----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
Dear Simon & all
Thanks for the invitation to join this discussion. I'd like to pick up
on a point made early on in the month's discussion by Christina Spiesel:
On 4 Jul 2013, at 18:21, Christina Spiesel
<christina.spie...@yale.edu<mailto:christina.spie...@yale.edu>> wrote:
We are organisms in environments. If we can't "see" those
environments, we can't adapt for self-protection. If we wish to
sustain our lives, we must be able to operate under changed signals
from a changing environment ... So how we "attend" to what is there,
I submit, is very important. And the capacity for play which is the
science of children.
As a dance artist, I am interested in exploring how people shape and
are shaped by their environment. Immediately after the debate and
activity of ISEA (my first), I had the pleasure of spending time in
residency at Bundanon Trust, working with collaborators on the
development of a new interactive performance installation work. In the
context of the beautiful setting of Bundanon, it sometimes seemed at
odds to be in a darkened studio, immersed in projected image, learning
to negotiate a highly mediated environment where motion was tracked,
voice captured, action augmented, space constrained.
The presence of technology was very apparent in the particular
environment we created in the studio, which at first glance seemed in
total contrast to the 'natural' environment outside and loaded with
constraints on 'the performers' 'freedom' to move. But outside, one
has to negotiate the technological infrastructures of communications,
transport, power, sanitation, conservation. Operating in an
environment like Bundanon requires opening and closing of gates,
driving with peripheral vision on high alert for kangaroos (although
the roos also adapt to traffic, and carefully stop-look-listen before
crossing the track!) taking care where one sits, avoiding wombat-
holes, being mindful of the river's currents It would be simplistic to
regard the different aspects of this experience as more, less or even
un-natural. In the installation system we were creating, I developed
embodied practices to nurture the performers' capacity to cope. these
emphasised attending to change, treading lightly, listening carefully
and/or reacting quickly.
I'm sharing this because it was such a great way for me, to put in to
practice and make sense of some of the ideas I heard at ISEA - in
particular concerning the ubiquity of technology, the impossibility of
disentangling ourselves from systems of mediation, and attentiveness
to our changing environment.
all the best, Sue
On 23 Jul 2013, at 03:00, <empyre-requ...@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au> <empyre-requ...@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> wrote:
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----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
Today's Topics:
1. empyre: Resistance is futile, ISEA, Sydney 2013 - week 4
(Simon Biggs)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Mon, 22 Jul 2013 10:52:01 +0100
From: Simon Biggs <si...@littlepig.org.uk>
To: soft_skinned_space <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Subject: [-empyre-] empyre: Resistance is futile, ISEA, Sydney 2013 -
week 4
Message-ID: <96faf381-6119-48a3-8486-1f1bb6f0f...@littlepig.org.uk>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Welcome to the fourth and final week of empyre's July 2013
discussion: Resistance is futile, ISEA Sydney, 2013
Thank you to Garth Paine and Deborah Ely, who described their own
activities at ISEA and considered those of others. Thanks to all
those who responded and contributed to the debate. The focus during
the week oscillated between themes concerning embodiment and place
and how each can be mediated and affected as a creative and
experiential site.
Our guests during the final fourth week (July 22-28) of our
discussion about ISEA are:
Clea T. Waite (US/D) is a research artist-scholar and experimental
filmmaker investigating the correspondences between art and science
via somatic, cinematic works. Her films are realized using
animation, immersion, stereoscopic imaging, structural montage and
unique interfaces as well as one inter-species collaboration with
several hundred spiders. She received her SB and SMVis degrees from
the MIT Media Lab as a physicist and 3D computer graphics developer.
She has been an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow, a Radcliffe Institute
Fellow, and a fellow at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. Her
artworks have been exhibited and awarded internationally, notably
the IBM Innovation Prize for Artistic Creation in Art and
Technology. She is currently an Annenberg Fellow at the University
of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts pursuing her PhD in
Media Arts and Practice.
Daniel C. Howe (HK/US) is an artist, hacker, writer, musician, and
educator whose work focuses on networked systems for image, sound
and text, and on the social and political implications of
computational technologies. He has a PhD in computer science and an
MFA in interactive media and digital literature. He currently lives
in Hong Kong where he teaches at City University's School of
Creative Media.
Ruth Aylett (GB) has been working with intelligent graphical
characters for more than ten years and, more recently, with social
robots. She has led large EU projects (VICTEC, eCIRCUS, eCute) in
this area and has helped develop affective architectures driving
virtual drama systems such as FearNot!. She has more than 200
publications and leads the Autonomous Affective Agents group at
Heriot-Watt University, Scotland, where she is Professor of Computer
Science.
Sue Hawksley (UK) is a dance artist, bodywork therapist and artistic
director of articulate animal, an interdisciplinary performance
company which undertakes collaborative projects focused upon
movement, identity and territory which have been presented
internationally. She has previously performed with Rambert Dance
Company, Mantis, Scottish Ballet and Philippe Genty among others, as
well as on many freelance projects as performer, choreographer or
educator. Sue holds a practice-led PhD from the University of
Edinburgh, Edinburgh College of Art. Her research critically
examines concepts of embodiment through choreographic and somatic
practices, philosophy, and mediation. She is Senior Lecturer in
Dance at the University of Bedfordshire. Her URL ishttp://www/articulateanimal.org.uk
Before proceeding to the final week's discussion we will again
outline July's discussion, engaging the themes and activities
underlying and emerging from this year's International Symposium of
Electronic Arts, held in and around Sydney, Australia during June
2013. The primary theme for ISEA was "resistance is futile". How are
we to interpret this? Resistance to what? The conference programme
offered a positive take on this statement - proposing that the
electronic arts have moved from the margins to occupy a central role
in contemporary culture. But has this happened - and, if it has, is
it generally the case or only so in certain contexts?
Other themes were also apparent at ISEA. Important questions were
asked about:
- sustainability - how this can be achieved in relation to the
environment but also how artists, arts groups, academics and
activists might ensure their activities are sustainable as the
processes of technologisation and globalisation unfold?
- notions of the human - what does it mean to be human now, in the
context of developments in genetics and ICT?
- globalisation, diasporas and cultural identity?
- the boundaries of the real - where virtual and augmented realities
have become pervasive media?
- the post-digital and its implications for aesthetics and questions
of agency?
- the challenges and opportunities associated with big data?
- urbanism, activism and the socially disruptive potential of
technology?
Looking forward to another week's discussion...
moderator:
Simon Biggs
si...@littlepig.org.uk
http://www.littlepig.org.uk @SimonBiggsUK http://amazon.com/author/simonbiggs
s.bi...@ed.ac.uk Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh
http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/edinburgh-college-art/school-of-art/staff/staff?person_id=182&cw_xml=profile.php
http://www.research.ed.ac.uk/portal/en/persons/simon-biggs%285dfcaf34-56b1-4452-9100-aaab96935e31%29.html
http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/ http://www.elmcip.net/ http://www.movingtargets.org.uk/
http://designinaction.com/
MSc by Research in Interdisciplinary Creative Practices
http://www.ed.ac.uk/studying/postgraduate/degrees?id=656&cw_xml=details.php
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End of empyre Digest, Vol 104, Issue 25
***************************************
Sue Hawksley
s...@articulateanimal.org.uk
http://www.articulateanimal.org.uk
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