Re: <eyebeam><blast> Art and Digital Practices

[Bill Seaman <seaman@umbc.edu>]

I do not have any problem with a work of art also being or merging with
a new technological tool. In fact I would say that some of the most
interesting digital works today function because of this kind of new
technological development.
 
The media theorist Dieter Daniels states:
 
"If we seek refuge in the history of art as the responsible discipline,
we discover that there is a plurality of methods and perspectives
through which the history of art can be recounted. One such possibility
is the development of techniques for media. Together with iconography
and period history, this aspect of media history has come more and more
to the fore, particularly with regard to how technologies and media
influence or even determine the content of art.

This interrelation was apparent long before the emergence of electronic
media. For example, the development of printing techniques (from wood
cut, engraving and etching to screen printing and offset) is linked
closeley to social and political role in the arts. Since the beginning
of the 20th century, an essential characteristic of the avant-garde is
that artists have reacted to the demands of media in art and moreover,
have purposefully altered and extended them. From the collages and
montages of Cubism, Futurism and Dadaism to the new art forms of the
sixties (environments, installations, multiples, performance, expanded
cinema, video art) a line of development is apparent that constantly
questions the role of art in a society determined by mass media.

The history of the avant-garde can be regarded as a permanent
self-analysis of art in relation to scientific, technical and media
innovations of the 20th century. This self-analysis results in the
following realizations: the medium used determines the cultural context
in which the work is percieved, and each new medium asks for a new
definition of the social role and aesthetic function of art. (Daniels in
Sommer, p.17)

Here are a few works which come to mind...

"Very Nervous System" - by David Rokeby is what he describes as a
"medium" -- it facilitates the making of art but also blends seemlessly
in the making of that art...

"The World Generator / The Engine of Desire" by Seaman is both a tool to
build virtual worlds, and a work of art.
 
Victoria Vesna's "Bodies Inc" both functions as a VRML builder and a
work of art.

Knowbotic Research (KR+cF):
"KR + cF devises a dynamic infrastructure for a public Knowledge Space
in which a dialogue about a potential nature can take place. Here
knowbots as hypothetical elements equipped with generative algorithms
incorporate scientific, economic and political forces within the
Antarctic Research and expose a confrontation with the dynamic
complexities of computer Aided Nature." (Leopoldseder and Schöpf, 1996,
p. 145)

also Knowbotic Research:
"TT turing tuning [explores] biological principles and ..chance,
evolution, memory as discursive concepts of an updated way of producing
sounds..aesthetic status-descriptions of a real-time confrontation of
machine logic and human intuition." (Knowbotic research, 1998)
 
Technoid Aesthetics: The visitors of KR+cF's environment moves in a
communication field in which new forms of language have not yet emerged.
The development of a non verbal form of individual knowledge generation
draws on an aesthetic experience in various (acoustic, textual,
graphical and numerical) encoded public data fields. The information
system of SMDK, too complex to be fully comprehended, represents a shift
in delimiting boundaries of technologically supported, ordered systems.
It provides an opportunity to expand our perception and arrive at a
critically reflected, technoid-aesthetically experience. (Knowbotic
research, 1998)

Perry Hoberman's Bar Code Hotel could also be seen as a new
technological device for the creation of virtual worlds via the playful
extended technological exploration of that technology.

Best
Bill

http://www.portola.com/PEOPLE/PERRY/perry.html   3/8/98
 
KNOWBOTIC RESEARCH (1998)
http://netbase.t0.or.at/~krcf/tt/tt.html    3/6/98
 
KNOWBOTIC RESEARCH (1998)
http://netbase.t0.or.at/~krcf/smdk/smdk1.html   3/6/98
 
LEOPOLDSEDER, H. and C. SCH¨OPF (1996) Prix Ars Electronica 96. New York
and Wein: Springer p. 145
 
Astrid Sommer
SOMMER, A. (1994) Ars Ex Machina by Dieter Daniels in Artintact   edited
by
A. Sommer. Distributed Art Press: New York

> From: Bill Seaman
> 117 N. BEAUMONT AVE. CATONSVILLE, MARYLAND 21228, USA
> HOME FAX 410 744 7428
> Tel. 410 744 7422
> 
> Associate Professor and Director of Imaging and Digital Arts
> Department of Visual Arts
> University of Maryland
> Baltimore County
> Department of Visual Arts
> 5401 Wilkens Ave.
> Baltimore, MD21228-5398  USA
> WORK PHONE 410 455 2150   OR   410 455 2151
> School Fax    410 455 1070
> seaman@umbc.edu
> 
> http://caiia-star.newport.plymouth.ac.uk
> http://research.umbc.edu/~seaman/
> http://www.235media.com/installations.html
-------------------------------------------------------------
a critical forum for artistic practice in the network
texts are the property of individual authors
to unsubscribe, send email to eyebeam@list.thing.net
with the following single line in the message body:
unsubscribe eyebeam-list
information and archive at http://www.eyebeam.org
Eyebeam Atelier/X Art Foundation http://www.blast.org
-------------------------------------------------------------