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Symposium:


Session Title:
  • East & West

Presentation Title:
  • Untitled

Presenter(s):


Venue(s):


Abstract:

  • Chair Per­son: Lorenzo Taiuti
    Pre­sen­ters: Ekmel Ertan, Dia Hamed, Ven­zha Christ & Willem Velthoven

    Let’s start from the title of the panel. In Eu­rope the other/cul­tures were tra­di­tion­ally de­fined as east­ern, Ori­en­tal, far out, a way of defin­ing that es­tab­lishes our bor­der­lines and pre­sent in dif­fer­ent ways in all cul­tures, since all cul­tures start from them­selves. So it’s im­por­tant to change the “Ge­o­graphic” de­f­i­n­i­tion that un­der­lines  dis­tance and re-place it with a mov­ing mind ge­og­ra­phy rhi­zome/like & multi/cen­tres, be­yond any post/colo­nial­ist and any self cen­tered cul­tures. The great de­vel­ope­ment of dig­i­tal media in the east and more gen­er­ally in the non/west­ern cul­tures chal­lenges the early asset of the dig­i­tal cul­tures. Not only Sil­i­con Val­ley, Japan and Eu­rope ( the source de­vel­op­ers of the 80’s), but many other cul­tures with a cross over of points of view ( and new uses of dig­i­tal cul­tures) that change the old dig­i­tal ge­og­ra­phy. The panel will try to make a point about what’s hap­pen­ing today, and what’s the “state of the art” of re­la­tion­ships and ex­changes be­tween East & West, and what are the dif­fer­en­cies in the dig­i­tal global so­ci­ety. We start from those points to con­front po­si­tions and in­ter­ro­gate ex­pe­ri­ences of work and col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween East and  West on is­sues of cre­ativ­ity and shar­ing. The ties have been made on mu­tual in­ter­ests and cul­tural syn­er­gies from Cairo “Medrar for con­tem­po­rary art” and Bar­cel­lona’s “Hangar”, Am­s­ter­dam “Waag” and In­done­sia’s “Honf”, and from “Me­dia­matic” on is­lamic cul­tures in Eu­rope, be­tween “Amber Fes­ti­val” in Is­tan­bul with Eu­rope and dif­fer­ent cul­tures of the east. “East & West” in­ter­ro­gates as well the as­sump­tion that dig­i­tal “par­i­fies” cul­tures and tries to re-as­sume  the data of cul­tural dif­fer­en­cies, and of the change­ments on the early ideas of the “dig­i­tal cul­ture” of the 90’s. Be­yond the myth of un­fail­ing global co­mu­ni­ca­tions, we might find dif­fer­ent lay­ered ways of cre­at­ing co­mu­ni­ca­tion and cre­ativ­ity through dig­i­tal ex­change. “East & West” would like to in­di­cate new so­lu­tions or un­der­lines the so­lu­tions that seem to fit bet­ter with a new cul­tural pat­tern where the ge­o­graphic di­rec­tions are right & left & every­where.

    Dig­i­tal lan­guages seem to be the “im­ma­te­r­ial” “melt­ing pot” that traces, in the con­texts of con­tem­po­rary co­mu­ni­ca­tions and con­tem­po­rary art, sim­i­lar­i­ties and con­trasts of the dif­fer­ent global cul­tures.  In re­cent hap­pen­ings in Egypt and Tunisia the use of tech­nolo­gies it’s been strong and vis­i­ble.  So­cial net­works like Face­book, Google, Youtube have been used in many ways as well as it was usual to see women using cel­lu­lar phones tak­ing videos dur­ing man­i­fes­ta­tions.  One of the deads dur­ing the clashes in Cairo, Ahmed Ba­siony, was a young artist using dig­i­tal media for in­stal­la­tions. One of them it’s a very  in­ter­est­ing ques­tion­ing of the dig­i­tal lan­guage “Ascii not speak ara­bic”, where the shad­ows of the view­ers make ap­pear ara­bic let­ters on a screen cov­ered by ascii code.  There is a grow­ing num­ber of work­shops, labs, fes­ti­vals going on in­volv­ing con­tem­po­rary art and dig­i­tal all over the “East” of the world.  It will be a charm­ing per­spec­tive to see what will come out of those new en­er­gies and cul­tures in­volved in the field of dig­i­tal lan­guages.  The panel wants to bring peo­ple to­gether to in­ter­ro­gate the ac­tual ac­tiv­i­ties, cre­ate new ideas and col­lab­o­ra­tions, in­cite cre­ativ­ity, new di­a­logues and try to fore­see what’s hap­pen­ing in a new global dig­i­tal cul­ture where ge­o­graphic de­f­i­n­i­tions are chang­ing but cul­tures main­tain their sin­gu­lar­i­ties.

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