The ISEA98 Themes Revisited

Symposium:

• ISEA98: Ninth International Symposium on Electronic Art

• The ISEA98 Themes Revisited

• John Hyatt

Category:

• Introductory & Welcoming Notes

• [This is a post scriptum dd 02.06.2015]

  The event had 3 parts. Due to the tripartite nature of the delivery of ISEA98 between Manchester Metropolitan University, Liverpool John Moore’s University and FACT, with FACT pursuing a cross city series of events as ‘revolution 98’, I decided that I would give the original theme of Revolution to Liverpool John Moore’s University for their conference as the first venue (though it was originally evolved in conversation between myself, John Byrne of LJMU and Lowena Faull of FACT whilst trapped by rain in the Old Post Office public house, Liverpool, to refer to Manchester’s history as a radical city) and develop Terror as a theme for the following venue and conference in Manchester. This was to examine a more dystopian set of outcome possibilities following the digital revolution. This averarching narrative of revolution followed by terror was the conceptual frame. This choice of ‘terror’ as a theme for examination was prescient and even I did not realise the currency which would accrue to the term in the post 9/11 era.