Anti-Dis­ci­pli­nary Art: Re­ject­ing the Stan­dard Forms

Symposium:

• ISEA2011: 17th International Symposium on Electronic Art

• The Institute of Unnecessary Research

• Anti-Dis­ci­pli­nary Art: Re­ject­ing the Stan­dard Forms

• Luke Robert Mason

Venue(s):

• Sabanci Center, Istanbul, Turkey

• Panel:  The Institute of Unnecessary Research

  “…as art col­lapses into sci­ence, cen­tral­ized con­trol dis­si­pates into net­works, and cul­ture mi­grates be­yond man, the old mod­els of ex­pla­na­tion, clas­si­fi­ca­tion and dis­cus­sion are ren­dered ob­so­lete.”     _Vir­tual Fu­tures Con­fer­ence (1996)

  In an en­vi­ron­ment of in­creas­ing in­for­ma­tion com­plex­ity and emerg­ing tech­nol­ogy should art’s role be to merely rep­re­sent cul­tural de­vel­op­ments or in­stead com­mit it­self to cul­tural en­gi­neer­ing? As pace of change in tech­no­log­i­cal in­no­va­tion oc­curs in a pre­sent of ter­mi­nal ve­loc­ity and fu­ture of in­creas­ing ac­cel­er­a­tion are we in a state in which an an­thro­po­log­i­cal analy­sis of our cur­rent vir­tual state seems im­pos­si­ble? Where tra­di­tional acad­e­mia may fail can per­for­mance based re­search take up the chal­lenge of en­gag­ing a new pub­lic in the dis­sem­i­na­tion of this com­plex­ity? This paper will ex­plore the his­tor­i­cal work of the Uni­ver­sity of War­wick’s Cy­ber­netic Cul­tures Re­search Unit in de­con­struct­ing, de­ter­ri­to­ri­al­iz­ing and de­volv­ing the work of aca­d­e­mics to allow for a new level of artis­tic un­der­stand­ing. I will be look­ing at what we can learn from this cult mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary group, who chose to track con­ver­gences in the post-hu­man­i­ties through artis­tic ex­pres­sion.

Category:

• Panel