9.5 Reimagining Media
Tracks
Track 5
Wednesday, June 26, 2024 |
3:30 PM - 5:30 PM |
Plaza P9 |
Speaker
Mr Xinyu Ma
Student
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou)
FP: From Engagement to Integration: Examining Participatory and Systemic Approaches in Contemporary Art Practices
3:30 PM - 3:55 PMAbstract
This essay delves into the evolving landscape of contemporary art, focusing on two distinct yet influential paradigms: participatory and systemic artistic practice. Participatory art, characterized by its emphasis on viewer interaction and communal experience, transforms the audience from passive observers to active participants. It fosters a platform for diverse interpretations and engagement, often addressing socio-political issues through immersive environments. Systemic artistic practice, conversely, presents a radical reimagining of the practice of engaging with complex, self-evolving networks that intersect technological, ecological, and social systems, challenging anthropocentric framings and acknowledging the agency of nonhuman actors. This essay explores the characteristics, philosophical underpinnings, and broader implications of these two paradigms. By doing so, it offers a critical understanding of how these emerging artistic practices reflect and reshape societal, cultural, and technological narratives.
Biography
Xinyu Ma is a Chinese artist who recently lives and studies in London. His art practice is basically associate with the aesthetical and philosophical way to rethink about the human minds. Ma uses media like sculpture, installation, performance and moving image to practices.
Ms Lauria Clarke
The New School / Antimodular Research
FP: The New Uncanny: Stories for Liminal Technology
3:55 PM - 4:20 PMAbstract
The Uncanny Valley is a thought experiment that has been colloquially used since 1970 to discuss technology’s sometimes uncomfortable resemblance to human life. Seventy years later, this paradigm is no longer sufficient when discussing technological uncanniness in the world. Topics like synthetic biology, atmospheric engineering, and biomimetic robotics cannot be understood using a singular threshold based on human likeness. This lack of perspective on how technology reflects and impacts the non-human, "natural'' world is particularly apparent in the field of BioArt and BioDesign where critical theory becomes closely intertwined with hard science. Drawing on language from the BioArt domain, this project expands the univariate, human-centric Uncanny Valley by exploring uncanniness along the three axes of the living, the biological, and the natural.
Biography
Lauria Clarke is an artist and educator based in New York City and Montreal. Her sculpture-based practice examines the uncanny intersections of technologies, materials, and bodies that emerge from contemporary conceptions of the natural world. Frequently employing moving assemblages of latex rubber and electronics, Lauria’s work pushes the point at which familiar bodily forms become alien.
Lauria holds an MFA in Design and Technology from The Parsons School of Design and an MS in Computer Engineering from Northeastern University. She currently teaches physical computing and creative code at Hunter College and The Parsons School of Design.
Dr Elke Reinhuber
Associate Professor
SCM School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong
FP: The Boar in the Flower Shop – Exploring Synthography as a New Genre Beyond Photography
4:20 PM - 4:45 PMAbstract
This paper seeks to explore and critically analyse the emergent genre of digital image creation proposed as ‘Synthography’. Drawing upon previous foundational texts by the author, this paper aims to delve into the theoretical implications and practical applications of Synthography. The text discusses the new possibilities in visual arts driven by the advancements in digital tools and artificial intelligence, which redefines the traditional concepts of photography. It explores the process of 3D modelling and its role in product photography as well as the concept of the ‘uncanny valley’ by using the example of a synthetic recreation of a wild boar through Synthography. This theory, which refers to the discomfort experienced when a representation is very close but not entirely identical to the real thing, has significant implications for this new genre. The interplay between the ‘real’ and the ‘synthetic’ in Synthography often walks this fine line, leading to innovative, yet sometimes unsettling, visual experiences.
Biography
Elke Reinhuber is a media artist, educator, researcher and Associate Professor at SCM City University of Hong Kong. In her work she explores different modes of presentation and strategies of storytelling to emphasise the parallel existence of multiple truths of the here and now, anchored in expanded photography and spanning into several disciplines such as time based media, immersive environments, Augmented and Virtual Reality as well as performance. Her award winning artistic research was presented internationally, at conferences, exhibitions and festivals.
www.eer.de
Mr Raivo Kelomees
Estonian Academy of Arts
SP: Cooperative Aesthetic Experience in Participatory and Interactive Art
4:45 PM - 5:00 PMAbstract
Visual and digital art mostly represent a field of culture where one viewer looks at one work of art. Personal appreciation of visual objects is a standard condition for experiencing fine art. But in music or dance, for example, this "standard condition" is collective reception. Creation can also be collective. These art forms require co-authorship, taking into account the ac-tions of other participants and the constant adaptation of artistic behavior – important in music, dance and film produc-tion. An interactive artwork may be created by a single artist or team and may be intended for one or more view-ers/participants. This last situation, which is the object of this analysis, is related to the cooperation between the so-called "pre-artwork" and the viewer. The existence of a work is es-sentially an event, it exists as a performance and becomes real through "playing it". The purpose of this article is to analyze works that are purposefully designed for multiple (rather than one) users and in which the artistic concept emerges as a result of the collaboration of two or more participants.
Biography
Raivo Kelomees, PhD (art history), is an artist, art historian and new media researcher. He studied psychology, art history and design in Tartu University and the Academy of Arts in Tallinn. He is senior researcher at the Fine Arts Faculty at the Estonian Academy of Arts and professor at the Pallas University of Applied Sciences. Kelomees is author of Surrealism (Kunst Publishers, 1993) and article collections Screen as a Membrane (Tartu Art College proceedings, 2007) and Social Games in Art Space (EAA, 2013). His doctoral thesis is Postmateriality in Art. Indeterministic Art Practices and Non-Material Art (Dissertationes Academiae Artium Estoniae 3, 2009). Together with Chris Hales he edited the collection of articles Constructing Narrative in Interactive Documentaries (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014). In collaboration with Varvara Guljajeva and Oliver Laas he edited the collection of articles The Meaning of Creativity in the Age of AI (EKA Press, 2022).
Mr Steve Daniels
Artist, Associate Professor
Toronto Metropolitan University (Canada)
SP: Permeability and Media Art
5:00 PM - 5:15 PMAbstract
This paper serves as a proposition for an alternate taxonomy regarding systems and media practices. With the digital no longer an adequate term for describing the specificities of media art, we briefly track the histories of various nomenclature with respect to their characteristics. Drawing on a biological metaphor of the living cell membrane we pay particular attention to systems and systems art and suggest an inclusive approach to the specificities of art that sits across numerous classifications. Open and closed systems are recognized as offering a broader approach; however, we see these as embedded in particular chronologies and disciplines. Our proposal is that the term permeability is more descriptive of the breadth of practices that fall into the media art category, and in fact this nomenclature may be applied to all art forms.
Biography
Steve Daniels uses electronics and communication technologies to create hardware agents, kinetic sculptures, ubiquitous spaces and networked events. Through his practice he juxtaposes disparate knowledge systems and experiences in an effort to reveal their underlying structures and assumptions. He has exhibited at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) Lightbox, Ontario Science Centre, InterAccess (Toronto, ON) and The Museum and internationally in the MACHines show at the Centre des Arts, Enghien Les Bain (FR), as a part of Eveil/Alive/Despertar (SESC Santana, Sao Paulo, Brazil), TEI’15 (Stanford, USA), ISEA Disruption (Vancouver, CAN), the Arts In Society Conference (Lisbon, Portugal, 2019) and ISEA 2020 - Why Sentience? (Montreal CAN, online).
Steve is currently Associate Professor and past Director of the New Media program in The Creative School at TMU. He holds an MSc from the University of Manitoba (Zoology, Behavioural Ecology) and is a graduate of Integrated Media at OCAD (Toronto).
Steve can be found online at www.spinningtheweb.org
Dr Caroline Seck Langill
Provost
Ontario College of Art and Design University
Co-presenter
Biography
Caroline Seck Langill is a writer and curator whose academic scholarship and curatorial work looks at intersections between art and science, as well as the related fields of media art history, criticism and preservation. Her interests in non-canonical art histories have led her to writing and exhibition-making that challenges disciplinary constraints. Dr. Langill’s recent publication, Curating Lively Objects: Exhibitions Beyond Disciplines (2022) co-edited with Dr. Lizzie Muller, is the result of SSHRC-funded research that explored alternate forms of curatorial practice. Dr. Langill holds an MFA from York University, and a PhD in Canadian Studies from Trent University. As a full professor she currently holds the position of Vice-President Academic and Provost at OCAD University.
Session chair
Caroline Seck Langill
Provost
Ontario College of Art and Design University
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