impressionism suggest that the new media are likely to mature outside of and despite of the academy.

Abstract

Much art seeks to describe or stimulate the feelings and emotions of the viewer, through both abstract and literal representation. With the exponential increase in computing power over recent years we also seek new ways of interacting with technology and exploring the virtual world. Physiological signals from the human body provide us with a view into the autonomic nervous system, that part of the nervous system largely unmediated by the direct intentions of the viewer. With the appropriate choice of signals and processing, we can even develop systems with the ability to interact with us on an emotional level – machines that know how we feel and can react accordingly. This gives us the ability to see into and map the interior worlds of artists and viewers through a direct and visceral connection – the human body itself.
A key issue in the development of physiologically based artwork is to make the observer-artwork dialogue meaningful to the observer, a question of translating the input biosignals to visual, auditory or experiential events. We have yet to develop a suitable language for this dialogue and so this paper seeks to explore some potential mappings for bio-signal art, illustrated using several case studies from past and current works.
We also examine some of the other philosophical and artistic issues involved in ‘affective’ and bio-art such as monitoring emotion versus engendering emotion, the involvement of the observer in creating and contributing to bio-signal art and strategies for effectively developing such works.

Innovate Durban

Living among snakes is put at the level of dream and imagination. Snakes are part of a huge arsenal of terrifying story that have always incited human imagination. “Have you ever been a snake?”. This invitation may be fulfilled if you take part in the interactive robotic event INSN(H)AK(R)ES.

Thinking about enhancing the sensorial-perceptive field with technologies and using robotics, sensors and communication networks, this event proposes to share the body of a robot that lives in a serpentarium, that is, with living snakes.

In ‘OUR HEART’, interactive installation (work in progress), the author offers echographies and other graphic landscapes of the heart as a room where the pumping of a heart at full function changes the virtual environment. The participant walks into the room with an electronic interface on the body. The acquisition and communication of data are made by the heart sound waves translated into electrical signals, These signals are received by the computer where they are digitized and processed. When interacting the biological senses are turned into computer paradigms and we experience the body/machine intimate digital dialogue.

n.a.

Public space does not end at the borders of visible, perceptible reality but extends into the invisible. The increased population of communication devices in public life results in a dense layering of electromagnetic content passing through both air and bodies, on route to its target. As such we are not just senders and recipients but carriers of signal.

We unwittingly move through numerous digital and analog networks, leaving traces of our electronic passing with the devices and gadgets we carry. More so, we inadvertently leak information about ourselves that can be analysed to a disturbing level of accuracy with publicly available forensic tools.

In Form of a workshop and presentation, the technologies and techniques of how to read the plethora of signal in the air, manipulate it and pass it on will be covered.

Network Insecurity                                                                                                                          Experienced wireless hackers Julian Oliver and Bengt Sjolen will present the WiFi spectrum (2.4-2.5Ghz) as a rich material for activist intervention, study and play. In tandem with Gordo Savicic and Danja Vasiliev, from a temporary outpost in Sao Paulo, they will lift network packet analysis and manipulation into a trans-continental domain.

Invisible Territories                                                                                                                            Brendan Howell and Martin Howse will take investigation and intervention into other bands of the spectrum, introducing custom hardware and rigorous techniques for a psycho-geophysical reading of the area around Tempelhof airport.

James Partaik introduces Insertio, an artistic initiative, which creates art interventions that actuate urban space and its infrastructures, revealing issues implicit to the site, the technologies themselves in a specific cultural context and the creative actions used to transform public space in a tangible way. The paper presents tactics of occupation and imbrications of urban infrastructures exemplifying Insertio’s use of site, devices and art actions that coalesce with the emerging discourses surrounding the issues of art, architecture and urban spaces in the age of the networked landscape.

Inside the Geometry Double language is a virtual reality art project, which takes the form of diverse site-specific video installations. The artworks involve the use of various 3D viewers, plus related smartphones playing all different virtual reality animations.

How do we experience virtual environments? How do virtual environments make an impression on us? How is the immersion in three-dimensional computer graphics a phenomenon of the viewing experience? Looking through Blue Window Pane, is an active examination of an artist’s projection on multiple screens. It is also a partaking in the projection’s narrative construction. What happens when we seize a moment of this?

The CAVE is a virtual display theater that presents a visual spatial media of shapes, landscapes and sounds that establish a system for construction and symbolic transformation. The environment creates a series of experiential exercises that signal the next event. Participants are given the stage to exercise the guidance of their cognitive structures and ascertain the meaning and content of the virtual experience. To inhabit the virtual space is to transform the projection.

Insights is a research about the relation of two bodies exploring breath as a shared need and connection in a geometrical system of figures. The performers are attached to nylon strings in order to play with the tension and a third body is created in between. The performance starts with the unison of two bodies one behind the other.?The two performers and the strings are the system that is in equilibrium when the bodies are diaphanous, communicating. This requires listening and coordinating impulses to operate in unison. The strings of nylon are a visible connection, like cables that transmit information. The glue links the strings to the skin, the surface of the body. The in- and out- breath is communicating vividly between the performers. Slowly a synergy between the performers establishes.?When the pulling force increases or one of the performer moves independently without communicating, the nylon strings will cut off. This risk and fragility is subject to the whole performance. Once the nylon connections are detached the visualization of the third body vanishes. You can perceive the third body in between the two figures whose outlines are attached by the strings. By pulling the strings the points of the outline translate in space, like a figure in geometry.

i visión es – Inspirar-Elevar, curar a través de la naturaleza y la creatividad. Soy un ARTISTA. Siempre he sido un artista desde el día en que nací, aunque no siempre lo he sabido. No fue hasta que dejé la escuela, cuando estaba libre de los límites y las limitaciones del sistema educativo que descubrí el artista en mí. Mi arte es una extensión de mí. Se extiende a todas las áreas de mi vida. Tengo una pasión por la vida, el amor y el cuidado de la tierra. Todo lo que creo tiene una razón – a veces esa razón es sólo para honrar la creatividad dentro de mí.

Research synthesizes the explorations and processes developed from the research—artistic creation and its link with design through a common theme: the phenomenon of audio-visual creation in real time and its connection with the body. This theme will be approached through visual autobiographies and the intimacy with objects as carriers of memories, sensations, and atmospheres that not only constitute or form part of an epoch, but also configure individual forms of inhabiting the world. At the same time, it looks to think or include the landscape from the same perspective, within these explorations, as an affective space and as part of contemporary thought towards the reevaluation of subjectivity, where the inquiry into emotion contributes to rethinking relationships between subject and world. In this way, the findings throughout this research have permitted thinking about research-creation as a meaningful phenomenon not only from the academic point of view but also in the creative processes of contemporary art. From this perspective, the relationships between body, landscape, technology, and self-referentiality, will be approached through a methodology that moves between the limits of art and design, in other words, putting these two aspects in tension, but at the same time taking advantage of the possibilities inherent in each discipline. Experience will be a determining factor precisely because it deepens on the autobiographic terrain, however it is necessary to create categories over which a text will be formed as well as a work of art that moves between objectivity and speculation.

In the early exhibitions of colour-field painting, the placement of works on the gallery wall was treated as being integral to the presentation. Photographic documentation began to take on a new significance in the light of the transience of the emerging ‘installation art’. Indeed, with the impermanent and/or inaccessible qualities of ‘site specific’ art, photographic documentation has become the surrogate medium of postmodern art. Today, the Internet enables photographic representation along with sound and text to be ‘piped’ into our homes, as easily as water, electricity or gas. By virtue of Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) all the representations contained on the multitude of servers on the Internet exist in virtual proximity and geographical distance appears to have been eliminated. This paper proposes that as artists ‘build’ sites on .the World Wide Web, they are constructing a revolutionary ontology for art — one in which the distinction of ‘site’ and ‘non-site’ will no longer be meaningful. Indeed, they are reconstituting installation art at ‘the end of geography’. This paper also presents La Folie de la Peinture, an on-line ‘installation’ at the website.

Hip Hop playwright, poet, essayist and performer Idris Goodwin has engaged Albuquerque teens in National Hispanic Cultural Center’s Voces program and Tricklock Company’s Manoa Project to create Instant Messages, a performance piece developed from evocative, inspiring and humorous conversations found on Twitter and social networking sites. He theatrically transforms and performs some of these “digital dialogues” together with student participants and members of Tricklock Company. Made possible in part by Intel.

Institutional Presentation Statement

The Institut Universitari de I’ Audiovisual of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (IUA-UPF) is an institute devoted to images and music by means of electronics and computers. It was established at 1994 as part of the UPF Audiovisual Complex that comprises the Faculty on Audiovisual Communication, a Media Centre, two auditoria and other facilities. IUA-UPF acts in the fields of Education, Production and Research. It offers several Doctorate studies (attached to the Faculty of Audiovisual Studies of the UPF) and two masters (Audiovisual Creation and Technologies (EMMA) and Music Creation and Technologies. IUA-UPF has produced interactive programmes (Twelve senses: Catalan Poetry; Born, magazine for audiovisual communication); music pieces (over 20), animations and videos (about 15). Every year several grants for experimental production are offered to students and professionals. In the Research area, IUA-UPF is working on Sound analysis, transformation and synthesis; Interactive systems (concept and design); Generative Art; and Virtual Environments. With respect art on line, and together with the Museum for Contemporary Art of Barcelona (MACBA), IUA-UPF has started a production/research team called “MACBA-on-line”. Finally, IUA-UPF is present in the Barcelona cultural landscape: every month organizes the Sala HAL, a place for exhibitions and lectures on audiovisual and new millennium. The presentation at ISEA96 will explain some details of the IUA-UPF two year experience and will show some of its results.

The tremendous potential for exploration and manipulation afforded by the computer is, to a large extent, offset by a corresponding diminution in formal concerns amongst practitioners, and (speaking as a lecturer) this is particularly acute amongst younger students. Exacerbated by the poor (material) quality of digital output, the instant print has a profoundly harmful effect on the essential object nature of the physical artwork. Fine artists have always subverted or appropriated new technologies to their creative ends; as a painter-printer — making art objects — Barfield’s concern is integrating digital technologies with traditional processes, such that formal concerns are not denied the printmaker using computers. A working method the author has developed provides a durable image creation process, utilising the computers capacity for exploration and manipulation, but remains susceptible of intervention by the hand of the artist throughout the process.

Other main objectives are: use of overprinted layers of inks, allowing physical planes of colour to create complex visual spaces; wresting colour creation and manipulation from the device, back to the development of cheap accessible methods for artists and students working with limited resources.

One of the important targets of engineering is to develop technologies that can realize new communications such as human-like communications with computers. In this area, so far, verbal communication has been mainly studied. On the other hand, non-verbal aspect of communications based on human emotion and sensitivity plays a very important role. It is indispensable, therefore, to develop non-verbal communication technologies for realizing human-like communications with computers. As engineering methods to treat emotions or sensitivity have not fully developed yet, collaboration with people in other areas is inevitable. One possible area is art where treating these basic human functions has been the main issue. One of the important functions of art is to transfer the concepts of the author to the audience by appealing to their emotional and intellectual perceptions. In recent years a new type of art called Interactive Art has emerged. Interactive art’s target is two-way communications by utilizing various kinds of technologies for interaction. There is a good chance therefore, that art and technology can work together to realize highly sophisticated communication methods. Based on this basic concept we have started a project to create new communication methods based on the collaboration between artists and engineers.

Abstract
This paper describes the development of the new media technology for our society, information transfer and the impact of cultural transmission. We discuss the new mode of transmission in new media era, cultural heritage in the process of the protection, and the important role of new media. Then, how to spread, inherit and preserve the Chinese culture heritage is the key subject. Media art and cultural heritage have been merging continuously, and have gotten results for the effect of visual communication that has an impact of cultural spread. When the cultural spread helps inherit the culture, it gets results for the cultural preservation too.

The advanced new media technology projects are widely used for spreading, protecting and inheriting cultural heritage. We introduce a Kung Fu live show, “Kung Fu Legend” as a case study to briefly describe the production process with its significances. “Kung Fu Legend” using the digital technology with the narrator, scenery and music rendering, reveals the beauty of Kung Fu movement, and also expresses the significance of Kung Fu culture. Along with the visual and sound effects, the transformation of its background screen makes people be part of it, and the illustrations apply interactive technology by the power of art in order to protect and to inherit the culture heritage.

Introduction
The proper way to spread and to educate contents of cultural heritage is the key issue for the cultural inheritance and the protection of cultural heritages. This is specific to the classification of the audience and the region, and we need a deep directional principle to spread the cultural heritage content. [1] We cannot avoid the fact that different content of cultural heritage in different environmental area strictly defines audience group. With the development of human society and evolution, the difference of the material life and spiritual life, which people pursue, is becoming bigger. [2] People who live in a cultural heritage area may not completely understand and inherit its content of cultural heritage. But outside the region, someone would like to go into the region to learn about it, and even want to develop its cultural heritage. The method for the spreading and the protecting cultural heritage can be shared and cooperated internationally, when we use the current new media technology properly.

Information Technology continues to foster the confluence of multimedia engineering, web technologies and social networks, and knowledge representation and reasoning. The goal is to promote original approaches and techniques for empowering creative usages and enabling interactive experiences based on an understanding of the content itself. In order to achieve this aim, semantic-based methods are being developed as a tools for extracting actionable knowledge from massive data sets and providing complex and yet flexible, interoperable services.

This paper will explore how these techniques can affect digital art production, how the act of creation an intelligent content may functions as an digital art interpretative process, and will attempt to discuss the future of media through computational archaeology.

Poster Statement

Cinema and television are traditional electronic storytelling media, drawing much of their emotional power from characters and story. For that reason, storytelling in the interactive electronic media should introduce interactive characters and interactive stories to offer users engaging and rewarding experiences. Interactive characters Created as representation of a human being, an interactive character has her own mood, personality and deep character. If we use interactivity to provide a two-way conversation between the user and the characters, a real life relationship can be simulated. This interactive relationship can be stimulated by giving the user different opportunities for interaction, where he or she has the chance to explore the character’s personality and give input which could influence the character’s behaviour in the story. There are certain aspects of the character’s personality which cannot be changed with the user’s input. However, as in real life, her mood could be influenced: opinions given by the user towards further actions in the story are very welcome. The more input the user gives, the greater will be the rewards on the development of the story and on the establishment of a “friendship” with the character. The result of conflicts could be a reward for user loyalty; constant interaction with characters can reveal their personality and maybe change her attitudes through the story. Interactive story structures To allow the simulation of real life situations and give users the appropriate rewards for a direct interaction with characters, an interactive story structure must be carefully designed. There is a number of narrative structures commonly used in platform games. Some combine linear chunks of story with puzzles, others branch in different directions to fold back to a same linear story. Yet none of them gives a real story payoff based on the user’s input. Looking at the traditional media techniques, it is known that a good screenplay must contain elements of surprise and suspense to engage the viewer. On an interactive environment, if the user is given the chance to control the narrative development on a certain point in the story there is a high risk of failure in the delivery of an engaging story. The user is not supposed to be the writer of the story – let’s leave that to the experts. I am creating models of narrative structures which give time-limited opportunities for interaction, where the user has the choice of interaction with the characters and the choice of not to interact, simply watching a linear film. The narrative flow never stops, and the development of the story will reflect the user’s interaction. The “tree of nuances” is part of an innovative interactive storytelling structure I have developed. The diagram below illustrates the way it works: During scene 2 there’s a “window of opportunity” for the user to interact. If the user chooses not to interact, the story continues linearly, to scene 3. The opportunity is to interact with a character, on a simulation of a two-way conversation. On the first node, the character will ask a question to the user, who can reply with a positive or negative answer by pressing buttons on a joystick. The following scene depends on this reply. There is a scene with a character’s answer for “yes” and another for “no” on each node, and a linear default scene if there is no interaction. Depending on each answer, the character might reveal details of her personality or knowledge of the story, e.g.. feelings about other characters. Note that answering “no” doesn’t mean being negative to the character. For example, the character might ask “do you think I’m stupid?”, and if the user responds “no” it’s obviously a good choice if he or she wants to be “friends” with that character. This way, if the user responds according to the character’s expectation, the “tree” can be explored in deeper layers where the character will ask more questions and progressively reveal more about her personality. Prototype demonstration Mixed Emotions is a Macintosh working prototype for an interactive film exploring the concepts of interactive characters and the interactive narrative structure described above. It uses full motion digital video with real actors and real backgrounds. The experience takes between 7 and 15 minutes, depending on each viewer’s choices of interaction.

True human-machine interaction implies machines to be endowed with expertise to foster self-motivation within the process of interaction itself; objectives are developed from scratch while interacting partners exercise unpredictable mutual influence. Rewarding human-machine interaction is imagined to be proportional to the appreciation of the recognition of relationships between human behaviour (e.g. spontaneous body language) and its impact on emerging behaviour in an otherwise self-organising micro-universe. Hybrid spaces may exist of biological and synthetic components interfaced in intimate interaction. We offer evidence that methods of machine learning and artificial evolution may contribute to the creation of highly complex audio-visual interactive systems. Such systems are experimental and speculative; they show that qualitative aesthetic experiences may emerge from unreliable degrees of understanding between cause and effect.

This paper seeks to further a dialogue regarding human use and perception of digital technology in the natural environment through the use of miniature digital mobile projection. We question whether the human experience of sensorial awareness of “nature” can be perceived and possibly changed through the experience of using digital mobile projection technology in outdoor settings.  Initial research studied the use digital Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCoS) pico projection technology in the production of two live technology-mediated experiments in a coastal forest setting and the Kaumana Cave on the Big Island of Hawaii.

We argue that pico projection studied in atypical ways may provide further understanding of the human relationship to digital technology.   We report on the audience experience, as well as the issues and challenges faced by artist-users.  We further posit that this research may be of importance in the study of locative mobile projection because it assists in understanding the human relationship to digital technology, which consequently inform their design.

A description of the recent innovatory breakthrough BA (Hons.) Interactive Arts course in the Department of Fine Arts, Manchester Metropolitan University. A course written only five years ago, it is already being used as a model for developments in the UK and internationally.

“The atmosphere that encourages innovative creativity within students is a non-hierarchical atmosphere. It is an atmosphere where the contributions of everyone are equally welcomed. Therefore, this course in its operation will attempt to be as democratic as is possible. It will have democratic processes built into its structure that will empower the student towards responsibility for his/her own programme of learning by the end of the course. In this, the course is student-centred and constructed around the strong belief in the benefits of interaction, teamwork and dialogue. The course will deliberately challenge the idea that experts and technicians should be seen as the sole arbiters of their respective fields. In a spirit of democratic creativity, an atmosphere of receptiveness to new ideas and patterns of thinking will be generated. Innovative linkages of ideas and processes will be encouraged, regardless of their source, origin, or previous categorisation. This course will develop techniques of thinking and doing which will equip the student for the emergent future.”
-from BA (Hons.) Interactive Arts, Course Philosophy

Digital technologies have not just changed the world, they are increasingly impacting children and youth all over the world. Childhood, learning and upbringing have changed dramatically over the last decades. And it is not going to stop. As UNICEF puts it, “digital technology is an irreversible fact of our lives”. [1] Yet we experience a Digital Gap between the adult generation born before the Internet and the Smartphone and those born after, the so called Digital Natives born after 2000. How to bridge this gap and include the younger generations into the field? What forms of electronic art speaks to Digital Natives today? How to include electronic art works in schools? The panel on Interactive Arts for Digital Natives discuss these and related questions. It is composed by an international expert group and will be led by Arts for Young Audiences Norway (AYA).

Cecilie Lundsholt is artistic director of the regional state funded theatre “Teateret Vårt” (Our Theatre) in Norway, responsible for the repertoire aimed at audiences from zero to eighteen years old. Peter Lee will present the Nolgong Theater from Korea and their two interactive theatre projects. Charlotte B. Myrvold will present the electronic media art project FoNT (Dissemination Models and New Technology). Stahl Stenslie will head the panel and is the director of R&D at Arts for Young Audiences Norway (AYA), the Norwegian Ministry of Culture’s agency owning the national responsibility for The Cultural Schoolbag (TCS) program.

Panel:  Borders and interfaces: the challenges of the wearable computer’s design in the near future

The processes of com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween man and ma­chine and man-ma­chine-man gain other con­tours from the ad­vances of the mo­bile net­works. These pos­si­bil­i­ties ex­pand as we add them to the bio­met­ric tech­nolo­gies that map the phys­i­o­log­i­cal data from the users and allow com­bin­ing them with more dif­fer­en­ti­ated out­puts of their choice. This con­di­tion pro­vides the de­sign of in­ter­ac­tions be­tween users and be­tween users and com­put­ers that match the body and emo­tional state of in­di­vid­u­als in­volved and, thus, to con­fig­ure in­creas­ingly af­fec­tion­ate re­la­tion­ships based on these or­ganic ex­changes of in­for­ma­tion.

In this con­text, we are going pre­sent­ing and dis­cussing sev­eral pro­pos­als from artists and de­sign­ers com­mit­ted to the cre­ation and de­vel­op­ment of bio-wear­able de­vices ap­plied to the fields of knowl­edge and per­for­mance of fash­ion, games, art and de­sign. Among them we may men­tion a few: “Con­duc­tor’s Jacket”, cre­ated by re­searchers at the Af­fec­tive Com­put­ing Group at MIT, which in­ter­prets the phys­i­o­log­i­cal sig­nals and ges­tures of the user ap­ply­ing them in a mu­si­cal con­text; “Smart Sec­ond Skin Dress”, pro­posed by Jenny Tillot­son, it con­sists of a in­ter­ac­tive dress that re­al­izes the user’s mood and starts to flow vent odors, al­low­ing the in­ter­ac­tor to cre­ate your own ol­fac­tory en­vi­ron­ment; “Bio­BodyGame” and “Neu­ro­BodyGame”, cre­ated by Rachel Zuanon and Ger­aldo Lima, they con­sist in two wear­able com­put­ers that pro­vide in­ter­ac­tions with games from the neu­ro­phys­i­o­log­i­cal sig­nals and brain sig­nals from the users, re­spec­tively, and they pre­sent the emo­tional state of the in­ter­ac­tor at the color and vi­bra­tions changes of their phys­i­cal struc­ture.

numer.oo: understanding interactivity, international conference on interactive design

Within the ISEA symposium, numer is organizing a session on the theme of interactive design and its position in the sphere of electronic arts.

The numer association is hosting numer.oo, the international conference on interactive design, at the Ecole nationale des Beaux-arts on December 9 and 10, on the emergence of a critical view of interactive design. The main facets of the discipline are discussed: aesthetics, metaphor, dynamics, narration, usage and metadesign. The participants come from all over the world and represent the set of all related professions — concept, graphic, sound or algorithm designers,
teachers, scientists, editors, portals, etc.

Papers: State of the art of interactive design

Interactive design is about web sites, cd-roms or kiosks, it is used for communication, education, games or culture, through skills of graphics, sound, text or programming… As a preamble to the round table on art and design, this collective presentation will capture the state of the art of interactive design.
Moderator: Pierre Lavoie, president of numer.
Speakers: Joshua Davis, Olivier Koechlin, Murielle Lefèvre, Étienne Mineur, Casey Reas.

Round Table: Art, design and interactivity

The artist speaks up, the designer lends his voice… Is it that simple? The designer responds to specifications while dealing with constraints. But in the process, he also impacts on aesthetics. The artist, on the other hand, chooses his subject and the setting of his discourse, but his intention also defines specifications : is he the designer of his own creation? These both reflect the same mastery over matter. However, they relate to different trades, practices, economies and even different communities.
speakers: Maurice Benayoun, Jean-Jacques Birgé, Minna Tarkka.

(Part in a Series of conferences: State of the art of the interactive)

In the Interactive Finger Puppet workshop participants build puppets with DIY conductive materials as a digitally augmented, creative, narrative form of play for STEAM learning. While participants play with their finger puppet characters and the stage – interacting with the designed voice recorder and player – they project their imagination into their stories. This paper explains how interactive design can augment such playful performance by connecting embodiment and creativity. It introduces Interactive Finger Puppet’s design components and explores the potential for enhancing early childhood learning.

Panel Statements

ALL DAY PANELS at the Ecole Nationle SuperIieure des Arts Decoratifs

Co-organised by the Atelier de Recherches Interactives (ENSAD) [Interactive Research Studio] and the Industrial Design Laboratory for Interactivity at the Universite Paris 8-UFR ARTS with the help of CIREN.

This forum is aimed at taking stock of a dimension, which from now on be vital to interactivity — its ability to create a new form of storytelling. Multimedia, networks, CD-ROMs, games and systems are where the new figures, procedures, aesthetics and economy of storytelling are emerging.
The question of interactive storytelling unites disciplines that are ordinarily separate — not only literature, opera and cinema, but also artistic installations which, over the last few years, have underlined the dimension of storytelling. The notion of interactive storytelling also concerns the fields of graphic arts, design, museography, media and games.

Part one:
Jacques Morizot (moderator) – Interactive Storytelling: Language and Writings

PANELISTS:

• Jean-Pierre Balpe, writer and professor at University Paris 8, France
• Anne Cauquelin, university professor
• George Legrady, Artist and Professor, Art Department, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA. On the self-organisation of a collection.
• Francois Soulages, professor at University Paris 8, France. On the question of transfer.
• Liliane Terrier, University Lecturer, University Paris 8, France. On the Ubersicht model.

Part two:
Maren Kopp (moderator) – Interactive Storytelling: Picture and Mechanism

PANELISTS:

• Raymond Bellour, Director at the CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique), France
• Jean-Louis Boisssier, Professor at University Paris 8, and ENSAD (L’École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs)
• Anne-Marie Duguet, Professor at the University Paris 1, editor of CD-Rom collection Anarchive
• Timothy Murray, Director of Graduate Studies in Film and Video, Cornell University, USA. On Storytelling and memory.
• Grahame Weinbren, Film maker, author of interactive installations, editor of Millenium Film Magazine, School of Visuel Arts, New York, USA. On Frames and Tunnels: Some Grammars for Interactive Narrative.
• Jacques Morizot, Assistant Professor at University Paris 8, France
• Maren Kopp, Assistant Professor at University Paris 8, France

Abstract

Mobile technologies offer the potential to enhance the lives of older adults. However, diminutive devices are often perplexing and many HCI problems exist. Consequently this potential is very often not exploited. In this paper we introduce MemoryLane, a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) based application being developed to enhance the reminiscence capabilities of older adults. Using abilities and preferences as a basis MemoryLane employs Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques to adapt its multimodal interface to accommodate the differing needs of older users and to compose and recount user life-cached multimedia data as memory stories.

Panel:  The Institute of Unnecessary Research

Ultra Smart Tex­tiles are the lat­est gen­er­a­tion of Smart Tex­tiles, which can sense, react and adopt them­selves to en­vi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions or stim­uli from me­chan­i­cal, ther­mal, chem­i­cal, elec­tri­cal or mag­netic sources. Thus the par­tic­i­pa­tory au­di­ence ex­pe­ri­ence is sig­nif­i­cantly height­ened, “push­ing the bound­aries”, com­pared to mod­els cre­ated with ear­lier tech­nolo­gies. Much has been dis­cussed about Smart Fab­rics lately. This rapidly grow­ing field of­fers a huge range of re­search op­por­tu­ni­ties and new areas for in­ves­ti­ga­tions. Novel tech­nol­ogy com­bined with one of the old­est tra­di­tions, the pro­duc­tion of tex­tiles, fa­cil­i­tates as­ton­ish­ing re­sults on many dif­fer­ent lev­els. These ma­te­ri­als with in­cor­po­rated tech­no­log­i­cal el­e­ments en­able the fab­rics to trans­form them into in­ter­ac­tive in­ter­faces. While nu­mer­ous re­search op­por­tu­ni­ties as well as in­no­v­a­tive method de­vel­op­ment by artists are of­fered in this field, it has to be noted that the goal of re­search is to­wards a prag­matic out­come closely linked to in­dus­try. The artist in this spe­cific field serves as a con­duit for knowl­edge trans­fer. A very smart or in­tel­li­gent tex­tile es­sen­tially con­sists of a unit, which works like the brain, with cog­ni­tion, rea­son­ing and ac­ti­vat­ing ca­pac­i­ties.

While Smart Tex­tiles are nowa­days still more con­nected with fash­ions or wear­ables and to a lesser de­gree with health or mil­i­tary use, there are huge pos­si­bil­i­ties for an artis­tic ap­proach con­nected to site spe­cific and in­ter­ac­tive works. In the gad­get or fash­ion field the tech­no­log­i­cal tools are often sep­a­rated from the tex­tile ma­te­r­ial, yet novel de­vel­op­ments for em­bed­ded tech­nol­ogy in­side the fab­ric are al­ready being in­ves­ti­gated and offer new po­ten­tials. Ob­ser­va­tions show very clearly that a lot of re­search is still needed, nev­er­the­less a sig­nif­i­cant amount of as­ton­ish­ing re­sults are al­ready gen­er­ated. Nev­er­the­less sev­eral ques­tions re­main unan­swered. How these ma­te­ri­als can be used to cre­ate mean­ing­ful rep­re­sen­ta­tions? How can the sen­sory as­pect of Smart Fab­rics be fur­ther de­vel­oped? How can the prac­ti­cal use of Smart Fab­rics be widely pro­moted be­yond the fash­ion and sports in­dus­try? This fast grow­ing area of Smart Tex­tiles is cross­ing bor­ders be­tween artis­tic, tech­no­log­i­cal and sci­en­tific sec­tors. This paper will focus on how the use of In­tel­li­gent Fab­rics can be in­volved more ef­fec­tively in art­works that ex­plore artis­tic and tech­ni­cal op­por­tu­ni­ties to en­able new aes­thetic per­spec­tives.

Panel Statement

This panel discussion and urban exhibition project brings together three multi-user virtual environment projects, developed by members of the Situations and Collaborations between Second Life and Consensual Landscapes and Scenarios project team at the University of Salford and Liverpool John Moores University, within a site-specific Second Life environment designed and constructed for presentation in Belfast at ISEA2009. The installation exhibition touches on a number of the conference themes, specifically ‘interactive storytelling and memory building in post-conflict society’ and ‘citizenship and contested spaces’. The facade of the of the Belfast Waterfront building has been identified as the proposed urban projection screen, which forms the central focus of the installation and immediately references the city of Belfast and its painted murals that depict the recent social history. The project could equally be projected onto the end of many of these rows of terraced houses.

Each of the three projects presented will be housed in a Second Life space that represents the virtual exhibition of contested space. The projects will deal with ironies and stereotypes in multi-user virtual environments such as border control, cultural identity, gender roles, digital consumption and virtual desire. Each project will also utilise alternative interactive functionality and techniques that will allow the participants to interact and direct projects by their presence and movements in the space immediately in front of the projection screen.

If media art in the 1990’s was characterized by interaction, an increasing use of public platforms in both Urban and virtual contexts now positions media art work as an increasingly social and communicative act(ion). In this panel discussion the participating artists will investigate how the experience of tactility and physical experience makes both participants and the artists more vulnerable, yet also offers altered ways or generating affective experiences. This discourse will include the participants theoretical standpoint and creative practice such as Paul Sermon’s exposure of an identity paradox in Second Life, Charlotte Gould’s alternative aesthetic that questions the predominance of digital realism in multi user virtual environments and Peter Appleton’s exploration of poetic and gestural resonances which could contribute to the experience of emotion in virtual spaces.

This panel discussion and Second Life installation will reflect on the surroundings of Belfast and will draw inspiration from the local history and community. Reliant on both user interaction and input; the audience will form an integral part of this project that aims to transcend borders and boundaries of culture and gender as interactive storytelling and memory building in post-conflict society.

1. Paul Sermon (convener) – Peace Games
2. Peter Appleton – In the Gloaming, in the Gloaming
3. Charlotte Gould – Ludic Second Life Narrative

Catherine Ikam is working in interactive installation, digital photography and virtual reality exploring the concept of identity and artificiality, the notion of self and otherness in terms on relationship between real space and the virtual world. She creates, with Louis Fleri, three dimensional characters with realistic human faces. Those characters interact in real time with visitors into virtual reality installations according to the analogies and random behavioral patterns they gave to them. The purpose of their work is to build the illusion of an emotional encounter with a human-like artifact. In spite of the fact they know it is an artifact, they feel an emotional response to it. How do people react to each other through a hybrid mechanical and human interface? What kind of behavioral patterns do they have to give these characters to increase the illusion that people have autonomy and agency?

Abstract

One of the basic points in the philosophy of Jacques Derrida is that the logocentric and phono-centric approach to text, language, communication, and interpretation, is predominant in the Western culture. This approach consists of the assertion that the being of any entity is always determined as presence. It means that the sense always precedes any kind of its objective appearance. To interpret the text one has to decipher its sense, which is already present and ready to be understood. The sense is different from the text, and situated “outside” it . As its foundation, the sense prevails the text. The text is only a neutral, transparent vehicle that carries the sense. The classic type of interpretation reduces the text to the representation and/or expression of the ultimate truth of the text, or the author’s intention. The communication means then the transmission of sense/meaning from one subject to another. The transmitted meaning should not (or cannot) be changed in the process of communication. Like text, communication is inseparably connected with the function of representation and expression. The thought precedes and runs the communication, which carries ideas, meanings, and contents. One communicates only what has already been known. All kinds of texts are treated in this traditional way, which is extremely inadequate in the case of interactive media art. If one tries to deal with this kind of art as an extension of the author’s artistic intention, all the innovative aspects of the interactive art are being lost.

According to Derrida, the text (the work of art) must be liberated from dependence on the sense. The structure of the text, the process of shaping it, comes to the focus. The reading of the text displaces the reading of the sense. The text encourages a new form of interpretation, the one closer to a play than to the hermeneutic approach. As the interpretation of the text, the process of communication has to become the play (with the rules and roles not necessarily fixed). The “interactive communication” is free from the function of representation, expression, from the intention and contents preceding the act of communication. It is also liberated from the references to the author and the recipient (understood as fixed identities), displaced by the roles of players . The sense of the communication is created in the process of play. This new
“interactive” communication is an essentially creative form of activity, a kind of “active interpretation”, which accepts its “unfinishness”,incompleteness, instability.

In the last few years, significant improvements have been made in the technology of output: converting the image on the computer screen to a tangible object, retaining or enhancing its richness of colour, detail and texture. Used with skill and imagination, computers can offer the artist-printmaker an unprecedented variety of techniques, approaches, and working methods a new repertoire of media and processes. The integration of computer-generated imagery with more traditional art-making processes creates opportunities for further creative evolution, enhanced stability of texture and colour and an emphasis on physicality. Images created in this way are often re-digitised for further development and finally exist as both printed and electronic data. They then have the potential to become ‘indefinite images’ open to reconsideration, revision, collaborative manipulation and cross-disciplinary utilisation via the Internet, in a vastly expanded creative domain. Despite the seductive effect of evolving technologies, it is the new conceptual spaces and their challenge to current artistic practice opened through computing media that are the most exciting areas for creative exploration by artists, allowing access and exchanges utilising previously inconceivable inter-connectivity.

Increasingly, museums are being perceived as agencies that promote conversations between communities in multicultural societies. Meanwhile, the development of digital technology, such as mixed reality (MR), has shifted our way to communicate by enhancing our perception of information. This paper presents a case scenario of how MR, in the museum domain, can be utilized effectively to create a platform where cross-cultural links of artifacts can be represented dynamically and interactively to formulate a more inclusive and diverse narrative about artifacts, history, and humanity for museum audiences. Two prototypes and future development are presented that explore different aspects of emerging MR technologies with new curatorial techniques for highlighting the dialogue of cultures in museums. This paper concludes with a discussion of the potential for emerging technologies to solve contemporary problems in museums.

Artists who are working across both intellectual and artistic disciplines are increasingly challenging conventional exhibition formats such that exhibitions now lag behind these artists’ aspirations. With practices that are performative; inflected by technology; participatory; take up user-generated content; posit continuities between physical and virtual spaces; and arise out of a distributed rather than a singular sensibility, they are working in ways that collapse the traditional distinctions between production, presentation and reception of their work.

Once discrete sites, the studio, laboratory, gallery and museum have become the spatial coordinates for an expanded field of relational energies. These energies are unwieldy and dispersed in character, however, and do not observe opening hours. While compelling they are extremely difficult to curate into exhibitions. Nevertheless, artists of all persuasions continue to want to be in exhibitions no matter how critical they may be of the art world’s institutions and audiences are drawn to this enduring cultural form.

This paper argues the need for curators and institutions to attend to the specific needs of interdisciplinary work by pursuing synthesised theoretical frameworks; adopting a more transactional view of audiences; and committing  adequate budgets so that the technological and durational requirements of artists can be met. Curators should continue to borrow from the protocols of cultural forms such as games arcades and theme parks as well as taking on board the presentation strategies used by other artforms. Only, however, if they are interrogating them so as not to forego the qualities traditionally associated with curating. The form of the exhibition is culturally loaded and highly codified but with scrutiny, evolving exhibition formats can continue to do what exhibitions do best which is to link the display of artists’ work to branches of philosophy such as aesthetics and ethics by stimulating curiosity and enjoyment, engendering contemplation, and fostering a sense of history and society.

The examination of today’s musical production shows the accelerated development of composer’s interest, and not only anymore mostly of artists, for sound and musical installations, moreover interactive. In the same time, gestural but also graphical interfaces, transducers and sound material representation and control tools, are going through a fantastic growth. This round-table will be the occasion to discuss the artistic goals and the trends.

Moderator:

• Jean-Baptiste Barriere 

Panelist:

• Jacopo Baboni Schilingi 
• Joel Chadabe 
• Thierry Coduys 

Media scholars have traditionally focused on audiovisual forms that are experienced indoors in static settings; cinema-going and television spectatorship provide good examples. Researchers are slowly beginning to realize that such an emphasis covers only a part of the complex terrain that constitutes media culture. That part may even be shrinking, thanks to current developments within urban environments and experiences. Not only are metropolitan cities covered by high-tech media attractions such are giant LED-display screens; a growing number of citizens are walking or cruising through such spaces with media devices in their hands. The current smart phone revolution may be just a beginning for much more dramatic technological, behavioral and cultural changes.

This paper will approach this situation from a media-archaeological perspective, trying to understand the current modalities of outdoor media use by excavating the processes of their becoming and the various cultural forms that have anticipated them. These earlier forms are not treated as clear genealogical steps leading to the present condition. Rather, they are analyzes are symptomatic manifestations of contradictory motives and discursive fragments that have at various times and contexts highlighted issues the current media culture may erroneously believe it is encountering for the first time. Such issues cover, for example, the saturation of the city space by commercial messages like billboards, and the attitudes toward them; the varied early forms of “mobile media” such as “walking human posters” (sandwichmen), and the practices of using fans, watches, and other forms of “proto-wearable” media; and the complex relationships that developed between them.

This paper documents Intérieur, a dance-and-media live performance specifically conceived for an immersive fulldome environment, created by the digital performance group kondition pluriel. Presented as the inaugural event of the Satosphere, a new dome-shaped theater in Montreal, this artistic project intermixes a virtual immersive image and sound environment with live performance and culinary arts. Engaged in victual consumption and social rituals, the public becomes an integral part of a multi-sensory happening involving several senses: taste, touch, vision, smell, hearing, and movement. The paper discusses the methodologies and artistic research undertaken towards the conception, development and implementation of a dramaturgical structure incorporating live performance, choreography, social rituals, savory delights and the experience of an immersive media environment, in order to provoke extreme states of sensorial empathy in the spectator. The text focuses on the creation process in this multidisciplinary project, the technological framework, the virtual scenography, the preformative strategies and the project’s artistic context.
It describes the steps that had to be taken to develop the central element of the work: the hyper amplification of the inner state of a woman with mental disorder and psychotic behavior. In the piece two live performers are incorporating one personality. The dome is used as a magnifying glass, as a huge organ reflecting the brain and the internal psychological state of the two performers, engaging the audience into a strange feast, an immersive experience that explores the possibilities of what one can describe with “trompe sense”, an attempt to create a total visceral experience for the audience. The author argues that with this type of artistic explorations new avenues of hybrid converging and diverging realities can be critically examined and a new sense of space and place, of object and subject can be displayed.

n this paper, we present a set of artworks that explore the use of face tracking and facial expressions detection techniques in interactive artworks. More specifically, we ask how can we communicate sensations and emotional states, in non‑verbal ways, to others, ourselves, things, or even places? Under the assumptions that facial gestures could constitute a window to somebody’s emotion, we constructed different art pieces and interactive prototypes that comprise different communication channels (haptic, visual, aural), and aim to help reflecting on communication itself, its poetry, and ourselves. The presented artworks are:

1. Facial Pentatonic and Face Sounds: two musical instruments that map the users’ face onto sounds. Sound production is triggered by the user’s mouth, while the head position and facial expressions modify the sounds parameters (pitch, timbre, etc.).
2. Look at me – an installation that explores the need for attention, as well as vibration‑based feedback. It constitutes of a device that attempts to force interactors to look at it, attempting to subvert the power relationship between the observed and the observant, between consumer and product.
3. Traces – a work in progress, Traces is an interactive     installation consisting in a room with closed‑eyes faces projected on its walls. A short while after an interactor enters the room, his or her blinking triggers a snapshot and the interactor’s is added to the collection of projected faces. The room shows its users are being seen, but not seeing. Traces reflects on our relationship with physical spaces, more specifically asks: is a place changed by our presence? What traces do we leave? These works were created by the paper’s author while performing a research internship at Microsoft Research.

With a theoretical, as well as a practical approach, this paper focuses on curatorial issues raised when dealing with artworks that employ the web as a territory for creation and as a means of artistic production, mostly when within the institutional walls. The goal is twofold. On the one hand, it means to analyze the number of shifts that unconventional time-based art has been undertaking by being assimilated into the wider contemporary art context, sometimes captured within the barriers of severe categorizations. On the other hand, it strives to finding new ways to encouraging and to promoting experimentation with mediums, such as the Internet, as well as discussing all that this implies in its delivery to the audience.

The presentation will shape from practical examples of curatorial practice, starting from NETinSPACE, the project I am currently curating at MAXXI — the newly born National Museum of XXIst Century Arts in Rome. NETinSPACE has been evolving from the previous NetSpace since 2005 which, in the span of three years (2005-2008), invited visitors to interact with net.?art, to deepen its historical and artistic roots. The new edition has moved outside the computer screen to undertake a journey at the confines of two worlds, the virtual and the physical, exploring their mutual interaction, while creating a new territory where diverse languages interweave and merge into one.

Emerging and established artists, working on the net but also in other fields, are invited to participate in the virtual space of the Internet and in the physical space of the museum, “infiltrating” the passageways which neighbour the exposition spaces. Milltos Manetas, Katja Loher, Bianco Valente, Stephen Vitiello are among them. The result intends to be an experimental platform that is neither outside nor inside the museum, and whose interdisciplinary nature constantly increases, together with the cross contamination between the virtual and the physical dimension.

On the one hand, the discussion will touch theoretical issues, questioning how nowadays the Internet crosses artistic production, and confronting different ethical approaches, mostly when acting within the institution’s walls. On the other hand, practical experience of curating will be put on the table to raise conversation around new possible paths of curatorial practise, inside the museum’s walls and beyond.

Internet of Things (IoT) claims to connect every object to the Internet, and it is emerging as a new sort of media. IoT paradigm challenges many fields and disciplines including cultural heritage. The new ontology of object implied by IoT paradigm offers a new vision for cultural artefacts being simultaneously pervasive, like social media and Internet, and promoting a kind of interaction both physical and digital, away from usual screen based model. This can reflect on a new ontological nature for museum or cultural heritage artefacts: their documentary representation and the way the audience experience and interact with them.

Set in the relatively new and fast developing field of IoT, the talk proposes a new vision and design framework for it. The new entanglement of the Internet of People and the Internet of Things as a new dimension is here defined as the Internet of Props. IoP provides an ontological performative theory and framework to broaden a poorly articulated field that can influence the museum and cultural heritage experiences. The talk will introduce the IoT and the IoP framework with a practical example of implementation to support the development of cultural spaces such as smart museum or smart cultural heritage.

What is culture in cyberspace? In Australia, Canada, the US and parts of Europe, some artists have gained access to computer networks and are using them to make and distribute art. Those working in a Euro-American artistic tradition often experiment with conferencing software to create works that evolve from a process of participatory, interactive communication. Native American artists in the US have developed online graphic share-art, which represents their distinct cultural identity, and feeds their traditional (offline) communities. In many 3rd world countries where poverty is high, and computers and phone lines are rare, networking projects are generally operated by non-governmental organisations or educational institutions, and tend to focus on economic or social development, not cultural preservation or participation.

How will cybercultures evolve? Is it important for cultural participation in cyberspace? And if so, how can and is equitable access made available to all cultural groups? What will happen to cultural groups that remain offline? Will cultural groups that do access cyberspace lose their distinct identities through a process of interaction? And if so, is such an occurrence cultural evolution or homogenisation —something to explore or something to avoid at all costs? What is the role of cyber-cultural activity in cyberspace itself; what is its role in the offline culture that initiated it?

As a virtual panel, Cultures in Cyberspace will be conducted as an open panel within a number of computer network communities, ranging from internationally distributed networks, to local BBS. Participants will include cultural workers as well as cyberspace citizens who are interested in the issue. TISEA participants are invited to contribute to the panel discussion, direct from its TISEA site.

Panel Statement

If there is any overarching concern that can be identified in artistic and cultural practices of the past few decades, it would have to be named as subjectivity, and the examination of how it is shaped through various representational apparatuses. Some would protest the resulting self-consciousness, not to say politicization, of cultural production, probably most acutely felt in the theory-laden period of the visual arts from the late seventies through the eighties. But another, more interesting and pertinent result of this period is the recognition that the sciences to put forward, and indeed are built upon, representational models that are inextricably bound up with human subjects, their histories and desires. Paul Feyerabend outlines an epistemological relationship between the work of scientific researchers and artists in the following way: performing in their different styles and using different languages and skills, scientists produce results that often coagulate into entire but mutually exclusive worlds. These worlds cannot be detached from the languages or the methods used. Extending this point of view to non-scientific cultures, we arrive at the assumption that what we find when applying material, social, literary technologies to Being are not the structures and properties of Being itself, but the ways in which Being reacts to human interference. (From “Theoreticians, Artists and Artisans” in Leonardo, Vol. 29, No. 1, p. 27, 1996) Feyerabend’s intention is not to collapse the two types of Research into one worldview, nor to prove how creative scientists really are. Rather, he reconsiders the interrelationship between material and theoretical processes in both art and science, with a view toward re-situating the grand search for truth, or at least for meaning, within culturally specific moments. One feature of our current moment is that, through technology, the sciences constitute a paradigm of collectivized desire. Technologies are the meeting ground between theory and practice where this desire manifests, with promises to improve the functionality of the soma and the psyche, as well as to heal the wounded soul: the appeal of Virtual environments / cyberspace / hyperspace is its promise of an infinite expansion of the perceptual world; artificial intelligence, artificial life and genetic technologies are to reveal the complexities of human behaviour and its evolution, and give us control over destiny and mortality. There is no intention here to criticize the goals of scientists or developers of technology, nor to appropriate trendy science metaphors for cultural theory. Instead, the proposal of this panel is of a more generally intellectual nature, which is, to consider ways in which complex, layered representations can keep subjectivity, the social world and also the natural world fully in view. The idea is that such a point of view is important for any designer of a Reality model, be it artist, theorist or scientist. After C.P. Snow’s The Two Cultures, a recent book expands on the idea of a third culture consisting of “those scientists and other thinkers in the empirical world who, through their work and expository writing, are taking the place of the traditional intellectual in rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are.” (John Brockman,The Third Culture, Simon and Schuster, 1996). The great men (sic) of letters are a thing of the past, Brockman declares. This statement drops like a lead weight into the ferment of a cultural scene that is not necessarily interested in replacing one intellectual pantheon with another, nor in accepting the idea that the sciences are overtaking other knowledges in constituting culture. But what we have until now called culture, in a literary and artistic sense, is beginning to recognize the problem of how to engage with scientific enquiry. This has come about via the burgeoning of technologies that very obviously have a cultural impact. Some of the current debate among creators of reality models concerns the empirical basis of those models, and seems to be distorted rather than enriched by the interdisciplinary of the “third culture.” As one school of thought applies social and political critique to the history and practices of science, an opposing school feels that this politicization ignores and undermines the crucial claim of scientific work to facts and truths based in the natural world. This has become a completely polarized argument, and not simply polarized between the cultural domain and the scientific one. A recent manifestation of its vituperativeness appeared in a report about a hoax article by physicist Alan Sokal which was published in the “postmodern” journal Social Text (The New York Times, Sunday, May 26 1996). Sokal’s paper was couched in pomo jargon, but deliberately included gross errors and misrepresentations meant to catch out the journal’s editors. They meanwhile perceived it as an important gesture on the part of a hard scientist to be engaged with current cultural studies issues. This incident does point seriously, if cynically, to the question of expertise even as it reinforces the belief that science (and in particular, physics) is the discourse of ultimate authority. This is the cultural context for our panel, its backdrop. The crossovers of areas of interest and expertise on the panel are these:

1. Eliot Handelman: music with cognitive science
2. Jeanne Randolph: art theory and criticism with psychiatry
3. Phoebe Sengers: cultural studies with artificial intelligence
4. Nell Tenhaaf: visual art with biogenetics,

Panel:  Chasing Ghosts: Reactive Notation and Extreme Sight Reading

One can take the sight read­ing and real- time score read­ing from dif­fer­ent points of view but the basic idea of both is ac­tu­ally very sim­i­lar. When we ques­tion sight read­ing, it is as an im­por­tant level if in­quiry as are the fields of har­mony, struc­ture, or­ches­tra­tion, and the tempi of the pieces may vary de­pend­ing on the cen­tury of the writ­ten music. This paper’s con­tri­bu­tion to the panel will focus on the read­ing part of no­tated and non- no­tated music. Real-time music in­cludes sur­prises and as in aleatori­cism, these occur au­to­mat­i­cally as the out­come of the in­ter­pre­ta­tion may vary from be­tween per­for­mances due to the pa­ra­me­ters given at the time being. The real-time scores may in­clude di­verse styles as there is no oblig­a­tion of only mak­ing con­tem­po­rary music or clas­si­cal music; there are no bound­aries for writ­ing the music and in­ter­pre­tat­ing it.

Intersection*ology is an experimental stage piece and art installation-in-motion co-created and performed by artists Lori Hepner and Kendra Ross. The piece consists of lighting, image and video elements designed by Hepner in conjunction with musical compositions by Ross with their collaborative movement throughout. Working at the intersection between art, gender, race, and technology, Hepner & Ross use light, sound, movement, and image to situate memories of the feminine past and corporeality in the natural world into new, technologically mediated locations and spaces. The artists insert sonic and image-based queries at particular points in how they process women’s pasts into future technological landscapes of digital information. In doing so, Hepner & Ross explore how their physical, female selves are adapting, morphing, rejoicing and revolting to/in how they are perceived both physically and digitally, as their digital ecologies grow parallel to that of their physical ecologies in this new space.

As artists we explore possibilities to extend the knowledge through visual and material practices and empirical methods. We  will introduce Augmented Reality visualization practices as artistic exploration of anatomopathology. Medical digital images have been a central reference in linking different creative fields such as design, computer animation or virtual reality. As artists we claim we have a role to play by exploring the underlying processes of constructing of these images, in which the visual has a key function.This artistic exploration is conceptually defined as an exploratory practice in AR technology, speculating from areas of Art and Design with the methodologies exercised daily in two specific laboratories of Anatomic Pathology located in different geographical and discursive locations: one researching cancer and the other dementias. The main aim of this project is to investigate how AR technology, and more immersive display technologies, when located in the center of an Art­Science collaboration, can be explored in order to produce high quality science informed artistic projects and also generate interfaces to be used within the realms of medical education and training. Our goal is to enhance reality in the research across fields, adding a surplus socially engaged value for addressing an ethically challenging theme such as cancer, dementia and pathology. Differences in culture are overcome by commoninterests in democratizing understanding in pathology and medical issues, explore the underlying process of medical imaging production and human/machine interaction, touching the truth at distance, by exploring creatively the technology of AR achieving an interface and softwareapplication of the interaction with real pathological tissue, and by extending the perspectives and boundaries on science and art as research. This team previous succeeded experiences when working in scientific collaborations/laboratories allow us to claim that when crossing territories results are thrilling new transdiciplinary knowledge and innovative understandings

Artist Statement

Keyword Intervention uses the most popular search phrases from top search engines in forms that allude to the transitory nature of materiality. On one hand, it displays search phrases on a website where they are indexed by the search engines, appearing in the search results themselves, creating an intervention into the consumption of popular culture. Users searching for these words click on the Keyword Intervention site in the search engine results, and encounter a message about the intervention. This manifestation acknowledges that the Internet is a public space, where like the physical world, artists can enact dialogue by intervening in that space.

‘The first manifestation using the image of the mandala is a reference to the appreciation of this changing culture. The search phrases emanate slowly from the centre of a circular form on the ground via a computer projection. It is intentionally meditative, similar to the creation of sand paintings by Buddhist monks, a religious construction acknowledging our temporary material forms. The method by which these words gain popularity has a relationship to historical searches; in quests for knowledge or enlightenment, pilgrimages, crusades for religious artifacts, etc.
Another manifestation reconfigures the search phrases into a starburst or mandala data visualization referencing the hypnotizing worship of popular content. Here the most popular result is found in the centre, where, similar to the use of mandala, we are at one with god. Marketers insert themselves into the public space of the Internet by using popular search engine terms (a.k.a. keywords) to increase traffic, and ultimately sales to commercial websites. Marketing tactics such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) help to intercept searches via these terms, creating desire for their products by inserting themselves into this interaction. Like other work by the artist, Keyword Intervention co-opts advertising strategies to cultivate critical reflection. Both manifestations operate in real time, using public space and publicly available information to construct a place of dialogue through new forms.

Technical information for Keyword Intervention Installation
1. Mount the digital projector to the ceiling or wall with the included hardware so that it points towards the ground. It can be projected onto any surface.
2. The higher you install it the larger the image will appear.
3. Power and VGA cables can be run down the wall to a computer, or it can be hidden using acoustic tiles or other means.
4. The computer runs a single executable file (Mac APP or Windows EXE). The computer needs wireless or ethernet internet access to connect to artist’s website (though a video version that doesn’t require an internet connection is also available)
Space requirements for the work (illumination, isolation, size)
The size of the projection on the floor is variable depending on the projector and its distance from the floor. A height of about 4 meters it usually covers a 3 meter in diameter area. There is no sound, and it can function in surprisingly medium illuminated spaces.
Software instructions
Run a small executable file on the computer. The script on the artist’s server takes care of the rest. Daily requirements:
1.When you start the projector up it will take a little time to correct the positioning of the image. This is normal and will cease after a few minutes.
2. At the end of the day just close the lid to the laptop. In the morning open it and tap the space bar to wake it up.
3. Turn the projector off to conserve the bulb and energy. Using the remote, hit the power button once, then again. Wait for the bulb to cool before attempting to move or restart it.
A cross-section of the installation showing the distribution of the various elements within the exhibition space, as well as technical factors such as electrical plugs, Internet connections and access to the space.
Minimum computer system requirements
Macintosh: PowerPC® G4, G5 or Intel® Processor, Mac OS X 10.3 +, 256 MB RAM Windows: Intel® Pentium® III or equivalent processor, Windows® XP +, 256 MB RAM

Current debates on telematic forms in art and performance often centre on notions of immediacy, presence and virtual representation, challenging conventions concerning the perception of time and memory. In non-media-driven modes of performance, the notion of immediacy encompasses the reception and perception of semiotic systems at work simultaneously with their presentation: the performer’s physical body is perceived directly along with movement, actions or speech onstage. In technology-driven forms like telematic performances, not only is the mediatised vision of the body and/or scenographic elements presented as a re-presentation of the physical body and narrative in a complementary digital form, but also, the transmission of computerized information, principally through video streaming, often produces temporal delay, or time-lag, between the transmission and reception of elements of a given semiotic system.

This time-lag is the focus of Inter_Views, an interactive telematic dance and theatre performance devised and staged by Jem Kelly and Andrea Davidson. Inspired by Bergson’s notions of durée and memory, notably, two memories, regressive memory, oriented towards the past, and habit or prolongation memory, oriented towards the future, Inter_Views, as a new media creation, tests Bergson’s notions of memory and their link to the perception of time and space.

The paper will analyse how, contrary to other digital dance performances that use technologies as means to ‘embody’, ‘augment’ or transform the live presence of dancers, here, an interaction between present and past is established whereby physical and virtual images play on the audience’s perception and recollection of actions. The project innovates by presenting actions that are currently taking place as well as those that have already taken place and those that are predicted to occur as a form of future memory.

The paper will then focus on the work’s visual device that creates a temporal and spatial mise-en-abyme conceived to map out a memory space in which the dancers and interacting “spectator-instructors” participate in a collaborative intentionality structured at the intersection of temporal immediacy and delay. It will notably be shown how a palimpsest of moments in an unfolding story creates a form of re-embodied memory that is simultaneously reactive and interpretative.

Abstract

We describe a system and technique for allowing mobile device-carrying users to leverage camera-equipped external displays to enhance their ability to manage, navigate, and interact with data sets of varying size. In particular, we have built a system that allows users to use external displays as an extension of their own device display through the transfer of selected device context to the external display itself. The user may then navigate and interact with this data using the device. We also demonstrate a more general use case, supporting a public kiosk-style of interaction, wherein multiple users have the ability to affect the content visible on the external display. These users may select and transfer any of this content to the device, where
it may be interacted with and sent back to the display for future visitors to experience or modify.

Abstract (long paper)

This paper considers the complex relationship between ethics and social technologies. It is particularly concerned with what it means to be intimate or share ideas of intimacy with robots and avatars. Looking to the world of theatre and situating our ethical framework within two specific plays we are able to examine new technological narratives that inspire critical reflection on our current and future relationships, sexual taboos and ethical practices. It also poses the question of the role of the arts in preparing society for dramatic technological and social shifts that challenge what we might think of current ideas of what it means to be human and values that have troubled debates between the biological and the artificial. Such shifts are not gender, or diversity free and we recognize that ethical aspects of technology are always person-dependent, culturedependent and situation-dependent. Within ethics, discussions of privacy and identity move to the foreground of our discussions.

The author considers the meaning of interactivity and the potentials of virtual environments, to explore, in particular, the total visual field and its periphery. She presents her artistic project whose aim is to make the viewer more sensitive to his or her own perception, respecting images and indistinct sensations they may give birth to.

Abstract

Strange enough, with such an apparent distance between the media worlds of the ancient Romans and ours, a central idea for artificial storage corresponds across the ages. Although in the meantime major paradigm shifts have taken place, and two new ‘galaxies’ have emerged – that of Gutenberg and that of Turing – not only some vague anthropological constant, but a worked-out concept of a memorizing technique survives, even though in quite a different format. The Greeks had made an art of it, and it is still known as ‘mnemonics’ today: the idea of using loci and imagines agentes (places and active vivid images) for dynamic, active storage of res and verba (things and words). The idea of rooms is basic to most computer games consisting of connected rooms or screens, and each is associated with things to see and do there. The same kind of spatial interface metaphor appears again in the network in the form of MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons), and here we also find back ‘vivid agents’. That this ‘world simulation’ could be at the base of a social, action-oriented, experiential interface to the Matrix is the main idea of this paper.

The presentation will contain a detailed description and specification of >tree< and >flighttracker<. >tree< accesses the source code of a web domain through its URL and transforms the syntactic structure of the web site into a tree structure represented by an image (with sound). >flighttracker< generates a global view of over 30,000 flight movements in real-time by reading out the flight data of the corresponding day, fully operable by the user with a wireless game controller pad—including the options: local position, time zone and time set.

MED TV is a UK based Kurdish language satellite station which seeks to provide a normal range of news, entertainment and cultural programmes to Kurds, to all those in its footprint of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. The unique history of the Kurdish people, divided by territorial borders and dispersed as refugees around the world, is what makes MED TV an extraordinary enterprise. Satellite technology of the modern world, often seen as an implement to abolish cultural differences, can also be a tool to preserve them. MED TV has followed a policy of giving equal prominence to all Kurdish dialects and makes special provisions for the religious interests of different Kurdish groups. The service is valued alike by Kurds in Europe, cut off from their native region and by Kurds in Turkey, where education, broadcasting and publishing in Kurdish is illegal. MED has received reports of Kurds listening to the station even in Iran — where all satellite dishes are banned. The use of Kurdish and the assertion of Kurdish identity is the subject of intense political controversy; and MED TV, from its beginning in 1995, has to develop in the face of a well-funded campaign to close the station down. Yet still MED TV has survived and flourished and is now in its fourth year of transmitting to a potential audience of 30 million, 18 hours a day. During the !SEA Mediated-Nations panel we all have an opportunity to participate in one of MED’s programmes — Zaningeha MED (University MED). The panel of invited guests in our Brussels studio together with all the viewers will have the opportunity to look at the impact of technology on cultural identity.

Introduction “The value of knowledge transfer in Aya Yala Abya Yala”

Introspection enables people to interact with microorganisms and cells derived from their own body in a non-invasive way. The contradiction of interacting with these alien, unfamiliar life forms (which are nonetheless intimately connected with our bodies) focuses on the boundaries between self and non-self and the cultural interest in bio-identification.? Reflecting on animal experimentation and the relationships between species, the Protozoa Games interactive installations allow humans and live protozoa to compete in a pinball-like environment mediated by digital microscope and motion tracking technologies.? If time allows, other projects in physical computing will also be discussed.

Abstract

Introspection:

Introspection enables people to interact with microorganisms and cells derived from their own body and those of others. It asks visitors to reflect on the place of humanity within the larger biosphere. The installation’s status as hybrid scientific/medical enterprise and media/game asks questions about access to scientific and medical protocols and new worlds made accessible by science. The contradiction of interacting with these alien, unfamiliar life forms (which are nonetheless intimately connected with our bodies) focuses on the boundaries between self and non-self. The request of visitors to surrender cells or body fluids brings home the often unspoken intimacy of biological research. It was shown in the Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon.

The installation reflects on our culture’s increasing focus on the microbiological. Human traits, capabilities, and identities are searched for at the unseen cellular and genetic levels. What should we make of this trend? How should non-scientists participate? It is urgent that the public develop deep literacy with microbiological tools and concepts. Emerging generations of networked, automated microscopes may usher in wider access just as the microcomputer did in its realm. This installation appropriates this emerging technology by reverse engineering it so it can become part of media art. Visitors are invited to play four ‘games’. 1. Explore 2. Mystery 3. Match 4. Blow-up

Explore: Visitors pick areas of their own cell sample for microscopic inspection by moving in the installation space. Motion detection creates a homunculus on screen whose movements parallel those of the visitor. The event seeks to demystify biological research methodology by asking visitors to engage in a mini-study of their own body as part of media art

Mystery: Where Did This Come From? Visitors try to identify what place in their cell sample is the origin of a blown up mystery image. The installation invites viewers to contemplate the micro world and to reflect on a biological era that must work at this unseen level relying on instrumentation for access.

Match: A FBI wanted poster from the future replaces fingerprints with images of cell samples from a randomly selected prior visitor. The viewer is challenged to identify which of six previous viewer portraits is the person who gave the samples. The event asks viewers to reflect on the changing nature of identity when so much cultural attention is focused on the microbiological level. With successful identification, visitors are rewarded with lights flashing in the environment and a sample of the prior visitor’s recording of an answer to questions about things on the inside – such as “what is inside of you?” “how do you know what is inside of someone else?

Blow up: Visitors can pick one area of their cell sample for detailed examination. Movements and gestures in the space can bring access to increasing levels of magnification. More details are seen but is any more known?

Performance and installation artist Sara Schnadt talks about three recent projects that are concerned with technology innovation, landscape and our perception of space. One is an absurd performance about our efforts to quantify the universe. The second creates a collision of ordinary and virtual space using everyday materials. The third traces her travel history within a constructed collective landscape. Much of Schnadt’s work involves representations or data that translate large quantities of socially resonant information into poetic forms, including data visualization. Schnadt often performs within accompanying sculptural environments, attempting to articulate the personal within virtual and technological innovation.

Abstract

The computer and the digital environment it has given birth to, ushers out fixed surfaces with fixed content and begins an era of variable surfaces, grafting, re-combining and customization (Electrotexture).

From the grid to the net. From metaphor to morph. From intended meaning to emerging meaning. Input and Output devices that shape our mental models. Art and design that is never finished. Art and design that’s a rumor. Art and design built to mutate. Not Graphic Designers, but Knowledge Designers, Interaction Designers and Dialog Specialists, constructing environments which facilitate turning information into knowledge (Post-Design). The new technologies of electronic agents, universal communication devices, the culturated hyper-surface of architecture and hypersonic transportation, lead to new art and design paradigms: art as communication replaces art as object; the dissolution of the distinction between personal and public experience; the waning of the gravity aesthetic. Post-design/Electrotexture means relinquishing the shared ideals of 20th Century modernism for the shared virtual experiential landscape of the 21st Century net.

My paper is a presentation and discussion of my academic-artistic installation Investigating Interactive Beauty (IIB). This installation forms the empiric part of a larger academic investigation of the notion of beauty in interactive art. IIB is an art installation and an empirical experiment that allows for data collection.  The research-art installation IIB thus encompasses an aesthetic experience and engages the participant in reflections on the nature of beauty in interactive art.

The basic idea of IIB is the contradictory notions of contemplative and performative beauty, represented on the one hand by the static representational genre of the art of still life paintings, and on the other hand the very artistic act of creating and composing still life set-ups (based on the hypothesis, that interactive artefacts offer and modulate the participants’ creative (poietic) impetus. The installation gives the participant the opportunity to compose the physical model of a still life by selecting and arranging typical still life objects (vases, flowers, food, dead animals, etc.) on a table.

The participant can at the same time see the photographic result of her arrangement real time as a projection, showing the video picture of the arranged still life. But the picture is a digitally manipulated picture. The degree and kind of modification depends on the amount and kind of the participant’s physical actions in space. The modification modalities are inspired by exponents of art history’s development from representational art to various kinds of pictorial motion abstractions (Balla, Boccioni, Duchamps, Muybridge).

Questionnaires, one before and one after the engagement with the interactive artefact, frame the research-art installation. The ‘pre-interaction’ questionnaire seeks to get information about the participants’ general notion of artistic beauty. The post-interaction part is an open-ended questionnaire followed by a brief personal interview on interactive beauty, as a reflection on the participants’ experience with the installation. The experiment has at the time of the abstract submission not been completed. The academic results of the experiment will be presented at the symposium.

The digital sublime refers to digital-composite photography that presents “the existence of something unpresentable” (Lyotard, cited in Linn, 1996, p. 97) and that renders a matchless look – a sophisticated fabrication, a perfect and clean composition, a maximum color saturation, a multiple-point perspective, and stunning or new-fangled content (Foster et al., 2004; Lipkin, 2005; Marien, 2002; Ohlin, 2002). Dissatisfied with the representation of the outer world that can be easily accomplished by pressing a single shutter button, photographers who painstakingly synthesize images together to create the digital sublime seem to be compelled to create personal versions of the world, which may be closer to the beliefs through which they interpret and interact with the world.

To gain a better understanding of these photographers’ digital sublime photographs, I propose that we investigate the artist’s views of reality by asking, “What is your definition of reality?” and “How do you visualize your reality in digital composite?” This paper cites the photographic project Occupations by contemporary photographer Nathan Baker of Chicago as an example.

I first introduce Baker’s process of photographic creation, including his initial feelings, thoughts, ideas, and finally, the actual production. I then relate his definition of reality, and the strategies that he employs to visualize reality in his composite photographs. Next, I interpret and find Baker’s four layers of reality, and cite suitable theory, realism, to explicate his work. Last, I conclude with the finding that the “unpresentable” substance that his photographs try to present reflects Baker’s experiences, comprised of sensory stimulation and intellectual ideas. This study has implications for how digital sublime photographs can be studied and taught.

The e-MobiLArt (European Mobile Lab for Interactive media Artists) project was tailored around the process of collaboratively creating interactive installations. The main objective of this project was to provide its participants with a multicultural, interdisciplinary context, so as to aid their collaboration in order to create interactive installations. Moreover it aimed at supporting the exhibition of the artworks they produced and the mobility of both artists and their works within Europe. The collaborative process took place during three workshops (in Athens, Rovaniemi and  Vienna) as well as on-line. The artworks created were exhibited in two exhibitions that took place in the Biennale of Thessaloniki and in Katowice. Thirty three experienced artists, coming from the areas of visual, electronic, interactive art, architecture, performance, video and sonic art were selected to participate in e-MobiLArt. These participants formed 14 groups and worked together in order to develop their projects.

e-MobiLArt was an experimental project and as such, it cannot be evaluated by focusing on the artistic result alone, as presented in the two exhibitions, but mainly by investigating the processes that it entailed and the impact of these processes on all parties and individuals involved. This paper presents and discusses the results of an evaluation, which was conducted via questionnaires and interviews and attempted to document and analyse the collaborative process from the perspectives of all participants.

Collaboration occurred at various levels between the groups of participants (artists’ groups, organizers, curatorial advisors, etc.) as well as within each group. The outcome of this research reflects on certain important aspects of collaboration, focusing on specific group structures, roles, hierarchy, group formation and organization methodologies for communication and mediation as well as investigating how creative ideas and collaborative strategies can emerge within a group formation. The study showed that interaction amongst participants was determined by a series of: objective factors (technology utilized, constraints of the fixed timetable of the project, technical and financial constraints of the production, artists’ background and skills) as well as subjective factors (interpersonal relations, personality of individuals involved and behavior within groups, degree of involvement of members of each group).

With the widespread employment of algorithmic trading in the stock market, the acceleration of economic time and its disassociation from ‘lived’ time proves a necessary site for discourse. The model of an investment that does not entail an expected return – reliant on investment’s etymological context as the ‘act of putting on’ and ‘surrounding’ – allows one inhabitation or presence without the calculation of discrete time. I situate this critique within Jacques Derrida’s Given Time and Alain Badiou’s politics of ‘subtraction’, suggesting new media art (re)opens the field of desire to think and practice such investment without term: a conceptualization of an economy of time apart from the time and speed of the economic.

ISEA2009, Group PERFORMATIVE announced the performance of combination dance and technology. Major topic of that was the real-time connectivity between dancers and visual images. In this time, I would like to introduce the inter-relationship between the performance and the action of inspired people by the performance.

Korean traditional music ‘Samul nori’ is composed of percussion instruments. And ‘Samul nori’ played impromptu performance using patterns of ancient rhythm. This feature of ‘Samul nori’ has been unchanged as the most of ancient music.

September, 12, 2010, Korean maestro ‘Duksoo Kim’ performed ‘Samul nori’ with Group PERFORMATIVE, the technical staff company. One is ensemble of big and small drums. The other is variation of 4 different types of percussion instruments. We used a visualization system generated by rhythm of percussion instruments in this performance.

Originally, we wanted to use various input sound factors like pitch, melody and rage in this system. In the simulation, however, we found too many input factors make too tacky result.

Therefore, we chose the rhythm, which makes the most dramatic result, as major factor.

And we programmed music’s volume and speed could affect the image’s size and visual effect. Besides, we added real-time operation function which could make more various images in performance. Fortunately, this change was more effective in the performance than the original plan.

At the performance, the most interesting situation has occurred in control room. During the performance, technical operator was immersed in rhythm of percussion instruments.

And he began to manipulate the operating system to improvise without his cognizance.

His inspired control has been synchronized to the performance. As a result, the accidental link was able to express the feature of music like originally planned.

I dare say the operator’s inspired control was invisible performance in control room.

With the rapid advancement of technology in the photographic industry, more photographers, including Jeff Wall, Pedro Meyer, Gregory Crewdson, Barry Frydlender, and Loretta Lux, are tremendously relying on the digital facilities (Sung, 2008) and embracing the style of digitally synthesized photographs. Using computers to combine pieces of images, digital synthesis requires a new method of production and renders a matchless look—a sophisticated fabrication, a perfect and clean aesthetic, a maximum color saturation, a multiple‑point perspective, and stunning or newfangled content (Marien,  2002; Ohlin, 2002; Foster, Krauss, Bois, & Buchloh, 2004; Lipkin, 2005). Abandoning the traditional one‑shot mode of production that produces so‑called truth‑laden photographs, digital photographers use computers to combine various pieces of many images together to construct a new photograph. This method of production creates digital synthesis, which is generally considered having little association with truth or realities. Dissatisfied with the representation of the outer world that can be easily accomplished by pressing a single shutter button, however, photographers who painstakingly synthesize images together seem to be compelled to create personal visions of the world. These photographers concretize their visions that cannot be seen with the naked eye and that are closer to the beliefs through which they interpret and interact within the world. To gain a better understanding of these photographers’ digital‑synthesized photographs, I investigate the photographer’s worldview, or what s/he values as knowledge. A more approachable way to inquire into a digital photographer’s knowledge is to ask about his or her view of reality with questions such as “What is your definition of reality?” “What notion of reality do you represent in your photographs?” and “How do you visualize your reality in photographs?” After knowing their layers of reality, the deepest and the most sophisticated layer can be considered as their knowledge, which may explain the invisible realities presented to viewers.

This paper investigates what invisible entities the digital synthesis attempts to represent. This study presents four American photographers whose constant style is the digital synthesis: Jaime Kennedy (Ohio), Tom Bamberger (Wisconsin), Tom Chambers (Virginia), and Nathan Baker (Illinois). This study employs an interpretivist methodology with which I aimed to investigate artists’ intentions, meanings, and worldviews behind their actions of producing digital composites, as well as their views on the digital medium. In order to do so, one‑on‑one interview was selected as the main method for data collection. In addition, I collected other supportive data, including their artist statements and publications. After the analysis of individual artist, I discuss several findings drawn from the previous investigation. For the implications to photographic education, this study suggests that in order to appreciate and teach about the knowledge provided by digitally synthesized photographs, photographic educators need to incorporate pedagogies that address both the appreciation of fine arts and the critiques of visual culture in classrooms, so as to pay attention to the aesthetics features of artworks and a deepened understanding of their contexts.

My associations to the theme ‘Lux Aeterna/Eternal Light’ in the context of my project:
• Projection, lightpaintings, animating with light, shadows
• Illuminate a story, brightening a day, viewing in a new light

Involuntary Journeys is a storytelling projection that merges my interest in socially engaged art with the aesthetics of animated, projected light under my umbrella term of ‘Engaged Media’, spanning several visual platforms. I will combine two projections: the interactive map of individual refugee routes is overlaid with an animated light-drawing to build a rich visual texture.

Involuntary Journeys is a blog and mapping project based on refugee interviews I conducted in a month-long storytelling project in Greece. The stories are the basis for geolocated journeys on Google Earth and Google Maps. The viewer can follow the story along an interactive path with links to narratives and photos – or view the journey as a time-based video. In the ISEA exhibition space the map will be accompanied by an animated overlay projection poetically relating to the stories using light and shadow as an associative layer to the geographical facts.

This second projection is site-specific and can be moved to portable or bike-mounted projections.

Panel: Crisis Narrative of Landscape: Future Inherent

In­com­pat­i­ble El­e­ments is an on­go­ing pro­ject that evolved dur­ing an artist res­i­dency at Per­for­mance Space, Car­riage­works, Syd­ney in 2009. The media art in­stal­la­tion ex­plores ways of rep­re­sent­ing the re­la­tion­ship be­tween na­ture and cul­ture, em­bed­ding po­etic texts into an­i­mated satel­lite im­ages of global land­scapes at par­tic­u­lar risk from cli­mate change. Starrs & Cmielewski en­gage in a kind of dig­i­tal geo­chem­istry, ter­raform­ing new wa­ter­ways and bar­ren patches of sand that tell sto­ries in wind­ing, cur­sive script. – ex­cerpt from the cat­a­logue essay for In­com­pat­i­ble El­e­ments :  Bec Dean, Per­for­mance Space, Syd­ney, 2010.

Panel: The Madness of Methods: Emerging Arts Research Practices

Grounded in a long­stand­ing in­ter­est in the pho­to­graphic, my artis­tic re­search is partly based around the idea of the in­dex­i­cal­ity of the pho­to­graphic doc­u­ment as a trace of the real and a record of the past. My work at­tempts to probe the ques­tion of whether pho­to­graphic in­dex­i­cal­ity func­tions dif­fer­ently when ex­pe­ri­enced within a mu­ta­ble dig­i­tal en­vi­ron­ment than in a fixed ana­log one. In this paper, I will pre­sent an analy­sis of sev­eral in­ter­ac­tive new media pro­jects that I have been in­stru­men­tal in de­vel­op­ing. These are works of com­puter in­ter­face de­sign that fea­ture both pho­to­graphic and cin­e­matic im­agery in ways that rep­re­sent space, place and time in spe­cific cul­tural con­texts. This analy­sis will draw on the­o­ret­i­cal writ­ings about the in­dex­i­cal in cin­ema, pho­tog­ra­phy, new media and lan­guage by such writ­ers as Roland Barthes, Mary Ann Doane and Ros­alind Krauss.

Panel: Variable Reality – Inter-formalities in Digital/Analogue Arts

Rieser will de­scribe the In­side Out sculp­tural ex­change ex­hi­bi­tion cur­rently tour­ing the UK, which has been shown in Syd­ney, Aus­tralia and 4 UK venues. The pro­ject, which ex­changed dig­i­tal files across con­ti­nents and then gen­er­ated the ob­jects using rapid pro­to­type print­ing meth­ods, was the first major in­ter­na­tional at­tempt to ob­vi­ate the phys­i­cal re­al­iza­tion of the sculp­tures by the artists them­selves. The talk will ex­plore no­tions of ma­te­ri­al­ity in re­la­tion to the dig­i­tal and how rad­i­cally artis­tic prac­tice is chang­ing around the idea of hy­brid or over­lap­ping re­al­i­ties as being in­ter­re­lated and of equal cul­tural sig­nif­i­cance.

Panel:  Intimate TV: Webcamming & Social Life-logging In the Surveillant-Sousveillant Space

Through­out my life I have been ra­di­ographed, sono­graphed, scanned, and had my blood pres­sure, bone struc­ture, mus­cu­lar mass and heart beats mea­sured… I keep my­self safe. Any strange anom­aly can be de­tected, pho­tographed and analysed. Sur­veil­lance is needed. Tech­nol­ogy is needed for sur­veil­lance to per­sist. In the name of health and well-be­ing, one is ad­vised to watch, to pre­vent and obey med­ical pro­ce­dures. Con­tin­u­ously, I am pre­sented with im­ages me­di­ated by tech­nol­ogy, per­tain­ing to a code I can not ac­cess for I lack the knowl­edge to in­ter­pret it, and yet they pro­lif­er­ate around me – pri­vate, in­ti­mate, im­ages of lungs, of an ovary, of a de­faulted organ, of an un­born baby…  This is a pa­per-per­for­mance on the pol­i­tics in­volved in the sur­veil­lance of the self, ques­tion­ing tech­nol­ogy as a “bio-tool” for com­mu­ni­ca­tion of in­ter­nal im­ages that are en­gaged with the self. This is also a bio-pa­per-per­for­mance of the per­former’s body, watch­ing her­self being watched by med­ical ma­chin­ery, ex­pos­ing a se­ries of per­sonal med­ical im­ages. Con­tin­u­ing the work I have been de­vel­op­ing con­cern­ing in­ti­mate tech­nol­ogy and in­ti­mate sto­ries, I in­tend to ex­plore the aes­thetic of tech­nolo­gies that sur­round our every­day life.

Panel: New Media Art Education in Central and Eastern Europe in the Last Two Decades: experiments and transition

This paper pre­sents the re­sults ob­tained and ex­pe­ri­ences gained through the teach­ing of var­i­ous short work­shops in the Baltic States (as well as else­where) in the spe­cific com­bi­na­tion of in­ter­ac­tiv­ity and mov­ing image. The work­shops com­bine the­o­ret­i­cal and prac­ti­cal ap­proaches – a func­tional pro­to­type of an ‘in­ter­ac­tive film’ will be pro­duced by stu­dents – and have been run by the au­thor in Tallinn, Tartu, Riga, Liepaja and Vil­nius from 2002 until the pre­sent day. Usu­ally these work­shops have been in of­fi­cial ed­u­ca­tional es­tab­lish­ments – prin­ci­pally those of art and de­sign – al­though more openly re­cruited work­shops have also taken place. An in­her­ent char­ac­ter­is­tic of mak­ing an in­ter­ac­tive film is that a com­bi­na­tion of spe­cific dis­ci­plines are re­quired to cre­ate the final out­come, pri­mar­ily film­mak­ing, in­ter­ac­tion de­sign, and nar­ra­tiv­ity. Meth­ods of teach­ing this, in which a work­shop par­tic­i­pant may not have any ex­pe­ri­ence or back­ground knowl­edge of one or more of these dis­ci­plines, and in which col­lab­o­ra­tion would be de­sir­able, will be dis­cussed.

De­spite the some­what spe­cific-sound­ing ob­jec­tive of these work­shops, the re­sult­ing arte­facts have dis­played a huge va­ri­ety of final forms and for­mats, in­clud­ing in­stal­la­tion art, live per­for­mance, in­ter­ac­tive DVD and web­sites. Al­though the scope of the final arte­fact is in­evitably lim­ited given a one or two week timescale, some of the prod­ucts have un­der­gone sub­se­quent ex­ploita­tion. This has oc­curred through pub­lic ex­hi­bi­tion, pub­lic per­for­mance, re­me­di­a­tion, and ex­pan­sion/re­make at a later date into a more sub­stan­tial prod­uct. Work­shop out­comes will be com­pared and con­trasted to pick out whether clear dif­fer­ences are ap­par­ent ac­cord­ing firstly to the vary­ing pro­file of the stu­dents in­volved, and sec­ondly be­tween re­sults from work­shops in the Baltic States and those (also run by the au­thor) in other Eu­ro­pean coun­tries – some of which have in­volved a de­lib­er­ately en­forced mix­ture of stu­dents from both artis­tic and tech­ni­cal back­grounds. The paper also dis­cusses whether the types of out­come have changed dur­ing the last seven years as a re­sult of de­vel­op­ments in tech­nol­ogy and so­cial media.

Panel:  Interart / Intersensorium. On the Interrelation of Media and the Senses

Synes­the­sia has re­ceived much at­ten­tion in sci­ence, art and in par­tic­u­lar in the over­lap­ping fields of dig­i­tal art and in­ter­me­dia in the last decades. Artists and sci­en­tists in these fields share a com­mon in­ter­est in human per­cep­tion. In the arts, synes­the­sia refers to a range of phe­nom­ena of si­mul­ta­ne­ous per­cep­tion of two or more stim­uli as one gestalt ex­pe­ri­ence. In neu­ro­science, synes­the­sia is more strictly de­fined as the elic­i­ta­tion of per­cep­tual ex­pe­ri­ences in the ab­sence of the nor­mal sen­sory stim­u­la­tion. About one in twenty-three per­sons has a type of ‘neu­ro­log­i­cal’ synes­the­sia. Over 60 types have been re­ported, and peo­ple dif­fer in in­ten­sity of the ex­pe­ri­ence. The most com­mon type of synes­the­sia is col­ored week­days, while the type of per­ceiv­ing col­ored let­ters and num­bers is most stud­ied by sci­en­tists, and the type of col­ored sound and music is most ex­plored by artists.

The neu­ro­sci­en­tific de­f­i­n­i­tion of synes­the­sia lim­its the num­ber of so-called ‘synes­thetes’ to 4% in the pop­u­la­tion. This num­ber con­trasts with the large amount of peo­ple who are in­ter­ested in art forms that pre­sent synes­thetic ex­pe­ri­ences to the pub­lic. This raises ques­tions like: is synes­the­sia ge­net­i­cally fixed at birth? Or is there a range of types of synes­thetic per­cep­tions in which a ge­net­i­cal dis­po­si­tion for synes­the­sia can be de­vel­oped? How wide is that range? How do bi­o­log­i­cal, so­cial and cul­tural fac­tors in­ter­act in this process? How do peo­ple de­velop dif­fer­ent synes­thetic sen­si­bil­i­ties? Slightly dif­fer­ent from the cur­rent neu­ro­sci­en­tific view on ‘neu­ro­log­i­cal synes­the­sia’, I will pro­pose a view on synes­the­sia that also in­cludes so­cial and cul­tural in­ter­ac­tions, which I as­sume will ac­count bet­ter for in­di­vid­ual dif­fer­ences in the aware­ness of synes­the­sia.

Ionic Satellite Fountain is an artwork that establishes a sensorial and spectral connection to the satellites passing over the installation site. The liquid jets created by nozzles are made of salt water, a very conductive medium. The flow of these jets is controlled by a computer that predicts the passes of satellites, positioning them with the best direction and angle for reception. The jets are connected to a radio so visitors can hear signals emitted from the satellites, with the streams serving as antennas.

In this talk I want to demonstrate how I use my phones as tools to create an artistic imagery. Starting point of my project called ‘Das Nichts / Nothing’ are screenshots from web sites that were not yet properly loaded. With highly manually skills I explore whatever can be done with these screenshots in regard to the different phones models that I have been using for this purpose.I have developed several presentation formats for this project. For now I will focus on my output for VJing.

Obsession & Hands at Work
‘Das Nichts’ became an obsession of mine. Since April 2014 I cannot help but to capture ‘nothing’ whenever a page on my smartphone needs time to load or it cannot connect to anywhere. My phone is slow though I need to be quick to capture the gap before the page properly displays it’s intended content. Starting point of my series of Sessions is usually one single screenshots that I then use for further screenshots. Did one set cover around 100 shots two years ago, I now make sessions with up to 1300 screenshots abase a single motive.

It needs some skills and all of my fingers to select and capture the desired compositions. I create one session usually in one go. Heavily working with the respective phone buttons for hours and hours my eyes by now hardly can bear the little white flash that indicates that the screenshot is made.

Restriction & Chances
By making screenshots of screenshots of screenshots. I like playing tricks with the programmer’s intention on what you may do with your pics and what you shouldn’t. Each software update leads to new aesthetics to explore and create new aspects. At the same time some aesthetics are lost. I cannot play with the tiny dust bin of iphone 3g. I have been working with three different phone models by now, which I will all bring along.

As each session of screenshots refers to a certain web site I would like to discuss the chances for commercial commissions and presentations. In-House & Indoor/Outdoor. All screenshots of this project are strictly made ‘inhouse’, that is inside my phone. I do not apply any further image alteration with photoshop. During post production of the visuals I set the image length and fading. To get a full screen image I then create simple compositing.

Each set of visuals covers one screenshot session, that stands for a certain topic and colour range. Usually one program is around four hours long. Projected onto walls and ceilings of bars, clubs and festivals around Berlin it leads to ever changing lights and moods.

Summary
With nothing but my phone and web input I manually create an imagery that explores the rich potential and variety of smartphone screenshots as an artistic media on it’s own.

This presents some interactive artwork dealing with post-industrial issues. Both the speaker’s own artwork, and wider examples from post-heavy industrial areas of the UK and North America will be discussed. Beryl Graham’s Individual Fancies, an interactive tea table installation, will be shown on video. The artwork is designed to be more rewarding when used by several people at once, and collaboration between the users is also important. When people sit at the table and ‘pour tea’, four characters reveal their stories – each is isolated in some way. Characters include a victim of crime, a South Asian homeworker, and a telecommuter. Each also finds some kind of solution in collective action, mirroring the use of the artwork. The work is humorous as well as issue-based – some of the rewards are in the form of cakes, including the “Individual Fancies” of the title.

Graham’s Rustheart is a photography/ mixed media artwork produced in North-East England, Pittsburg, Detroit, Hamilton and Buffalo. It combines large photographic triptychs with tourist trash and found objects. It deals with false rhetorics for areas of declining heavy industry and the vast changes in work patterns, gender and race roles. The project also has an Internet element which connects artists working with these issues, for example Carlos Diaz’s Unemployed Auto Workers, and Inter Animi’s abandoned spaces project in Detroit. Basic details and images of my artworks are available on my web site.

Electronic arts have now formed an autonomous environment which has set up its own structures: institutions such as the Ars Electronica Center in Linz, the ZKM in Karlsruhe or the ICC in Tokyo and meetings such as the ISEA Symposium or the SIGGRAPH Art Gallery. However, it is difficult for electronic arts to fit into the circle of contemporary art in general, and there are nearly no digital works in large events such as Documenta in Kassel or the Biennial Festival in Venice nor in large museum institutions. Does this mean that there are diverging opinions on art? Is an intersection possible? How does one reconcile technological works and artistic content?

The goal of this round table is to open a dialogue between two worlds that seldom communicate, as well as perhaps to define new possible directions for contemporary electronic art.

Moderator: Philippe Codognet.

Panelist: Manuela de Barros, Hou Hanru, and Barbara London.

To go beyond the range or grasp of human experience, or reason or belief are simple definitions of the verb to transcend. We are often encouraged to consider the global transient network of digital media as a portal to some form of transformation, either of ourselves or at least our virtual selves. It may be that at the point at which we are in danger of being overwhelmed, where there is an almost felt violence, the terror of the encounter of looking over the precipice, a State of Emergence, there is a sublime experience. Does the immensity, complexity, impenetrability of digital infrastructures fill you with existential vertigo? Does the enhanced awareness of our rational ability to navigate, direct and even circumscribe the flow of electronic bits re-affirm your human spirit? Transcendence is often hinted at as a key feature of the sublime experience. Transcendence, in that there is a sense of ourselves to be a part of, within and surrounding that which overwhelms. Is this potential for transcendence an intrinsic aspect of a virtual environment that needs to be envisaged?

Today’s “aesthetic” of digital art originates from a carefully applied amalgam of a myriad of new creative options. Does digital art have its own “look and feel”? It can and often does, but since the improvements in image resolution with the resultant shrinking of the blocky pixel, even a computer-based painting is not limited to that pixellated “look” any more. I believe that the digital aesthetic, the beauty of digital art, lies in its capacity to surpass the traditional limitations of previous media and its ability to allow the merging of aspects or techniques that used to be the exclusive domain of distinctly separate media.

The digital aesthetic is most readily experienced in the images that success-fully integrate effects from previously divergent sources. Ideally, these new creations should be enjoyed at face value. That is, as new unified works, appreciated for what they express about art, or other important matters. The most important thing to remember is that art in any form is not created by the tools but by the imagination and skill of the operator, the artist! The digital aesthetic merely echoes a gift from the twentieth century: that the sky is no longer the limit!

Starting from the question ‘Is there a digital aesthetic?’, the paper focusses on the revolutionary concept of the avant-garde and discuss whether developments in new media arts that make use of digital technologies can be considered as avant-garde. The history and the theory of the concept of the avant-garde in twentieth century makes clear, that the term avant-garde has been widely used to determine revolutionary developments in arts and politics. The essential characteristic of avant-garde arts, that is to say the strong emphasis on new technologies, might be applied in the discussion of new media arts, in particular when the metaphors of revolution are applied to digitally processed arts. The shift in the arts that is caused by new technologies is often described in terms of a digital revolution. On that basis Spielman would like to compare the issues of the European avant-garde at the beginning of the twentieth century with developments in media arts, where the questioning of traditional aesthetic concepts, such as the image, is effected through electronic and digital tools. The question the author would like to answer here could be this: ‘Is there an avant-garde in digital arts?’

Abstract

My research inquiry is concerned with the possible relationship between online virtual game spaces and public participation in local real world democratic processes. In any such inquiry into the possible productive ability or utility of game spaces it is crucial to understand how games operate in the world today. This paper will focus on an apparent dislocation of the relationship between world of play and the lived world of everyday reality.

ABSTRACT

The International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology (I.S.A.S.T.) is a non-profit professional organisation. The goal of ISAST is to encourage the interaction of the contemporary arts, sciences and technology. I.S.A.S.T. is the publisher of the international art journal LEONARDO.

LEONARDO was founded in 1967 by kinetic artist and space pioneer Frank J. Malina. LEONARDO was established to provide a forum where artists could write about their own work, particularly work which made use of contemporary science and technology. In addition LEONARDO provides a forum where scientists, engineers, and art scholars can present interdisciplinary discussions. In 1991, LEONARDO will increase its publication frequency to 6 issues a year. As part of this expansion, the LEONARDO Music Journal will be launched to provide an interdisciplinary journal focused on the use of sound in the arts. The LEONARDO Compact Disk series will also be issued, containing original recordings.

ISEA International And The ACM SIGGRAPH Digital Arts Community

The Annual General Meeting is an opportunity for ISEA to report on current and future activities and for the community to offer its comments and advice. Following an introduction to the general direction that ISEA International is taking at this time, there will be a presentation by Montreal, ISEA2020, discussing the experience of our first delivery a largely virtual symposium. This will be followed by presentations about ISEA2021/22, ISEA2023 and ISEA2024, followed by a concluding open question and answer session. ISEA2021/22 Barcelona, Catalonia Theme – The Possible The main Symposium will be in 2022, but we are hoping to also mount a smaller virtual event in 2021. ‘The Possible’ is openness and movement, a horizon of change that unfolds and organizes the world. ‘The Possible’ started with the polis, the city, and is political by definition. ISEA2023 Paris, France Theme – Symbiosis ‘Symbiosis’ is an interaction between two or more different organisms living in close physical association. ISEA2024 Groups making proposals to host ISEA2024 will then present their proposals. These include Brisbane Australia, Shenzhen, China, and Taipei, Taiwan.

THE ISEA98 SUMMIT at the ROYAL NORTHERN COLLEGE OF MUSIC Chaired/hosted by Anthony H. Wilson of Factory Records, Granada TV, and the Hacienda. INCLUDING ANNOUNCEMENTS ON FUTURE ISEA SYMPOSIA

ISEA, the Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts, is a non-profit international organization whose membership and collaborators consists of a wide range of individuals and institutions involved in the creative, theoretical and technological aspects of electronic arts.

ISEA’s Mission

The aim of ISEA is to establish and facilitate inter-disciplinary communication in the field of art, technology, science, education and industry. ISEA advocates a culturally diverse community, which stimulates a global promotion and development of electronic art practices. The Inter-Society fosters such communications by means of an International Advisory Committee, an on-line network; a monthly newsletter and endorses the International Symposium on Electronic Art, ISEA’s most vibrant and visible activity.

ISEA’s Symposium

The founding of the Inter-Society was the result of the First International Symposium on Electronic Arts that was held in Utrecht, Netherlands in 1988. Since then, year after year the ISEA symposiums have attracted a gathering of international participants to present new media research, exhibit artworks and actively debate and exchange on art and technology. The symposium became an annual event in 1992 to fulfil the growing need and interest from the ISEA community. The symposium has developed into a successful vehicle for the emergence and circulation of philosophical, social, artistic and scientific discourse. Hosted by a different city each year the location of the symposium is selected by the ISEA Board of Directors based on application by potential hosts.

Utrecht, Netherlands (FISEA, 1988)
Groningen, Netherlands (SISEA, 1990)
Sydney, Australia (TISEA, 1992)
Minneapolis, USA (FISEA, 1993)
Helsinki, Finland (ISEA94)
Montreal, Canada (ISEA95)
Rotterdam, Netherlands (ISEA96)
Chicago, USA (ISEA97)
Liverpool & Manchester, UK (ISEA98 )
ISEA Headquarters

Founded in the Netherlands in 1990, ISEA moved its Headquarters to Montreal, Quebec, Canada in 1996. The HQ is committed to reflect the multicultural and multidisciplinary activities of our members by extending its networks and providing a diverse range of benefits to the membership. The HQ has a dynamic, multilingual staff who coordinates and administers ISEA’s virtual and physical presence. Our team manages the membership network, provides information on international activities and upcoming symposiums, manages ISEA web site and newsletter as well as develops projects in collaboration with our growing network. The doors are open to all proposals or initiative going along ISEA’s main goals. Do not hesitate to contact us!

Director: Alain Mongeau
Information & Administration: Isabelle Painchaud
International Relations: Maria Stukoff
Development & Promotion: Eva Quintas
Online Projects: Jodoin Isabelle Maria Valerie
International Board

The ISEA HQ is under the constituency of an International Board whose members are voted by the membership. For the duration between 1997-1998 the Board members are: Peter Beyls (Belgium); Amanda McDonald Crowley (Australia); Tapio Makela (Finland); Alain Mongeau (Canada); Simon Penny (USA); Wim van der Plas (Netherlands); Cynthia Beth Rubin (USA); Patricia Search (USA); and ex-officio John Brady (UK), Shawn Decker (USA), and John Hyatt (UK). Two additional committees shape the organizational guidelines: the ISEA International Advisory Committee (IIAC) and the Cultural Diversity Committee. Membership Support ISEA’s activities by becoming a member!

Benefits for members

ISEA’s monthly newsletter; more than 10% discount on ISEA Symposiums registration and proceedings; inscription on ISEA’s web repertory listings; access to ISEA’s electronic databases and archives; 20 % discount on subscription to Leonardo Journal, the Journal of the Society for the Arts, Science and Technology (ISAST).

Fees

Membership good for one year. All taxes included. Regular Individuals 80 $ Institutional (Including 3 memberships) 270 $ CDN Students 40 $ Your membership contribution will in part be directed to our Cultural Diversity Fund supporting multicultural and multilingual initiatives. Our listsery is also available for open discussions for members and non-members.

web.archive.org/web/19990125100334/http://www.isea.qc.ca

Curator Statement

ISEA2009: The Exhibition is a judicious arrangement that is a curated selection of the many successful peer reviewed proposals in the Art Projects category, submitted to the 15th International Symposium on Electronic Art in Belfast. The Exhibition features 66 works by approximately 75 artists from 25 countries. While the majority of works will be shown at the three primary venues in the city of Belfast: The Ormeau Baths Gallery (OBG); the Golden Thread Gallery (GTG) and at the University of Ulster Belfast campus (UUA), many works are cited at specific locations in Belfast, and a number of performances and interventions will be staged during the ISEA symposium at The Waterfront Hall. Both the OBG and GTG are leading contemporary art spaces in Northern Ireland while the UU gallery (in the atrium of the University’s new Belfast building) has been expanded significantly to accommodate The Exhibition.

The Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts began in 1988, when the First ISEA Symposium (FISEA), was held in Utrecht, Netherlands. ISEA was launched as a non profit, non commercial international organisation in 1990, with the specific mission ‘to foster interdisciplinary academic discourse and exchange, among culturally diverse organizations and individuals working with art, science and emerging technologies’. The peer review process for papers, panels and art projects has been an essential aspect of its’ structure since inception, and accounts for the prevailing number of contributions from artists and researchers from within the academic research and higher education environment. ISEA emerged when media art was still largely unknown in the fine art discourse. In Europe, video art festivals became popular international events in the 1980s; Ars Electronica emerged as a strong international sound and media art festival in 1987, in Linz, Austria; and SIGGRAPH was a major annual computer graphics forum in the United States. By the 1980s, SIGGRAPH already attracted more than 50,000 attendees, and although it featured a juried digital art show it was a major commercial product showcase, as well as industrial keynotes, panels and papers.

Panel statement:

One of the most significant issues of new media art is its constant challenging of our perceptions of reality, and of our relationship with the real. Once people stop relying on their own sensory perception and common sense, a hole opens that brings up both fantastic new possible worlds and incredible vulnerability. Pioneer artists Luc Courchesne, Masaki Fujihata and Jeffrey Shaw have been exploring these new territories for years, working at the boundary of art and science. This panel aims at confronting their visions of art in an in-depth conversation, questioning their inner motivations to continuously extend the real and the challenges involved. Their artworks point out a post-modern human condition where individuals are no longer at the centre of the universe. Yet their practices keep replacing the human being at the core of the process, using artifacts and objects as instruments to maintain Man’s feeling of powerfulness. Beyond technology and beyond the production of knowledge, what is at stake here is the great subjectivity of the new realities created. The fictions produced by the artists do not pretend to be real, however they impact on how we perceive the real, and might thus becomes real. Is there firm ground on which we can stand between the total freedom of art and the rationality – often inhuman – of science?

Panel: Tracking the Boom: Think Tanks, Mouse Hacks and more in the United Arab Emirates

1.   urban cultures in the Middle East
2.   cities as cultural and knowledge hubs
3.   mapping and building the future territory (locations on maps) of Dubai
4.   how ISEA, a citywide event, can be a tool to revive public space and establish an urban  research culture in the UAE

The University of New Mexico has a long history of innovation in data and computer engineering including human-computer interaction, complex data structure applications, computer science education and has some of the highest ranking computing and engineering programs in the country. This panel highlights some of the recent research and infrastructure projects of the UNM IT, Computer Science and Engineering programs and opens a discussion about future challenges.

We propose to tell a story of the design and construction of a place-specific responsive environment. This story is fundamental to the problem of materialisation of structures that are derived via an adaptive simulative process. Rather than seeing the purpose of the project in an object we recognise how a task of making physical a digitally evolved idea is a near-absurdist endeavour resembling that described by Kafka in The Great Wall of China. The Sisyphusean move from bytes to matter has involved tens of people and has spread from the city of Cambridge to the city of Prague. In our view, seeing this project for what it is suggest a new theoretical way of seeing and appraising both contemporary cutting-edge architectural design and digital art. We have documented the design and materialisation processes, the interaction with people and the places and have compiled the results into a 25 minute film that includes video and animated simulation sequences.

During September 2010 ICCI (Innovation for the Creative and Cultural Industries) University of Plymouth, UK, organised a 360° film, arts and performance festival in Plymouth city centre. The festival was the first of a series that revive the popular nineteenth century tradition of touring panoramas here employing digital formats on a six metre high by twenty metre diameter (62 metre length) projection screen, housed within a demountable dome structure. Using the festival as a case study, this paper reflects on the parameters for and the processes involved in the preparation of creative content for the festival, particularly focusing on the issues and concerns pertinent to 360° film making, reviewing the display and presentation of film in the festival’s dome auditorium.

Early panoramic paintings relied heavily on the inclusion of architectural structures, either ‘faux terrain’ or painted, to ‘frame’ the images they depicted. One of the most dramatic adjustments that need to be considered when producing or for that matter experiencing 360 cinema is the idea that, although one is working with a much wider frame, the viewer is not able to see and experience everything at any one time.  While, particularly for a standing audience, there is the opportunity to move one’s eyes, head and body to experience the complete screen, the viewer, schooled for many years of image consumption through various sizes of flat screens and by every filmic example previously experienced holds onto screen mentality and may struggle to reduce the screen horizon into a watchable frame, unfortunately, in doing so elements of the presentation may go unseen behind the viewer.

The paper also identifies a number of factors relating to the audience experience of 360° content and how the particular spatial and visual environment affects both the production and experience of work and how these factors might be understood.

Institutional Presentation Statement

International competitions and tour exhibitions sometimes make a deep influence on art movements. We can note some epoch-making examples such as ‘Cybernetic Serendipity’ in 1968 and the ‘Ars Electronica Festival’. Between 1958 and 1969, the nascent stages of media art in Japan and the festivals held at the Sogetsu Art Center inspired many avant-garde movie makers, animators, performers, and composers. Then, Manga – game and animation works – became subjects of our governmental support from the 1990s and have been moving from the margin to the centre of mainstream contemporary Japanese visual culture, and also quite a large export for the foreign market.

The ‘Japan Media Arts Festival’ started in 1997 and is presently hosted by the Japanese Cultural Agency, The National Art Centre and the Computer Graphic Arts Society based in Japan. The festival consists of an annual competition and exhibition of animation, manga, digital arts and entertainment technologies as well as works bought by international artists and curators. The mass-produced game, ‘Wii sports’ by Nintendo and the university students’ works are considered equally and either could win the same prize. In reality, this festival has triggered student works to become commercial games, or has helped young artists’ as an international debut. In the festival in February 2009, there were 2,146 entries, including 512 from overseas, and 55,234 visitors (4,602 per day on an average) were recorded. This paper discusses the role of this festival as a successful model of a social educational environment and also as a medium which gives people the big picture of ‘media arts’ in Japan and the world. The reasons for the growth and continuity of the festival are thought to be due to 1) being a governmental initiative, 2) having a stable project team, 3) the cooperation with academic institutions, 4) encouraging national and international exchange 5) using a cross-cultural network of juries, 6) the rethinking of the judging methods, 7) the identity of Japanese-ness.

We have been developing a project called ‘Media Arts in the World’ for both real exhibition space and cyber space. This will help viewers to grasp the global movement and also give some artists the chance to network with international curators or media producers.
Festival information and archives plaza.bunka.go.jp/english/
Media Arts in the World in the Google Maps & Google Earth mapping.jp/jmf/gmap.html

The main aim of JELLYEYES is to encourage post reflection through an immersive augmented reality interaction with three main concepts of the evolution of the biodiverse development of the camerabased eye: co-evolution, structural evolution, and comparative evolution

Abstract (short paper)

Homemade and reused devices in experimental music are the result of compositional ideas and processes. In this contribution, I want to show that the record player as an instrument in live performances provides manifold possibilities to create signal/noise relationships. The analysis of sound artist Joke Lanz’s improvised concert reveals individual sonic concepts that liaise signal and noise, playback and live manipulated sounds. These concepts are realised by manipulations and prepared turntables or vinyl discs. The turntable, uniting mechanic and electronic processes, creates unique affordances and material properties that link sound and physical gesture. The resulting sounds of Lanz’s turntable performances are media-specific. My analysis will show this by focusing on the interaction of the performer with the instrument. The analytical methodology includes ideas of materiality and mediality of performances. As a new tool for an analysis, the software EAnalysis was used to incorporate the video recording next to graphical representations of the sounds.

This is a report on a practice-based research project that investigates contemporary modes of non-linear and recombinant digital storytelling based on algorithmic computer-controlled systems. The video installation ‘Journeys in Travel’ is a story of travel and investigates relationships between travelogue, cinematic essay and digital database narrative. The Open Source Software ‘PD’, which is mainly used to create live-algorithmic musical improvisation and (interactive) music composition, controls here an infinite audiovisual narrative. It is a temporary, open-ended arrangement, which sets in motion a seemingly endless chain of references to related topics: Travel, being elsewhere in foreign places, tourism, ethnography, globalisation, a hyper-connected world, reality and simulation, movement, pace, rhythm and the relationship of film (structure), narrative, music and travel.

‘Journeys in Travel’ is designed as a laboratory for multiple investigations of contemporary digital narrative constructions. The database of video and sound elements can act as a source for varying research questions and experimental approaches where the ‘data’ or ‘units’ of the story are arranged and assembled according to different computer algorithms.

The link between digital database narrative and cinematic essay has not yet been intensively investigated and emerges as one of the central aspects of the project. But there are also close and historical connections between travel, film and narrative, that are revisited and re-contextualised in the digital era. Travel can be understood as the reading of an audio-visual narrative, a sequence of images and sounds of unfolding events, captured while we are moving through time and space.

Another interest lies in investigating relationships between structuring processes in film and music creation via principles of ‘macro-aleatoric’ music composition, which are determined by elements of chance or an uncertain outcome. ‘Aleatoric’ alignment of ‘data’ has long precident in music dating back to the beginning of the 20th century. Aleatoric music composition supports structure but also variation and chance within structure, and is similar to approaches in nonlinear recombinant film. The film units/sequences will be created after knowledge of musical units and rhythm preserving original proportions of a formula to create a structure where the possible combinations of narration reach to infinity.

For this presentation, we will discuss our project Junkspace, which will be on display in the ISEA Main Exhibition at 516Arts in Albuquerque. Junkspace is a time and location sensitive video installation and corresponding iOS App that highlights two forms of waste. Earth-bound (electronic waste) are the remnants of the many devices that fill our lives, transformed from objects of desire to trash through a selfperpetuating cycle of obsolescence. Celestial (orbital debris) consists of the millions of pieces of junk currently circling the earth, left behind by decades of satellite and space missions.

Care for a thrill? Consider what might happen if the Millennium Bug, that tendency for many of the world’s computers to mistake the year 2000 for 1900, is not eradicated in time… The cover of one news magazine asked recently: Could two measly digits really halt civilization? Yes, yes – 2000 times yes! -The Economist Oct 4th-10th 1997

Cannot a revolution make a clean sweep of all this old garbage… Proclaim a new era and… a new calendar with no reference to AD/BC.
-William Burroughs interview in Research #4-5

COUNT ZERO INTERRUPT.-On receiving an interrupt, decrement the counter to zero.
-William Gibson Count Zero

…so Mbug resistors think MATRIX needs a new calendar – totally steam-punk. Wake up-ITs already K-Time. Count-0_=Greg Date 1900… Count S Zero. Up 2 Date

Chronopolitical immune-response to the Millennium Bug amounts to a program for Gregorian Restoration a retrotranslation of Cyber-(or K-) Time into standard (4 digit) AD dates. The convention which codes years as 2-digit decimal numbers has unconsciously made computers the register of a new calendar, starting with a year zero. Revolution has already happened. Can it be stopped in time?

Kadenze is a new interactive Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) platform that brings together educators, artists, and engineers to provide an online education that is unparalleled in the field of arts and technology.

Imagine an ice cream truck transformed into a mobile karaoke unit, driven by a squirrel cub with a penchant for cheap magic, deployed to spark spontaneous interaction between citizens of Cesar Chavez Plaza. Participants perform for an audience from a stage in the transformed rear of the vehicle, and use a customized karaoke engine to select, sing, and record a song. Free popsicles lure passersby to participate. The resulting mix is one that celebrates the power of music to entice and inflame, as well as the sense of community that can be fostered among strangers trapped in a terrestrial network.

Kennetic Word aims the reflection upon the artistic creation of multi-user interactive virtual worlds and avatars which are created by artists. The interaction relies of methods which aims to allow the body, the mind (the intellect) and the psyche to meet, into the virtual realms, with the poetic gesture and the intuitive aspects until now restricts to the imaginary and dream realms.

“Arts and science are similar in that they are expressions of what it is to be human in this world. Both are driven by curiosity, discovery, the aspiration for knowledge of the world or oneself. But they express themselves in different ways…” – Ariane Koek

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Dr Egg Digital is creating cutting edge interactive children’s entertainment with a twist. Exploring biotech science and ethics, this trans-media project seeks to engage kids via embedded gaming mechanics and animation within an interactive storyworld. Based on the prize winning, internationally successful theatre show Dr Egg and The Man With No Ear, the interactive storybook app is set in a fantastical interactive laboratory. The Dr Egg interactive storyworld explores cloning and genetic modification through the eyes of three young characters. The stories have strong educational and cross-platform potential extending into interactive publications, TV episodes/webisodes, mobile cross-platform apps, and games. Originally dramaturged by SymbioticA’s leading Science-Art practitioner Dr Ionatt Zurr, the work references real scientific and ethical dilemmas, such as therapeutic stem cell technologies, cloning, xeno-transplantation and ethical laboratory practices. The interactive storybook/browser allows the largely 8-13 year old audience to explore the story as well as interact with animated and gaming elements. The main user experience whilst gaming will be to ‘collect’ objects such as seeds or body parts, making ethical choices about creation and destruction, encouraging scientific investigation around systematic collecting and ethical decision-making. The Literature and Inter-Arts boards of the Australia Council have funded the writing of interactive pathways and production of the multi media assets. Can children learn about ethical choices while they play games? OR do they want to play with mutant creations just to have fun and destroy the bad guys? How do we run market tests that reflect both entertainment value and explore ethical responses? In this creative presentation Dr Egg Digital creative director and writer Catherine Fargher, trans media project manager Dani Wiessner, screen director Maia Horniak, script editor Gina Roncoli and game developer Zina Kaye discuss market testing, educational strategies and Linean collection systems as a means of getting kids into ethics.

KikiT VisuoSonic Performance involves the live interaction and generation of sonics and visuals in a performance space. KikiT challenges the notion of interface by fusing sonics anbd visuals together through a positive feedback loop. The group are concerned with interrogating the relationships between liveness, play, interactivity and the inter-play between sonics and visuals in real-time. ‘Synaesthesia’, ‘visual music’, ‘painting music’ and ‘chromatic music’ investigations together with new theories regarding ‘interactivity’ provide conceptual tools for the development a theory of digital live performance – the synthesis of sonics and visuals.

Panel: Site Specifics: Mobile Media Art and the Contexts of Place

Each of my works re­quire ex­ten­sive in­ter­ac­tion with sites through the sim­ple act of walk­ing. Both in pro­duc­tion and re­cep­tion, my work emerges through a process that I have come to think of as a form of “kines­thetic at­tune­ment.” Walk­ing is the ground from which my work evolves as a form of ex­pe­ri­en­tial knowl­edge. It is also the basis upon which I seek to chal­lenge and cri­tique ab­stract mod­els of spa­tial rep­re­sen­ta­tion and the the­o­ret­i­cal foun­da­tions of tech­nolo­gies as­so­ci­ated with loca­tive media. Draw­ing upon the phi­los­o­phy of em­bod­i­ment as well as an­thro­po­log­i­cal meth­ods and ethno­graphic prac­tices em­ployed in cur­rent pro­jects, I will dis­cuss in­sights from my over fif­teen years ex­pe­ri­ence mak­ing site-spe­cific sound and media in­stal­la­tions using GPS and other lo­ca­tion-sens­ing tech­nolo­gies.

Abstract

Computationally enhanced tabletops featuring tangible objects for participant interaction hold promise for the creation of new forms of media, including documentaries and stories constructed by individuals or small groups in distributed or face-to-face settings. Many computer-aided storytelling systems feature either algorithms to arrange story elements automatically or, story structures to guide authors in presenting their tales. In contrast, the KinoPuzzle system affords a high degree of freedom for authors in constructing tabletop experiences and for participants in exploring multi-viewpoint narratives. This format for story-telling combines the representational depth and flexibility of the digital database with the expressive power of the collage surface, offering advantages in terms of open-ended
dialogic juxtapositions and the collaborative exploration of reality-based material. The inspiration for the KinoPuzzle system comes from the fields of social and ethnographic documentary-making and conceptual lenses from ethnography and ethnomethodology. The values embedded in these approaches to recording life are reflected in the code, data structures (or lack therefore), and visual strategies of the system. The primary goal of the system is to enable authors and readers flexibility to explore, interpret, and reinterpret multiple viewpoints within differing contexts. Our adoption of the collage tradition for organizing the display and interaction of visual and tangible content provides an open-ended framework for the composition and manipulation of viewpoints and stories. Collage as a spatial representational form may be better suited to the presenting the conflicting ‘actualities’ that are the subject of contemporary documentaries than narratives presented in sequence based on traditional story structures in the Aristotelian tradition.

This panel explores the idea of human and machine sentience as they pertain to art practices. Sentience makes new media art unique because it is a pathway to a different understanding and approach to time, space and the body. But, is machine sentience the same a biological sentience?

“From the Orrery to the Cloud: Precursors and Foundations of Sentience in New Media Art” is a reflection by Steve Daniels on how the history of technology and media systems and corresponding shifts in cultural metaphors interact to create artworks that make meaning through sentience. “Mediated Networked Selves – New modes of Human and Machine Sentience?” is an exploration by Alexandra Bal of the historical roots of cybernetic, telematic cultures in order to ascertain how new modes of human and machine sentience currently emerging are an evolution of our culture. She discusses the potential dangers of a world where machines and embodied sentience are incomprehensible to disembodied humans. Lila Pine explores Go’gmanaq which examines our kinship with new media technologies. In “Creature Quality in Kinetic Art” Kathleen Pirrie-Adams shows how the behavior of kinetic art moves the audience away from the field of vision into a phenomenological field of experience. It explores how movement invites identification and establishes the ‘creature quality’ of human-made entities.

Kosmica brings together earth-bound artists, astronomers, performers, space explorers and musicians from Mexico, the UK, France, Germany and the US, and is programmed by the
artist Nahum Mantra and The Arts Catalyst (UK) in partnership with the Laboratorio Arte Alameda, INBA (Mexico). For its first edition in Mexico City on 27 September, KOSMICA will see over 15 participants actively working in cultural and artistic aspects of space exploration. Urban stargazing, cosmic music, zero gravity dance, armchair space exploration, science fiction and DIY rocket science collide in a unique event that cannot be missed

The virtual world of Second Life has been in existence since 2003. A growing number of artists and designers have continued to specifically work with SL building tools and programming language to explore the potentials and limitations of the platform itself. Is there is a maturing of the languages and spaces within SL? Is there a commonality of approach and emergent experience?

We intend to invite up to 10 major artists with different SL interests to construct a site on Kriti Island under the theme of ‘Reality Jam’ for an SL presentation at ISEA2008. These projects will be the responses of an international set of experienced ‘inWorlders’ such as: Luna Bliss (Virtual World Designer), Robbie Dingo (Sound Designer), Angrybeth Shortbread (Multimedia Designer), Wanderingfictions Story (Interactive Media Artist), Lime Galsworthy (Media Artist), Chingaling Bling (Games Designer), and Bi Hifeng (Performance Artist).

The new works should identify new approaches that are emerging when interfacing between real and virtual space with a particular focus on the virtual presence of the audience. E.g. Aldous Eastkew and Kami Gentil are to contribute “Dancing across the virtual divide” using technologically mediated performance where the ‘stage’ is a fluid place, a bridging mechanism between physical geographic spaces, the corporeal and the virtual, and the enforced hierarchical relationship of audience and performer. Participants of all abilities are invited to dance across the virtual divide by engaging in play and performance simultaneously on Kriti Island and in the real world.

To further extend the interface between Kriti and ISEA we would like to position wandering robotic devices/avatars/humans with web cams, in both worlds, to create an infinite feedback mirroring effect. These documenters will enable the ISEA viewers to experience the Kriti works and give ISEA exhibits an SL presence on our island.

Artists Statement

The virtual world of Second Life has been in existence since 2003. A growing number of artists and designers have continued to specifically work with SL building tools and programming language to explore the potentials and limitations of the platform itself. Is there is a maturing of the languages and spaces within SL? Is there a commonality of approach and emergent experience?

We intend to invite up to 10 major artists with different SL interests to construct a site on Kriti Island under the theme of ‘Reality Jam’ for an SL presentation at ISEA2008. These projects will be the responses of an international set of experienced ‘inWorlders’ such as: Luna Bliss (Virtual World Designer), Robbie Dingo (Sound Designer), Angrybeth Shortbread (Multimedia Designer), Wanderingfictions Story (Interactive Media Artist), Lime Galsworthy (Media Artist), Chingaling Bling (Games Designer), and Bi Hifeng (Performance Artist).

The new works should identify new approaches that are emerging when interfacing between real and virtual space with a particular focus on the virtual presence of the audience. E.g. Aldous Eastkew and Kami Gentil are to contribute “Dancing across the virtual divide” using technologically mediated performance where the ‘stage’ is a fluid place, a bridging mechanism between physical geographic spaces, the corporeal and the virtual, and the enforced hierarchical relationship of audience and performer. Participants of all abilities are invited to dance across the virtual divide by engaging in play and performance simultaneously on Kriti Island and in the real world.

To further extend the interface between Kriti and ISEA we would like to position wandering robotic devices/avatars/humans with web cams, in both worlds, to create an infinite feedback mirroring effect. These documenters will enable the ISEA viewers to experience the Kriti works and give ISEA exhibits an SL presence on our island.

Kulturtanken

ABSTRACT

This work gives a brief overview of the scientific and aesthetic researches at the L.I.M. – Laboratorio di Informatica Musicale. Many projects have been carried on since 1975; they cover many areas in the field of computer applications to music; the main projects concern the following topics:

-definition of formal methods for music information describing, with particular emphasis on   Petri nets as the formal tool;

-study and experimentation about advanced digital sound processing techniques;

-design and implementation of software and hardware tools for music processing, with many   levels of representation capability, both for real time and interactive systems;

-study and experimentation about multimedia aesthetics.

Poster Statement

In the 18th and 19th centuries, human migrations from Europe radically changed the cultural environment of North America. Water was the main channel of this movement and generally unidirectional. In many ways, late 20th century electronic technologies have supplanted water as the exploration route. With this shift, the speed, direction and control of cultural exchanges have corroded conventional regulatory means. While the expense of these technologies is a critical factor, a power shift is nevertheless afoot for marginalized groups and individuals to inform and re-envisioned themselves and their ‘communities’. The work shown in this session seeks to address a reading of history in which we respond with silence when our experience crashes into conflict with the current main stream and to begin reconfigure new connections rather than delivering authoritative conclusions. I response to my own movement through these waters, I developed two site specific installation series, Eau de Passion: An Ode to Passion and its sequel, La langue d’eau; the first series followed a personal migration along the waters between Canada and the United States and the second continued eastwards to Ireland. The three installations in Eau de Passion; An Ode to Passion each explored a topic of particular relevance to contemporary women – the environment, partnerships and health. The installations employed fragments of local history in combination with images of the landscape photographically ‘tattooed’ onto the female body. The beveled edges of these self-portraits create the illusion of faux mirrors. The juxtapositions are further contextualized by debris collected along the shores of ‘the route of the explorers.’ These debris are incidental monuments left by generations of human intervention; in the installation, the objects function as metaphors for the last decade of our century, its complex issues of displacement, and the shifting cultural codes which are our collective and personal legacies and new ‘territories.’ The metaphor of water’s edge provokes thought about the corrosion of boundaries, the power of contradiction, and the collision of passions. The female body as self-portrait grounds the metaphor in the personal – the mapping of sites onto the body locates the dilemma of a woman tending fires of private passion in the context of a societal landscape pulsing with diverse and contrasting demands. The second series, La langue d’eau, is still in process. The first installation, In the Wake of Grosse Ile, was developed as a commemoration of the Irish who passed through or died at the Canadian quarantine centre on the island of Grosse Ile, Quebec between 1832 and 1937. The work, constructed of 5000 tongue depressors formed into a wall fragment floating in the water near Dublin, remembers the historic and linguistic connections among the Irish, French and Canadians in Quebec. It is often in the mother tongues, the mother’s names or the mother’s birthplaces that the forgotten connections lie. In the broader migratory sense, the work is about the ritual return to place for renewal and satisfaction of a hunger. Where are the tongues of women in these places today? What do we have to say, how do we say it, how do we receive what we hear? In the silences surrounding women’s bodies and women’s passions, much is extolled channels of information and cultural expansion, corrode established barriers or become vessels quarantined offshore? Are voice and visibility a promise or a threat?

The French Ministry of Culture is contributing actively to the creation of the environment required for the development of the new multimedia industry and the accompanying artistic considerations which evolve from this mutation. Already, the Ministry’s server (http:// www.culture.fr) offers cultural information and electronic multimedia exhibitions on the lnternet.

The specifics of Alliages a Memoires de Formes (Memory Shape Alloys) includes the memorizing of various shapes at various temperatures, shapes that can be spontaneously reconstituted each time the shape encounters the some temperature. These technologies were originally developed by the military. When I first studied them in 1985, I was so impressed that I decided to apply them at an artistic level. To meet the production imperatives required for a self-memorizing evolutive sculpture (one whose shapes evolve night and day and seasonally), an original research program was undertaken in high-tech laboratories in France and the United States.

Since 1978, Inter, a print art journal, pursues a strategy diametrically opposed to the reigning models concerning emancipatory idea contamination. Between the nomadic medium (the review), and the established contemporary art centre (headquarter of activism), we create art events. In other words, art as act, from performances to manoeuvres, from solidarity to excentric practice, far from the metropolitain centres, there emerges a firm belief. Which is why during ISEA, we shall oscillate between technoculture and technonature on a human scale.

Institutional Presentation Statement

The Laboratory is the name of a new unit at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art which was founded in 1994 to foster and promote new work in the visual arts. The Laboratory provides opportunities within the University of Oxford for professional artists at graduate level and beyond to continue with and expand upon their existing activities, creating a forum for informed debate on current practice and furnishing a platform for the exchange of ideas and information on a wide range of artistic issues. It promotes collaboration between artists and experts from the worlds of science, technology and the humanities and seeks to generate an arena within the framework of the University in which practitioners can engage in meaningful critical dialogue across a number of academic fields. Visible output from The Laboratory takes the form of exhibitions, public art projects, limited editions and multiples, broadcasting, live and time-based art and publications in electronic and paper-based formats. The exhibitions and other projects occur both in and out of Oxford and form the basis of various symposia on a wide range of topics.