“Artistsinlabs: Reality Jamming between Lucid Fields of Practice” presented by Hediger and Scott
Symposium:
Session Title:
- Between Art and Science 2
Presentation Title:
- Artistsinlabs: Reality Jamming between Lucid Fields of Practice
Presenter(s):
Venue(s):
Abstract:
The paper begins with an outline about technical progress and our information society in so called “developing” countries and constructs a set of relevant questions for the future of art and science collaborations. These questions focus on the role of the artist in relation to the business of scientific knowledge. Is empirical knowledge only situated in a specific time or place or can it co-exist simultaneously in two parallel lucid fields of practice: media art and the visual sciences? In this light *Lucid Fields” are comprehensible and factual fields of realities and paradoxes that exist today rather than the fictional illusions of tomorrow. The authors claim that the potentials of the cogent and the coherent communication are increased when media art is mixed with scientific research, particularly if the aim is to make critical scientific issues more articulate and transparent for the general public. The authors will arrive in Singapore early and cull information from interviews with Asian media artists (some who have been resident in science departments at NUS Singapore) with prior interviews that have already made with Swiss media artists who have been resident in science labs. The results will compare the role of an artist as a critical enquirer within the scientific field to that of an artist as a valuable outsider from the field of new media. The interviews with Swiss artists are related to an accompanying exhibition on at the same time in ISEA, about artificial Intelligence, physics and relativity, environmental science and biotechnology. In relation to knowledge, a set of critical issues are addressed in the questionnaire about the relation between utopic and dystopic interpretations of humans and their machines; the visual/acoustic augmentation of real space as a factual information, genetic engineering and the paradox between energy and progress. Through this methodology the authors hope to shed light on the different roles of media artists in relation to situated knowledge and cultural difference and if this information-reality is evenly shared across art and science fields of practice.
