Ⓥ 9.1 Heritage of the Pioneers (Part of the 4th Summit on New Media Art Archiving)
Tracks
Track 1
Wednesday, June 26, 2024 |
3:30 PM - 4:25 PM |
Plaza Auditorium |
Overview
This session will be livestreamed from Brisbane for virtual delegates
Details
Regular meetings of electronic artists, like Ars Electronica and ISEA, typically started in the 1980's. Art schools became aware of the creative potential of computer use in that same decade. We are now entering an era where many of the early 'computer artists' would be thinking of retirement, if they were not artists.
In the context of the Summits on New Media Art Archiving the question arose what is going to happen with the archives of these artists? This is a good reason to invite some of the major electronic art pioneers to join us at ISEA2024 and tell us about the state of affairs regarding their own archives (digital and/or physical), the sustainability of that situation and their thoughts on the possibilities to make other electronic artists' archives safe for the future.
Speaker
Peter Beyls
Panelist
Abstract
Biography
Peter Beyls, a pioneer at the intersection of computer science and the arts, develops generative systems in music, visual arts, and hybrid formats. He holds degrees in music and computer science from EMS, Stockholm, the Royal Music Conservatory, Brussels, and the Slade School of Art, UC London.
Beyls' groundbreaking work with cellular automata in computer music influenced the field. He has taught and researched worldwide, notably at institutions like the University of Quebec and the Osaka Arts University.
A member of ISEA since the 1990s, Beyls engages with various organizations such as the Electronic Music Foundation and Intermedia Projects. His artistic journey spans from tape music composition to interactive installations, exploring the relationship between digital and analog realms.
He conceptualizes software as a tool for aesthetic introspection, pushing boundaries in generative art and interactive systems. Beyls' oeuvre, documented in publications and exhibited internationally, reflects his experimental and exploratory approach to art and technology.
Christa / Laurent Sommerer / Mignonneau
Panelist
Biography
Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau are internationally renowned media artists, researchers and pioneers of interactive art. They worked 10 years in Japan as Associate Professors at the IAMAS Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences in Gifu, Japan and as Researchers and Artistic Directors at the ATR Advanced Telecommunications Research Lab in Kyoto Japan. Before they were artists-in residence at the MIT CAVS in Cambridge US, artists-in-residence at the NCSA National Center for Supercomputing Applications Beckmann Institute in Champaign Urbana, IL, USA and artists-in-residence at the NTT-InterCommunication Center in Tokyo. In 2004 they set up the department for Interface Cultures at the University of Art and Design in Linz, Austria where they are both professors.
Sommerer held positions a Visiting Professor at CAFA Central Academy of Fine Arts Beijing in 2019, as Visiting Professor at the Empowerment Informatics Program at Tsukuba University in 2018 and as Obel Guest Professor at Aalborg University, Denmark from 2014-2016. Mignonneau was a Chair International Professor at Paris 8 University in France in 2015.
Sommerer and Mignonneau have published numerous books and research papers on Artificial Life, interactivity and interface design and they lectured extensively at universities, international conferences, and symposia. Sommerer is also an International Co-editor for the LEONARDO Journal, MIT Press, among other international media art board and committee memberships.
Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau created around 50 pioneering interactive artworks that have been exhibited in around 350 international exhibitions They received numerous awards, f.e. the 2016 ARCO BEEP Award in Madrid Spain, the 2012 Wu Guanzhong Art and Science Innovation Award which was bestowed by the Ministry of Culture of the People’s Republic of China and the 1994 Golden Nica Prix Ars Electronica Award and in 2021 the Austrian State Art Award in the category of Media Art. They created pioneering interactive artworks such as "Interactive Plant Growing" in 1992 where visitors can interact with real plants to create artificial plants on a screen (From the ZKM Collection: and Another highlight is the interactive Installation "A-Volve" in 1994 where visitors can create Artificial Life creatures that swim, mate and propagate in a pool filled with water.
In 2010 Sommerer and Mignonneau became interested in the attention economy and created a work called "The Value of Art". Visitors can look at paintings and 10 seconds of their attention increases the value of the artwork by one Euro. The constantly increasing value of the art work is printed on a thermal printed attached to the art work.They also have been interested in digital portraiture and created interactive installations such as "Portrait on the Fly" (2015). Here visitors can produce their own live portrait through a swarm of 10.000 flies or through artificial ants in "Homo Insectus" (2020) Sommerer and Mignonneau have also created several large scale public installations such as "ANTopolis" (2020) where people and passerby in the city could see themselves transformed by virtual ants on a gigantic screen. Sommerer and Mignonneau artworks are mostly concerned with interactivity, the human-nature relationship and ecological topics.
Keisuke Oki
Artist
Panelist
Biography
Exhibitions:
2022: My First Digital, 3331 Arts Chiyoda, Tokyo
2019: Art Farming, Choja machi, Nagoya
2017: Teramachi Art Project, Sougakuji temple, Nagoya
2016: Space, Art and Human-Body, Tokyo University of Art, Tokyo
2016: Solo show, TIMES Gallery, Aichi Triennale, Nagoya
2015: REN-CON ART PROJECT, City center for Artistic Creation, Nagoya
2014: Solo show and concert, Guest Room, Malibor, Slovenia
2013: UNA, Setouchi Triennale 2013, Uno city, Okayama
2012: MFRU - Mednarodni Festival, Maribor, Slovenia
2012: Explosion Tokyo, Tokyo Cinema Club, Tokyo
And many more, spanning from 1976 to 2022.
Lectures (selected):
2002: "Morphing Gender: Transitional forms in Artistic expression" - ISEA2002, Nagoya, Japan
2000: "bodyfuture" - ISEA2000, Paris
2000: "bodyfuture" - WRO center for media arts, Wroclaw, Poland
1999: "Future Body" - Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Contemporary Art
And others, covering topics from art to technology, starting from 1996.
Writings (selected):
1993~: Various articles including "Brain Wave Rider: A Human-Machine Interface" in "Leonardo" Volume 28, Number 4, 1995.
Contributions to publications such as Burda Academy and Kunstforum in Germany.
Stelarc
Panelist
Biography
Stelarc is an Australian artist who has performed and exhibited in Japan, Europe and the United States. He has used medical instruments, prosthetics, robotics, virtual reality systems, the Internet and biotechnology to explore alternate, intimate and involuntary interfaces with the body. He has acoustically and visually probed the body, having amplified brainwaves, blood-flow and muscle signals and filmed the inside of his lungs, stomach and colon. He has done 25 Body Suspensions with insertions into the skin, in different positions and varying situations in remote locations. He has performed with a Third Hand, a Virtual Arm, a Virtual Body, an inserted Stomach Sculpture and Exoskeleton, a six-legged walking machine.
For Fractal Flesh , as part of Telepolis, he developed a touch-screen interfaced Muscle Stimulation System, enabling remote access, actuation and choreography of the body. Performances such as Ping Body and Parasite probe notions of telematic scaling and the engineering of external, extended and virtual nervous systems for the body using the Internet. The Motion Prosthesis is a compliant upper body servo-mechanism that allows programming of precise, repetitive and accelerated movements of the arms. The Prosthetic Head (an ongoing project) explores issues of awareness and identity. An embodied, somewhat intelligent, conversational agent, which speaks to the person who interrogates with real-time lip-syncing and facial expressions, was exhibited at Sherman Galleries in May 2005.
In 1997, Stelarc was appointed Honorary Professor of Art and Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University. He was artist in residence for Hamburg City in 1998. In 2002, he was awarded an Honorary Degree of Laws by Monash University. He has completed visiting artist positions in Art and Technology at Ohio State University (2002-04), and in 2004 he was awarded a two-year Australia Council New Media Arts Fellowship. In 2006 Stelarc was Principal Research Fellow in the Performance Arts Digital Research Unit at Nottingham Trent University, UK.
Session chair
Wim van der Plas
ISEA Symposium Archives
Session moderator
Melanie Swalwell
Swinburne University of Technology
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