Time-and-Information-Based Environment

Symposium:

• ISEA94: Fifth International Symposium on Electronic Art
• More presentations from ISEA94:  

• Pedagogical Policies (Electronic Art in Universities)

• Time-and-Information-Based Environment

• Richard Kriesche

• Abstract

  In the ‘time-and-information-based environment’ content and form, the central focus in art are becoming less and less significant. This doesn’t just affect the traditional visual arts, but has a fundamental impact on our culture as whole, its cultural institutions, especially the art-schools, art and design schools, academies, Hochschule der Künste, etc. are challenged to become aware of their very own transition. But as recent examples already have shown, the answer to ‘post-modernization’ isn’t just the foundation of ‘media-labs’, but lies in the question of their cultural integration. It is the question to strengthening culture as a whole, the fundaments of our traditions, the moral value systems, ethics, etc. for the sake to cope with the inevitable overall transformation. In defining this cultural realm art schools could function as a ‘social lab’ for the ‘information-based society’. From this it follows its new social significance by interacting between the conventional methods of ‘materializing’ a world – as for instance done with painting and an electronic, technological, dematerialized approach. This dialectics affects the center of the art schools in being part of the fundamental historical knowledge and the extreme innovative experiment in communicating between these areas of preservation and creation. In this respect at least four aspects define the owned qualities of an art school in an ‘information-based environment’:

  1. The aspect of continuity. The deliberate acceptance of the art school’s traditions, and of its specific quality as an artistic, cultural and aesthetic institution in research, teaching and education.
  2. The aspect of transformation. Scrutinizing the artistic traditions as to their sustainability as a basis for the imagery of our day-to-day techno-reaIity.
  3. The aspect of social change. The confrontation of a technically dominated and technologically dramatically changing every-day reality with the traditional values and standards to which the art school continues to feel committed.
  4. The aspect of transparency. Opening the art school to extra-mural science, disciplines and research, integrating the art school with the technical, technological, informational environment to enable it for fulfilling its social responsibility: to process its aesthetic and creative qualities within the community.

Category:

• Paper