Untitled

Symposium:

• ISEA2011: 17th International Symposium on Electronic Art

• The Matter with Media

• Untitled

• Jamie Allen
• Tom Schofield

Venue(s):

• Sabanci Center, Istanbul, Turkey

• Chair Per­sons: Jamie Allen & Tom Schofield
  Pre­sen­ters: Mar­tijn Stevens, Ale­jan­dro Schi­anchi, Ceci Moss, Shin­taro Miyazaki & Thomas Zum­mer

  Along with in­vited pan­elists, the se­lected par­tic­i­pants will be wel­comed to dis­cuss their ideas, art­works, media and other forms of prac­tice-in­fused re­search in re­sponse to the fol­low­ing ideas:

  “The early human artists who tapped into this ex­pres­sive reser­voir for their cave paint­ings, body tat­toos, and rit­ual cer­e­monies, far from in­tro­duc­ing artistry into the world were sim­ply adding one more voice to an on­go­ing ma­te­r­ial cho­rus.” _Manuel De­Landa

  Our dig­i­tal, net­worked age hides from us in plain sight the con­crete, his­tor­i­cal and af­fec­tive cor­re­spon­dences be­tween mat­ter, in­for­ma­tion and per­cep­tion. The prac­tice and cul­ture of art-and-tech­nol­ogy make it easy to for­get the ma­te­r­ial un­der­pin­nings and im­pli­ca­tions of artis­tic ac­tiv­ity and pro­duc­tion. In­for­ma­tion sys­tems, media and the elec­tronic arts in par­tic­u­lar re­quire the sup­port of a be­wil­der­ing nexus of power and in­fra­struc­ture. This fact “alerts us to the at­ten­u­ated in­dex­i­cal trace of an ob­jec­tive real that haunts the ap­par­ently self-ref­er­en­tial world of pure sim­u­lacra.” The ubiq­ui­tous tem­po­ral and spa­tial free­doms promised to us by cy­ber-the­o­rists and rei­fied in ex­am­ple by artists, are a no-show, or as Kit­tler em­phat­i­cally put it, “There is No Soft­ware”.  Ques­tions & topic areas:

  1. What frame­works for con­cep­tu­al­iz­ing “the dig­i­tal” best em­pha­size its tan­gi­ble ap­peal and con­se­quence, as well as its eco­log­i­cal and sys­temic reper­cus­sions?
  2. How do we best chal­lenge the ab­stract rhetorics of cy­ber-the­ory and vir­tu­al­ity of later-day 20th-Cen­tury new media and in­ter­ac­tive art dis­course?
  3. What is the ma­te­r­ial of “raw data,” and what are its canon­i­cal or iconic forms?
  4. How can we work as artists with in­for­ma­tion/ sig­nals as ma­te­r­ial and un­der­stand the in­ter­pre­tive and rep­re­sen­ta­tive ex­trap­o­la­tions nec­es­sar­ily being made?
  5. How does data dif­fer from other ma­te­ri­als which have a more ob­vi­ous phys­i­cal ma­te­r­ial forms?
  6. What pow­ers have we del­e­gated sig­nals and data as things-in-them­selves?
  7. Dis­tinc­tions be­tween the “nat­ural” and “man-made” as we re­gard tech­nolo­gies as com­plex ecolo­gies of mat­ter.
  8. Dis­tinc­tions be­tween what is within and with­out our un­der­stand­ing, con­trol or com­po­si­tion (in­dus­trial or eco­nomic com­plexes, ecolo­gies).
  9. His­tor­i­cal, cul­tural and con­tem­po­rary artis­tic prac­tice re­la­tions be­tween “tech­nol­ogy”, “new media”, “elec­tronic art” and “main­stream con­tem­po­rary art”.
  10. Dis­courses on aes­thet­ics as to the pur­pose and func­tion of art as pre­scient, dec­o­ra­tive, memetic, in­ter­rog­a­tive, chal­leng­ing and de­fi­ant.
  11. Ed­u­ca­tional, epis­te­mo­log­i­cal dif­fer­ences in the hu­man­i­ties, cre­ative arts prac­tices, and en­gi­neer­ing and the sci­ences.

Category:

• Panel