Martin Rieser - The Digital Uncanny

Tue, 14 Jan 2014

Martin Rieser - The Digital Uncanny

Venue: BCS London, First Floor, Davidson House, 5 Southampton St, London, WC2E 7HA
6pm

Martin Rieser examines how the spread of Augmented Reality heralds the advent of a new kind of unfamiliar familiarity - that Freud labelled the "uncanny" or 'unheimlich'. Digital worlds may now seem immersive, in that they are convincing, multi-faceted and "user friendly", but it seems that an unfriendly aftertaste lingers on around the figure of the avatar, related to their imperfect but familiar appearance

At the same time, new narrative spaces are being opened up by mobile and pervasive technologies , that offer the possibility of escaping the now prevailing functionalism of the everyday digital, and through that, the possibility of new and individual expressive freedoms. He will review a number of his own and other recent creative digital art projects that center on the notion of 'otherness' as being intrinsic to the digital medium.

Professor Rieser has worked in the field of interactive arts for many years. He was research Professor in the Institute of Creative Technologies in The Faculty of Art Design and Humanities at De Montfort and is now visiting Professor at the Pervasive Studio University of the West of England. His art practice in internet art and interactive narrative installations has been seen around the world including Cannes; Holland, Paris; Vienna, Thessaloniki, London, Germany, Milan and Melbourne, Australia. He has published numerous essays and books on digital art including New Screen Media: Cinema/ Art/Narrative (BFI/ZKM, 2002), and has recently edited The Mobile Audience, a book on mobile and locative technology and art from Rodopi.

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