DASH Archives - August 2005

From: Roger Malina

We are pleased to announce the final plans and program for the Refresh!
conference, co-sponsored by Leonardo/ISAST.

Call to all interested to attend the first Refresh! conference on the
Histories of the New Media Arts, Sciences and Technologies which will be
held at the Banff New Media Institute.

Conference dates:
September 28 - October 1, 2005

Recognizing the increasing significance of media art for our culture, this
conference on the histories of media art will discuss, for the first time,
the history of media art within the interdisciplinary and intercultural
contexts of the histories of art. Leonardo/ISAST, Banff New Media Institute,
the Database for Virtual Art, and UNESCO DigiArts are collaborating to
produce the first international art history conference covering art and new
media, art and technology, art-science interaction, and the history of media
as pertinent to contemporary art.

Selected speakers include:
Oliver Grau: Refresh! Conference Director; Lecturer in Art History at
Humboldt University, Berlin; Visiting Professor at the Kunst Universaet
Linz; Lucia Santanella, Professor of Communication and Semiotics, São Paulo
Catholic University, Brazil; and Edmond Couchot: Theoretician, and Emeritus
Professor, the Université de  Paris.

For more information about Refresh!, the final program and to register,
please visit: http://www.banffcentre.ca/bnmi/events/refresh/

Leonardo will be publishing a selection of papers. This collaboration is
part of the Leonardo Pionniers and Pathbreakers Art History Project. For
more details see http://www.olats.org

Call for Papers

Do we have an Image Problem?
Performance and Media Art caught between Art 
History and Visual Culture Studies.

The first Media Art Conference in Osnabrück will 
take place from the 15th to the 17th of May 2006 
as a three-day specialist symposium at the 
University of Osnabrück and is sponsored by 
Department of  Kultur- und Geowissenschaften. It 
will be held immediately following the 19th 
European Media Art Festival (EMAF, 10th to 14th 
May 2006), one of the largest media art events in 
Europe.


The conference will focus on the growing affinity 
between art forms produced, experienced and 
distributed by the media on the one hand and the 
highly debated iconic or pictorial turn on the 
other. One of the central issues will be to 
question whether the recently developed aesthetic 
terminology can sufficiently deal with the time- 
and action-oriented art forms of performance and 
media art.


In addition to a number of distinguished experts 
invited to present papers, the speakers will 
include young scholars as well as contributors 
selected on the basis of the abstracts they 
submitted to this call for papers.


Enclosed you will find further information 
concerning the background and objectives of the 
conference. Please do not hesitate to ask us 
questions at any time.


We would be very pleased to include you among the 
speakers or authors for our planned publication.


Topics for Talks and Articles


1.	Performance and media art in the context 
of the contemporary debate between art history 
and Visual Culture Studies and where art history 
is positioning itself in relation to Visual 
Culture Studies, Media Studies and Cultural 
History.

2.	Media art, art history’s cultural 
orientation and the scientific modus operandi 
given the wide range of methodologies and the 
overlap of genres.

3.	Examples of art historical and media 
studies descriptions and analysis of performance 
and media art.


In addition to a description of content, the 
abstracts for papers (c. 400 words) should 
clearly demonstrate both their relevance to the 
theme of the conference and their originality.


A publication of the conference findings is 
planned. All contributions will be considered.


Please submit your abstracts by 30 October 2005 to the EMAC office:


Media Art Conference Osnabrück


http://www.media-art-conference.com


Universität Osnabrück

Fachbereich Kultur- und Geowissenschaften

Kunstgeschichte

Katharinenstraße 5

49069 Osnabrück

Germany


Juniorprofessor Dr. Slavko Kacunko (Organisation)

skacunko@uni-osnabrueck.de


Priv. Doz. Dr. Habil. Dawn Leach (Organisation)

dr.leach@kunstakademie-duesseldorf.de


Björn Brüggemann (Büro)

bjbruegg@uni-osnabrueck.de


Phone: +49 (0)541 969-6041

Fax: +49 (0)541 969-4103



Reference-Text


The first Media Art Conference in Osnabrück will 
direct attention to timely questions confronting 
art history, in particular the multimedia aspects 
concerning the production, critical appraisal and 
dissemination of performance and media art. Thus 
the following aspects will be addressed:


·	art history’s repositioning itself in 
relation to Visual Culture Studies, Media Studies 
and Cultural history


·	the development of a modus operandi which 
takes into consideration a wide range of 
methodologies and the interpenetration of 
different genres


·	the description and analysis of media art 
in the face of the instable status of the work 
concept in Media Art, and art in general


The key issues to be addressed by the first Media 
Art Conference in Osnabrück can be summarised by 
the following question:

Given the increasingly complex demands which the 
wide range of visual, media, critical, 
performance, cultural and gender studies exert on 
the teaching and research environment, how can 
the history of art maintain its ability to deal 
aptly with representations, new media and art and 
simultaneously incorporate interdisciplinary 
strategies?


By focussing on time- and action-oriented art 
forms, the traditional discourse will be 
broadened to include the following questions: Can 
an (inter)active beholder play an integral role 
in the making of a work of art without 
jeopardising its intrinsic artistic value or 
reducing the “autonomy of the work of art” to a 
mere attribute? Where exactly do performance and 
media art fit into the already inflated body of 
terminology for denoting images?


A glance at the large number of university 
graduates dealing with art and visual culture 
(Berlin, Frankfurt, Karlsruhe, Basel) documents 
the current popularity of the image-discourse. 
Similarly, the flood of specialist literature in 
recent years as well as related conferences (e.g. 
Art Historians Day, Bonn 2005) confirm this trend.


If we take a look at the origins of performance 
and media art in the 1960s and 1970s and the 
subsequent development of the iconic/pictorial 
turns, the suspicion arises that recent efforts 
to expand the boundaries of art history to absorb 
current visual culture occurred in part to 
circumvent the challenges posed by these new art 
forms.


By investigating art forms which defy traditional 
definition while exploring the definitions 
themselves, this conference will attempt to graft 
these two ambivalent discourses. At the same time 
it will lay the foundations for a 
reinterpretation of the relevant academic fields. 
An impressive series of arguments presented by 
artists, art historians and experts in media 
studies address the need to conjoin these 
conflicting fields of study.

Review of
Nicolas Schöffer Exhibition
at
Espace EDF Electra
6, rue Recamier 75007 Paris
Tel: 01 53 63 23 45
Until September 11th, 2005

By Joseph Nechvatal


If one discounts the existence of László Moholy-Nagy’s Bauhaus Light Space 
Modulator (1923-30) (rebuilt in 1970 and now in the collection of Harvard 
University's Busch-Reisinger Museum) – a visionary multimedia artwork that 
helped inaugurate the artistic dialogue between machines, light, shadow and 
motion - there is something to the claim that the Hungarian-born French 
artist Nicolas Schöffer (1912-1992) is 'the Father of Cybernetic Art'. At 
the very least this premise may now be entertained while viewing actual work 
(mostly mobile sculpture under theatrical lighting effects) and an 
incredible amount of documentation now on view in Paris at the museum of the 
French electricity company Espace EDF Electra.

What is immediately evident in this exceptional historic presentation is 
that Schöffer’s career touched on painting, kinetic sculpture, architecture, 
urbanism, film, TV, and even music (he collaborated with Pierre Henry) – all 
in the pursuit of a dynamism in art which was originally initiated by the 
Cubo-Futurists and then intensified and solidified by the Russian 
Constructivists such as Naum Gabo, Anton Pevsner, Moholy-Nagy and Ludwig 
Hirschfeld-Mack. All were concerned with opening up the static 
three-dimensional sculptural form to a fourth dimension of time and motion, 
and this was Schöffer’s intention as well. Schöffer however, coming well 
after, benefited pleasingly from cybernetic theories (theories of feedback 
systems (interactivity) primarily based on the ideas of Norbert Wiener 
(1894-1964)) in that they suggested to him artistic processes in terms of 
the organization of the system manifesting it (e.g., the circular causality 
of feedback-loops). For Schöffer, this enabled cybernetics to elucidate 
complex artistic relationships from within the work itself.

His CYSP 1, from 1956, is considered the first cybernetic sculpture in art 
history in that it made use of electronic computations as developed by the 
Philips Company. The sculpture is set on a base mounted on four rollers, 
which contains the mechanism and the electronic brain. The plates are 
operated by small motors located under their axis. Photo-electric cells and 
a microphone built into the sculpture catch all the variations in the fields 
of color, light intensity and sound intensity. All these changes occasion 
reactions on the part of the sculpture.

Consequently Schöffer’s kinetic sculptural compositions were able to 
parallel Warren McCulloch's adaptation of cybernetics in formulating a 
creative epistemology concerned with the self-communication within an 
observer's psyche and between the psyche and the surrounding environment. 
This is cybernetics’ primary usefulness in studying the supposed 
subject/object polarity in terms of artistic experience. That is the 
theoretical premise, at least.

In actuality we are treated here to dramatic light shows (some on the trippy 
side) that come whirling out of his spinning mechanical metal sculptures. 
Colored lights bounce off revolving polished metal towers - casting 
ever-changing lights and shadows onto huge wall screens and into our eyes. 
There also is a very basic interactive room consisting of a group of smaller 
whirling sculptures which respond to the presence of a viewer and a large 
prismatic triangle structure containing infinity views. This work brought to 
mind Lucas Samaras, Room 2 and other mirrored immersive works such as 
Getulio Alvani’s Cubic Environment and Luc Peire's Environment – all of 
which similarly offered the viewer a pervasive reflective arrangement where 
mirrored surfaces rebound amplitude to an indefinite degree.

In Schöffer’s triangular structure, my image was being ceaselessly mixed and 
reflected within spinning lights as I was made to feel an integral part of 
an exploding expanse. In general, this infinity experience bided me to view 
myself in infinity and so to feel space not in the traditional passive 
Euclidean custom - but in a conceptually operative and viractual (viractive) 
manner.

In addition, the exhibition demonstrates Schöffer’s three period styles. 
First is his “spatio-dynamic” constructions from 1948 on: attempts at a 
synthesis of spatial and dynamic elements. Next come the “lumo-dynamic” 
constructions of 1957, which connect light projections to music. In his 
“chrono-dynamic” works of 1959, word and tone, movement and space, light and 
color form together a totality of space-time.

Also well documented is Schöffer’s 52 metres high “Cybernetic Tower” from 
1961, which was constructed in Liege with 66 revolving mirrors.

Given the period-piece nature of the exhibition, I found it stylistically 
engaging - and not overly retro looking. Indeed, the show surprisingly did 
not appear that dated, even though of course it recalled the early Paris 
60’s and the futuristic 'space age' designs of Paco Rabanne which involved 
the use of moving metallic discs or plates. Yet my subject/object polarity 
never shifted much.

But given that, shouldn’t Nicolas Schöffer work be considered something 
other than an art object per se? Perhaps it is more appropriate to think of 
it as a means of transforming static perspective vision into a luminous 
motion study. We might just as well consider it then as stage props. Or 
better, an apparatus for painting with light. With his video works of 1961, 
Schöffer is additionally regarded as an early representative of video art – 
so perhaps it all funnels into special effects broadcast TV (which he did).

For me, the final interest of this show (which I have seen three times now) 
is in its allowing me to better position Schöffer in a certain art-tech 
artist-engineer intellectual history – a living history which has not yet 
exhausted itself. Indeed it is touching to consider that László 
Moholy-Nagy’s Light Space Modulator – which was driven by a motor and 
equipped with 128 electric bulbs in different colors - was finally 
demonstrated at the 1930 Paris Werkbund exhibition. So we see Nicolas 
Schöffer here not only as a pioneer of cybernetic art, kinetic sculptor, 
town planner, architect and theoretician of art - but as a key player in the 
middle of the art-tech intellectual narration – a narration which 
increasingly defines artistic achievement in the beginning of the 21st 
century.







Joseph Nechvatal

http://www.nechvatal.net

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interzone: Media arts in Australia
a new book by Darren Tofts

Media arts have become the most public and accessible form of inquiry
into the interface between society, culture and technology. The impact
of digital technologies has been profound and new disciplines of
inquiry have emerged over the last twenty years in response to the
overall "computerisation" of society. Media artists are at the
forefront of this inquiry in both their use of new media and their
aesthetic exploration of its effects.

interzone presents the first comprehensive overview of the development
of media arts culture in Australia. It critically discusses the work of
established and emerging media artists and the contexts out of which
their work has developed.

interzone explores, through the work of more than 70 artists, the
emergence of key concepts such as interactivity, interface and immersion.
It is wide-ranging in its attention to aesthetic forms that have
developed in relation to computer-based media, such as net art, virtual
reality environments, digital video, multimedia installation and
interactive fiction.

interzone will be published in November by Thames & Hudson Australia.

NOTE:  a flyer with a special discount offer is attached.  The phone
and fax numbers supplied are in Australia - if you are phone/faxing
from elsewhere replace 03 with +613
-- 
===============================================================
Paul Brown                 in the UK 16 July - end October 2005
mailto:paul@paul-brown.com            http://www.paul-brown.com
UK mob +44 (0)794 104 8228              USA fax +1 309 216 9900
===============================================================
Visiting Professor - Sussex University
        http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/ccnr/research/creativity.html
===============================================================