ISEA2016 Keynote Panel

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?