“Inaccurate Coordinates” presented by Ota

Symposium:

• ISEA2008: 14th International Symposium on Electronic Art
• More presentations from ISEA2008:  

• Locating Media 1

• Inaccurate Coordinates

• Emma Ota

Venue(s):

• Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore

• With reference to Dislocate – Festival of art, technology and locality, I will present activities concerned with the relationship between new media and our location.
  Dislocate is an annual event held in Tokyo, along with offshoot events in the UK. Its aim is to bring together artists, designers, thinkers in the examination of the interplay between new media and our surroundings. Through exhibitions, workshops and an international symposium Dislocate aims to explore the potential new media has to increase our awareness of our environment, enhance participation in our locality and community and transform our perceptions of the space we inhabit.

  How do we locate ourselves? How do we position ourselves in relation to our surroundings?

  Location is not a set of coordinates, it is not something static and easily measurable, it is not a case of physical geography but is a state which exists through the complex interplay of history, culture, socio-politics, economics and technologies. Location is a multifaceted context, a situation and state of being and is not necessarily linked to the ground beneath our feet. The expansion and intermix of these various elements means they may no longer be defined by location. A shift from one location to the next seems impossible to define when locations constantly merge with each other, a positioning within multiple contexts, multiple spaces. History, culture etc. are not constructed in one defined place, our locations are innumerable, dispersed points of reference.

  I would like to comment on the works of a number of artists who have taken on the notion of the locative in some form and have made investigations into our sense of place. These include Maebayashi Akitsugu, Fujihata Masaki, Christian Nold, Dan Belasco Rogers and Active Ingredient.

  These artists have engaged new media in some form in order to examine some of the following:
  – The relationship between the body and place
  – Collective experience of location
  – The hidden stories of a specific location, personal histories, the relevance of a particular place in our lives

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