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ARTMEDIA 8 from Esthétique de la communication au NET ART
ORGANIZERS & PARTNERS
1 - Organizers
Mario Costa , professor of Aesthetics at the University of Salerno, of Criticism's Methodology at the University of Napoli (IUO) and of Ethics and Aesthetics of Communication at the University of Nice;
Annick Bureaud, director Leonardo/Olats;
Fred Forest, emeritus professor of the University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis.
- Advisory Committee
Anne Cauquelin , emeritus professor of the University of Paris, theoretician in contemporary art, Ph.D in Philosophy, co-director of the Revue d'esthétique.
Edmond Couchot , professor at Paris VIII University, former director the the ATI Department (Art et Technologies de l'Image) in the UFR of Arts, aesthetics and philosophy.
Derrick de Kerckhove, director of the Marshall Mc Luhan Program, University of Toronto
Jean-Paul Longavesne, professor at the University of Paris XI and the ENSAD, director of the GRIP (Groupe de Recherche en Informatique Picturale)
Roger Malina, Chairman of the Board of Leonardo, director of the Laboratoire d'Astronomie Spatiale de Marseille, CNRS
Pierre Moeglin , director of the Laboratoire des Sciences de l'information et de la communication, Paris XIII (Laboratory for the Sciences of Information and Communication, University of Paris XIII) and project manager at the "Maison des sciences de l'homme 'Paris Nord'" for the French Ministry of Research.
Karen O'Rourke, assistant professor at the University of Paris I, Sorbonne, Saint-Charles
Louise Poissant , director of the Ph.D. Program "Etudes et Pratiques des Arts", director of the GRAM (Groupe de Recherche en Arts Médiatiques/Research Group in Media Arts), at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM)
Annick Bureaud, director Leonardo/Olats;
Mario Costa,
Mario Costa , professor of Aesthetics at the University of Salerno, of Criticism's Methodology at the University of Napoli (IUO)
Fred Forest, emeritus professor of the University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis.
PROGRAMME
VENDREDI 29 NOVEMBRE 2002 / FRIDAY NOVEMBER 29th 2002
sessions au CFCE / sessions at the CFCE, 10 avenue d'Iéna, 75116 Paris
08h45 - 09h00 : Accueil
09h00 - 09h10 : Jean-Daniel Gardère, Directeur CFCE
09h10 - 09h20 : Enrico Nuzzo, Université de Salerne
09h20 - 09h55 : Présentation Artmedia VIII, Mario Costa, Fred Forest, Annick Bureaud
Session 1 : Histoire d'une esthétique de la communication technologique / History of an Aesthetics of Technological Communication
Modérateur / Moderator : Frank Popper
10h00 - 10h20 : Louise Poissant, Le Dictionnaire des Arts Médiatiques / Media Arts Dictionnary
10h20 - 10h40 : Natan Karczmar, Le Vidéocollectif / The Videocollectif
10h40 - 11h10 : Fred Forest, Petit voyage à rebrousse temps : en remontant du Net art aux? fondements historiques de l'esthétique de la communication / Small Journey in thePast: by going back from Net art to the historic foundations of theaesthetics of communication
11h10 - 11h30 : Louis-José Lestocart, Emergences-l'art en espace partagé / Emergences - Art in Shared Space
11h30 - 11h40 : Conclusion, Frank Popper
11h40 - 11h50 : Questions
11h50 - 12h00 : Pause / Break
Session 2 : Forme et événements dans les réseaux / Form and Events in the Networks
Modérateur / Moderator : Derrick de Kerckhove
12h00 - 12h20 : Mario Costa, "Bloc communiquant" et esthétique du flux / "Communicating Block" and Aesthetics of the Flux
12h20 - 12h40 : Mariapaola Fimiani, Esthétique et éthique : la force des choses / Aesthetics and Ethics : The Strength of Things
12h40 - 13h00 : Edmond Couchot, De la communication à la commutation / From Communication to Commutation
13h00 - 13h10 : Conclusion, Derrick de Kerckhove
13h10 - 13h20 : Questions
Pause déjeuner / Lunch Break
Session 3 (1ère partie) : Thématisation de l'espace-temps comme pratique artistique / "Thematizing" Space-Time as Artistic Practice
Modérateur / Moderator : Roger Malina
14h30 - 14h50 : Samuel Bianchini, Image interactive : stratégies de manipulation / Interactive Image: Stategies of manipulation
14h50 - 15h10 : Nicolas Reeves, Les terrifiants pépins de la lucidité : Essai sur les mondes pseudo-infinis / The Terrifying Pips of Lucidity: Essay on Pseudo Infinite Worlds
15h10 - 15h30 : José Jiménez, L'art à venir / The Art to Come
15h30 - 15h50 : Andreas Broeckmann, Réseau/Résonance - Les processus de connectivité et la pratique artistique / Reseau/Resonance - Connective Processes and Artistic Practice
15h50 - 16h20 : Monika Fleischmann & Wolfgang Strauss, Métaphores de la navigation en ligne : netzspannung.org - un espace collaboratif de savoir pour l'art et la technologie, une plate-forme Internet communautaire / Metaphors of Online Navigation: netzspannung.org ? a Collaborative Knowledge Space for Art and Technology, a Community-based Internet Platform
16h20 - 16h30 : Conclusion, Roger Malina
16h30 - 16h40 : Questions
6h40 - 16h50 : Pause / Break
Session 3 (2ème partie) : Thématisation de l'espace-temps comme pratique artistique / "Thematizing" Space-Time as Artistic Practice
Modérateur / Moderator : Mario Costa
16h50 - 17h10 : Karen O'Rourke & Sharon Daniel, Cartographier la base de données : la représentation en ligne de l'expérience spatio-temporelle / Mapping Databases: Online Representation of Spatiotemporal Experience
17h10 - 17h30 : Christophe Charles, Pratiques de la (dé)(com)position / Practice of (de)(com)position
17h30 - 17h50 : Roberto Barbanti, "Ultramédialité" et question éthique / "Ultramediality" and Ethical Question
17h50 - 18h10 : Daniel Charles, À propos des "Paysages Imaginaires" de John Cage / About John Cage's "Imaginary Landscapes"
18h10 - 18h20 : Conclusion, Mario Costa
18h20 - 18h30 : Questions
SAMEDI 30 NOVEMBRE 2002 / SATURDAY NOVEMBER 30th 2002
sessions au CFCE / sessions at the CFCE, 10 avenue d'Iéna, 75116 Paris
Session 4 : Jeux vidéos et arts hybrides dans les réseaux / Video Games and Hybrid Arts in the Networks
Modératrice / Moderator : Louise Poissant
09h00 - 09h 20 : Timothée Rolin, Histoires parallèles / Parallel Stories
09h20 - 09h40 : Bruno Samper, Créateurs de mondes persistants : les artistes acteurs de la convergence / Creators of Persisting Worlds: The Artists, Players of the Convergence
09h40 - 10h10 : Bruno Beusch & Tina Cassani, Jeux Illimités / Games Unlimited
10h10 - 10h40 : Gilbertto Prado, Expériences récentes d'environnements virtuels multi- utilisateurs au Brésil / Recent Experiments in Multiuser Virtual Environments in Brazil
10h40 - 10h50 : Conclusion, Louise Poissant
10h50 - 11h00 : Questions
11h00 - 11h10 : Pause / Break
Session 5 : Le Net art dans le cadre muséal, les circuits marchands et institutionnels à l'heure de la mondialisation / Net Art in the Museum Context, Commercial and Institutional Circuits in Times of Globalization
Modérateur / Moderator : Pierre Restany
11h10 - 11h40 : Steve Dietz, Translocations et comment les latitudes deviennent formes / Translocations and How Latitudes Become Forms
11h40 - 12h10 : Benjamin Weil, De l'objet au processus : la dématérialisation de l'idée artistique et ses effets sur les pratiques de conservation et d'organisation d'expositions / From Object to Process: the Dematerialization of the Art Idea and its Effect on Curatorial and Conservation Practices
12h10 - 13h00 : Table-ronde et discussion avec / Panel and discussion with : Steve Dietz (Walker Art Center), Benjamin Weil (SFMoMA), Jemima Rellie (Tate Gallery), Pierre Restany (modérateur/moderator)
Pause déjeuner / Lunch Break
Session 6 : Présence à distance, Téléprésence / Presence at a Distance, Telepresence
Modérateur / Moderator : Pierre Moeglin
14h00 - 14h20 : Isabelle Rieusset-Lemarié, Les chemins de l'?uvre d'art au-delà de l'utilisabilité (à portée de net : quelle proximité ?) / Artwork's Pathes beyond Utilisability (Whitin Net Range: Which Kind of Proximity?)
14h20 - 14h50 : Eduardo Kac, Téléprésence, biotélématique et art transgénique / Telepresence, Biotelematics, Transgenic Art
14h50 - 15h10 : Vincenzo Cuomo, Tele-cum-être-ici. Topologie de l?impersonnalité / Tele- cum-being-here: Topology of Impersonnality
15h10 - 15h30 : Reynald Drouhin & Jean-Paul Fourmentraux, Les coulisses de l'?uvre net.art : Des_Frags Process / Behind the Curtain of a Work of net.art: Des_Frags Process
15h30 - 15h50 : Gregory Chatonsky, La fiction programmatique / Programmatic Fiction
15h50 - 16h10 : Stephan Barron, "Ozone, o-o-o, Contact"... des ?uvres technoromantiques entre présence et absence / "Ozone, o-o-o, Contact"...Technoromantic Artworks between Presence and Absence
16h10 - 16h20 : Conclusion, Pierre Moeglin
16h20 - 16h30 : Questions
16h30 - 16h45 : Pause / Break
Session 7 : Réseaux et futur de l'écriture / Networks and the Future of Writing
Modératrice / Moderator : Marie-Claude Vettraino-Soulard
16h45 - 17h15 : Jean-Pierre Balpe, Vers une littérature diffractée / Toward a Diffracted Literature
17h15 - 17h35 : Matteo d'Ambrosio, Une sémiotique à venir pour la cyberpoésie / A Semiotic Approach to Cyberpoetry
17h35 - 17h55 : Eric Sadin, Surfaces urbaines / territoires textuels > signs, bits & the city / Urban Surfaces / Textual Territories > signs, bits & the cit
17h55 - 18h05 : Conclusion, Marie-Claude Vettraino-Soulard
18h05 - 18h15 : Questions du public
19h00 : Librairie du Palais de Tokyo /Palais de Tokyo Bookstore
Rencontres avec les participants du colloque autour de leurs livree
Meeting with the symposium participants
DIMANCHE 1er DECEMBRE 2002 / SUNDAY DECEMBER 1st 2002
sessions au CFCE / sessions at the CFCE, 10 avenue d'Iéna, 75116 Paris
Session 8 : Architecture, urbanisme et technologies de la communication / Architecture, Urban Design and Communication Technologies
Modératrice / Moderator : Anne Cauquelin
10h00 - 10h20 : Pierre Lévy, Le "design culturel", une nouvelle forme d'art conceptuel : le projet de l'intelligence collective / "Cultural Design", a New Conceptual Art Form: The Collective Intelligence Project
10h20 - 10h50 : Luc Courchesne, La découverte de l'horizon / The Discovery of the Horizon
10h50 - 11h10 : Anolga Rodionoff, Architectures de réseau, architectures de l'interactivité? ? / Network Architecture, Architecture of Interactivity ?
11h10 - 11h30 : Maurizio Bolognini, "SMSMS (Short Message Service Mediated Sublime)": l'art et le sublime technologique dans l'environnement urbain / "SMSMS (Short Message Service Mediated Sublime)": Art and Technological Sublime in the Urban Environment
11h30 - 11h50 : Olivier Auber, Esthétique de la perspective numérique / Aesthetics of Digital Perspective
11h50 - 12h10 : Mit Mitropoulos, Articulation des espaces électroniques et du comportement en leur sein ?comparés à des espaces semi privés/public et à une conception minimaliste pour des sites distants / Articulation of Electronic Spaces, and Behaviour in them --as compared to Semi-private/public Spaces and Minimal Design for Remote Sites
12h10 - 12h20 : Conclusion, Anne Cauquelin
12h20 - 12h30 : Questions
Pause déjeuner / Lunch Break
Session 9 (1ère partie) : Corps, cortex et réseaux / Body, Cortex and Networks
Modérateur / Moderator : François Soulages
14h00 - 14h20 : Angelo Trimarco, La critique à l?ère du virtuel / The Critic at the Era of the Virtual
14h20 - 14h50 : Victoria Vesna, Changement de l'esprit et futur du corps : des réseaux aux systèmes nanologiques / Mind Shifting and Future Bodies: from Networks to Nanosystems
14h50 - 15h20 : Roy Ascott, Voyager dans la conscience : art et technologies transformatives / Navigating Consciousness: Art and Transformative Technologies.
15h20 - 15h40 : Dominique Lestel, Eléments d?une phylogenèse de l?esthétique en réseau : rationalité expressive et régression créatrice / Elements for a Phylogenesis of a Networked Aesthetics: Expressive Rationality and Creative Regression
15h40 - 15h50 : Conclusion, François Soulages
15h50 - 16h00 : Questions
16h00 - 16h10 : Pause / Break
Session 9 (2ème partie) : Corps, cortex et réseaux / Body, Cortex and Networks
Modérateur / Moderator : Edmond Couchot
16h10 - 16h30 : Roger Malina, L'univers est-il numérique ? / Is the Universe Digital ?
16h30 - 17h00 : Maurice Benayoun, Représentation/Situation, fluidité et rugosité du virtuel / Representation/Situation, Fluidity and Rugosity of the Virtual
17h00 - 17h20 : Sophie Lavaud, L?implication du corps dans les scénographies interactives / The Implication of the Body in Interactive Scenographies
17h20 - 17h40 : Derrick de Kerckhove, Les arts numériques comme des objets mentaux externes / Digital Arts as External Mental Objects
17h40 - 17h50 : Conclusion, Edmond Couchot
17h50 - 18h00 : Questions
LUNDI 2 DECEMBRE 2002 / MONDAY DECEMBER 2nd 2002
Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS), 45, rue d'Ulm, 75015 Paris, salle Dussane
10h00 - 13h00 : Séance de clôture : Cognition & art en réseaux / Cognition and Art in the Networks
Organisateur et modérateur / Coordinator and moderator : Dominique Lestel
avec/with : Mario Costa, Fred Forest, Annick Bureaud, Dominique Lestel, Jean-Paul Longavesne, Edmond Couchot, Derrick de Kerkhove, Pierre Lévy, Roy Ascott, Isabelle Rieusset-Lemarié.
INTRODUCTION
The conference Artmedia VIII bases its reflection on the presupposition that technological communication at a distance functions as a driving force in transformations to our world. This brings us to reflect, in particular, on the questions of anthropo-philosophy and aesthetics raised by the current situation. It also involves pondering the implications of this for the economy and even the organization of culture.
At the beginning of the 1980s, "The aesthetics of communication" having sensed the direction of this current change, and its present developments, appears as one of the first attempts aiming to provoke awareness of what was happening in order to observe all the consequences, both aesthetic and artistic. The present-day existence of networks and the very diversified phenomenology of "aesthetic" products which can be found there, raises again, although according to different modalities, all the questions already posed by the "aesthetics of communication", while generating new experimentation one can still recognize as related to these problematics.
The conference proposes to "thematize" this situation, with the participation and testimony of a great many "communications artists", both old-timers and newcomers, and the contribution of theoreticians and specialists engaged, in one way or another, in reflecting on, organizing and spreading culture.
ARTMEDIA VIII IN PARIS
The history of communication art is part of a vast international field: North America (The USA and Canada) , Australia, Latin America (Brazil) and Europe.
In Europe creative activity was preponderant in four countries: Austria with Richard Kriesche in particular, England with Roy Ascott and above all France with Fred Forest. In this respect it is useful to note that artistic practice using the Minitel developed in France between 1978 and 1989, well before the arrival of Internet. Artists like Orlan contributed to this situation and presented works in exhibitions like : La Bourse de l'Imaginaire organized by Fred Forest in 1982 at the Pompidou Center, Electra in 1983 at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris), curated by Frank Popper and les Immatériaux"(the Immaterials) at the Centre Georges Pompidou in 1985, curated by Jean-François Lyotard.
Moreover the two signatories of the Manifeste de l'Esthétique de la Communication (Manifesto of the Aesthetics of Communication, October 1983) were Mario Costa and Fred Forest: an Italian and a Frenchman.
Many of the most respected theoreticians in this field are French: Pierre Lévy, Philippe Quéau, Edmond Couchot, Isabelle Rieusset-Lemarié, Pierre Moeglin, Jean Devèze?
High-level international conferences have become "nomadic", taking place in different countries and cities, thus opening their doors to people who wouldn't have been able to participate otherwise, and confronting cultural contexts.
After seven editions of Artmedia in Italy and taking into account the international evolution of the discipline, it appeared timely to realize Artmedia in France knowing that, from 1995 to 1998, Fred Forest organized a seminar on the aesthetics of communication at the MAMAC (Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Nice).
THEMES
The conference is organized in six sections:
Section 1 : History of an aesthetics of technological communication
From the "chess games" that were played using the first telephone line installed by Morse (1844) to Moholy-Nagy's "telephone pictures" (1923), from the Futurist manifesto "La Radia" (1933) to Fontana's manifestos of "spatialism" (1946 etc.) history attests that from the beginning communication technologies were associated with the idea of their aesthetic potential.
This section proposes to establish and examine the history of the relations that exist between communication technologies and aesthetic experimentation.
Section 2
This section proposes to study thoroughly the questions that are located midway between aesthetics and general philosophy. Its purpose is three-fold :
a- Body, Cortex and Networks
In what new situation do networks place the body? Do they foster and accelerate the obsolescence of the body, as Leroi-Gourhan foretold, or do they amplify its multi-sensorial capacity and involve it as never before? As network servo-mechanisms develop, which will come to the fore, the cortex or the body? How is the networked mind in operation called and stimulated to think? Is it plugged into the network which is allowed to penetrate it through and through, or does it shut itself away in the "cogito"?
b- Presence at a Distance - Telepresence
What happens to the fundamental categories of Da Sein (the being in the world) and Mit Sein (the being in the world with others), as related to those of "proximity" and "distance"? In what way do distance communication technologies compel us to reformulate Heidegger's fundamental category of Zuhandenheit (the essence of things, which is that of being used by us)? What new phenomenology of presence has technological communication at a distance introduced? What about presence at a distance in the connection between networks and robotic devices?
c- Form and Event in the Networks
Is Nietzsche's distinction between the arts of "form" (the Apollonian) and the arts of "event" (the Dionysian) still valid and pertinent to qualify aesthetic productions found on the network? Do the networks foster a new appearance of "form" or will they dissolve it in the "flux" and temporality of the "event"? How many kinds of time pass and are embodied in network "events" ? Can a network "event" be "given form"?
Section 3
This section is halfway between aesthetics and criticism in its literal sense, and proposes, among other things, to analyse the new aesthetic practices found on the network. Its purpose is two-fold:
1. "Thematizing" Space-time as Artistic Practice
Starting with the distinction made by Lessing between the "space arts" and the "time arts", aesthetic thought has unceasingly reflected on and questioned these fundamental categories and the relations they maintain with different artistic practices. Someone like Suzanne Langer, for example, was led to declare that the very function of certain arts is none other than implementing a representation and a virtual experience of space and time.
But with distance communication technologies, space and time, when looked at closely, reject any function of "containing" and move away from the idea of surface or support that can be covered with signs, to exhibit themselves intrinsically.
"Communications artists" were the first to perceive this, and they began very early on to consider space and time as new "materials" to "thematize" and "aestheticize".
Here the speakers will outline a phenomenology, underline differences, indicate the specificities of each one in the artistic and aesthetic appropriation of new "materials".
2. Video Games and Hybrid Arts in the Networks
In our world, next to the field of "art" which has a weaker and weaker identity, another aesthetic movement has appeared which has become more and more widespread. We can see it at work in many behaviours and in an indefinite variety of hybrid products.
We intend to verify how this drive expresses itself on the network, to analyse its productions, attempt to classify them and formulate a new aesthetic-critical vocabulary.
Section 4: Net Art in the Museum Context, Commercial and Institutional Circuits in Times of Globalization
Net Art in its best models of production and expression, has found a place and a genuine aesthetic legitimacy. These products of the mind require the same type of aesthetic attitude which had previously been reserved for the arts. This poses a whole series of questions which must be answered.
How should these products be treated in institutions devoted to the arts? How will the museums, already subject to change (networked museums, virtual theatres etc.), be expected to evolve? Will it be necessary to find new channels or strategies of distribution? What's happening to copyright laws ? What forms of economic transaction do these products give rise to? How can net art be preserved (collection, archive)? Will the net be the only form of presence of these products? How are the authorities being called to intervene with regard to this type of production?
Section 5: Networks and the Future of Writing
Questions related to electronic writing have dealt up to now with hypertext, non-linear and non-sequential processes. But questions concerning writing on a network, alphabetical writing as such, but supported by the network, come forward as much more problematic and profound.
What is the destiny of writing? Which previously existing fringes between speaking and writing have been eliminated by the network? What cognitive attitudes are required by written communication on the network? And what do we think, what do we write when our networked thought-writing is immediately transferred to others? What do we write when there is no longer an interval, what happens to waiting time? And last of all what do we write when writing is an immaterial and abstract trace, which asks to be erased, to disappear rather than be preserved anonymously as hard copy?
Section 6: Architecture, Urban Design and Communication Technologies
This section poses the question of the presence of "communications artists" -outside the strictly artistic networks and spheres- working with architects, urban designers, town planners, etc.
The "aesthetics of communication", in its earliest version as well as its most recent, gives artists the possibility of going beyond the circles and the ghetto of art, to take part, as in the time of the cathedrals in the movement of civilian life and to oppose the loss of meaning.
The projects and rare accomplishments of "home automation" that show the successful combination of engineering, architecture and communications technologies provide the first example; they constitute an embryo of that new function which has obviously fallen to "communications artists" and remains entirely to be invented and developed.
PARTICIPANTS
Roy Ascott (UK), artist and theoretician
Biography: Roy Ascott is the founding director of the international transdisciplinary research center, CAiiA-STAR (www.caiia-star.net). He is Research Professor at the University of Wales, and at the University of Plymouth (UK), and is Adjunct Professor in Design|Media Arts at the University of California Los Angeles (www.design.ucla.edu/home.html). A pioneer of cybernetics and telematics in art, he has shown at the Venice Biennale, Electra Paris, Ars Electronica Linz, V2 Holland, Milan Triennale, Biennale do Mercosul, Brazil, European Media Festival, and gr2000az at Graz, Austria. He has been Dean of San Francisco Art Institute, California, Professor for Communications Theory in the University of Applied Arts, Vienna, and Principal of Ontario College of Art, Toronto. He is on the editorial boards of Leonardo, Convergence, Digital Creativity, and the Chinese language online journal Tom.Com . He advises new media centres and festivals in North and South America, Europe, Japan, Korea, and lectures widely around the world. His publications are translated into many languages and include the books, Reframing Consciousness (1999), Art Technology Consciousness (2000), Intellect Books, Bristol; and Art & Telematics: toward the Construction of New Aesthetics. (Japanese trans. E. Fujihara), NTT, Tokyo, 1998. In 2002, University of California Press will publish his collected writings, Telematic Embrace, edited by Edward Shanken.
Contribution: Navigating Consciousness : Art and Transformative Technologies.
Abstract: Unless transactions in the Net yield transformations of consciousness, the quality of telematicity will be lost to the commercialisation of discourse. Telematicity is to art in the Net what plasticity is to biology: exhibiting adaptability to change in the environment, and offering scope for creativity. When telematicity is at the heart of molecular structures or epigenetic systems, then the promise of moistmedia can more fully be realised. The pathway from pixels to particles is not likely to be straightforward, and once the power of nanotechnology is properly understood every State will attempt to constrain its evolution. As artists we must resist these prohibitions on navigating into deepest matter.
Olivier Auber (France), artist
Biography: Olivier Auber develops since the early 80s installations and exhibitions based on various technologies in order to achieve a sort of mirors of behaviours. Among them, the Générateur Poïétique (http://poietic-generator.net ) is a system allowing real time collective interactions that he has experimented in different kinds of networks since 1986. In 1997, he founded together with the architect and urbanist Bernd Hoge the cultural laboratoty A+H (http://km2.net/aplush ) that proposes interdisciplinary projects between physical and digital territories. The Nibelungenmuseum, virtual museum dedicated to a myth opened in 2001. Currently, he is working on the projet @RBRE (http://km2.net/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=127)
Contribution: The Aesthetic of the Digital Perspective
Abstract: Hybrid media, a mix of silicon, neurons and genes, what Roy Ascott called "moistmedia," generate representations?of people, whether in a group, a society or a world?using a perspective analogous to that used during the Renaissance, accepting, in the end, a digital code as vanishing point. This means reducing humanity to its representation, which is freighted with the forbidden, in the fields of politics, science, technology and economics. It is only in the field of aesthetics that it is possible to get around this prohibition: the aesthetics of the sublime inherent in digital perspective brings out the dimensions and limits of the collective and the individual, as well as the nature of their interrelationship. Various explorations of this aesthetics will be presented during this discussion. (Translation, L-S Torgoff)
Jean-Pierre Balpe (France), artist
Biography: Born in 1942 in Mende (Lozère), Jean-Pierre Balpe is the Director of the Hypermedia Department and of the Paragraphe Laboratory of the University of Paris VIII. He is also General Secretary of the journal Action Poétique. Researcher, theoretician of computer literature, author of various scientific and technological books, writer, he is interested in the possibilities that computer science provided to literature since 1975. In 1981, he co-founded ALAMO (Workshop for Computer and Mathematic Assisted Literature) and as such became advisor to the Pompidou Center for the exhibitions Les Immatériaux and Mémoires du Futur. Since 1989, he creates software for computer literature used mainly during exhibitions or public events among which Un roman inachevé for the booth of the Ministry of Culture (MILIA, Cannes, 1995 and MIM in Montreal) ; ROMANS (Roman) for the exhibition Artifices in 1996 ; Trois mythologies et un poète aveugle for the IRCAM in 1997 ; Barbe Bleue that will be the result of the combination of 3 generators : text, music (Alexandre Raskatov) and staging (Michel Jaffrennou) generators ; TRAJECTOIRES, interactive and generative novel for the Internet (www.trajectoires.com) ; he is involved in various shows among which Encuentras essentiales for the museum MARCO in Monterey (Mexico) together with Jacopo Baboni-Schilingi (music) and Miguel Chevalier (interactive stage design).
Contribution: Toward a DiffractedLiterature
Abstract: If a sheet of paper can bear pictures, it is never a picture: a picture book is not a picture. On the opposite, a screen, even when it displays texts is before all a picture.
The fact that literature, before being shut away in the book, is now gone out from it, force it to confront to the reality of that medium which is now completely its one: the screen. From that relation are emerging new questions and sketching creative possibilities never perceived before.
When the screen is also a digital screen of which the potential is a fundamental technical component, literature, while keeping to be literature, but coming close to something like a show, changes yet its qualities: its texts diffracting into the space of their potentialities, are inventing a new expression space.
Roberto Barbanti (France/Italy), artist and theorician
Biography: Studied philosophy, computer music and experimental music at the University and Academy Cherubini of Florence (Italy). Ph.D in "Art and science of art" at the University Paris I. Teacher at the University Paul Valéry, Montpellier III in charge of the Multimedia section of the Performing Arts Department. Founder and Chairman of the Center Pharos, Center for Study and Research in Philosophy, Art and the Science, co-directed together with the philosopher Luciano Boi (www.pharos.centrostudiricerche.org). He has created several multimedia works : peformances, environmental music, installations and communication events. Among his last books :
- Francesco d'Assisi e Marcel Duchamp. Rudimenti per un'est-etica / Francis of Assisi and Marcel Duchamp. Rudiments for an aesth-ethic, Danilo Montanari Editore, 2001.
- L'art au XXe siècle et l'utopie, L'Harmattan (collection arts8), 2000 (with Claire Fagnart).
Contribution: Ultramediality and Ethical Issue
Abstract: Underlying all technological innovation today there seems to be a desire to profitably domesticate space, time and matter itself.
To the question of presence, or in other words, What is it that is before me in space and in time, today one could respond as follows: a desire to truly go beyond, which seems to mean annihilating this same space and time and with them the object of perception itself. In other words, while presence is still presence to something and of something, this something tends to slip away and disappear.
We are living in the era of "ultramediality." An era in which space-time (from nanometers to gigahertz) and matter itself are "worked" in such a way as to place them beyond all possibility of sensory detection.
Spatio-temporal communication at a distance, which aims to suppress this distance, is one of the forms of ultramediality.
This situation, which on the one hand excludes the sensorium de facto and on the other poses the question of the irreversibility and the dangerousness of the processes into which we are locked, thrusts us into an ethical dynamic (as the ineluctability of a possible choice, consciousness of an absence and the perspective of a substantial alterity), a dynamic that assumes basic importance and puts artistic activity in the context of its responsibilities. (Translation, L-S Torgoff)
Stéphan Barron (France), artist
Biography: Born in 1961 in Caen, Normandy. Grant from Villa Médicis in 1996 for
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