[spectre] xCoAx 2020 Call for papers, artworks, and performances
**xCoAx 2020: 8th International Conference on** **Computation, Communication, Aesthetics and X** 8–10 July 2020, Graz, Austria http://xcoax.org/ Please feel free to distribute this call to your networks. **Submission deadline: 31 January 2020** xCoAx is an exploration of the intersection where computational tools and media meet art and culture, in the form of a multi-disciplinary enquiry on aesthetics, computation, communication and the elusive X factor that connects them all. xCoAx has been an occasion for international audiences to meet and exchange ideas, in search for interdisciplinary synergies among computer scientists, artists, media practitioners, and theoreticians at the thresholds between digital arts and culture. Starting in 2013 in Bergamo, xCoAx has so far taken place also in Porto, Glasgow, Lisbon, Madrid, and Milan. The focus of xCoAx is on the unpredictable overlaps between the freedom of creativity and the rules of algorithms, between human nature and machine technology, with the aim to evolve towards new directions in aesthetics. In 2020 xCoAx will take place in Graz, Austria, directly adjoining the symposium **Algorithms that Matter (ALMAT)**. On the two days preceding xCoAx, ALMAT gathers artists and researchers to present and discuss the relations between algorithmic agency and artistic research, the practice of algorithmic experimentation and its impact on compositional process. ALMAT has issued a separate call for participation – https://almat.iem.at/symposium.html – and reduced combi-tickets are available for xCoAx + ALMAT. **Topics** You are invited to submit theoretical, practical or experimental research work that includes but is not limited to the following topics: Computation, Communication, Aesthetics, X, Algorithms / Systems / Models, Artificial Aesthetics, Artificial Intelligence, Audiovisuals / Multimodality, Creativity, Design, Interaction, Games, Generative Art / Design, History, Mechatronics / Physical Computing, Music / Sound Art, Performance, Philosophy of Art / of Computation, Technology / Ethics / Epistemology. **Submission Categories** Papers, artworks, performances, ongoing doctoral research (all details for submission at http://xcoax.org/). For this edition of xCoAx, a special call for performances for MUMUTH's Ligeti Hall is also being launched. **Publications** All accepted works will be published in a proceedings book with ISBN (see http://proceedings.xcoax.org for previous editions) and the authors of the best papers will be invited to a special issue of the Scopus-indexed Journal of Science and Technology of the Arts (http://artes.ucp.pt/citarj/). **Keynote Speakers** Yuk Hui Špela Petrič **Doctoral Symposium Chairs** Marko Ciciliani **Organizing Committee** André Rangel: CITAR / i2ADS David Pirrò: Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics, University of Music and Performing Arts, Graz Hanns Holger Rutz: Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics, University of Music and Performing Arts, Graz Jason Reizner: Bauhaus-Universität Weimar Luís Nunes: i2ADS / Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Porto Luísa Ribas: CIEBA / Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon Mario Verdicchio: Università degli Studi di Bergamo Miguel Carvalhais: INESC TEC / Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Porto **Local Organizing Committee** David Pirrò: Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics, University of Music and Performing Arts, Graz Hanns Holger Rutz: Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics, University of Music and Performing Arts, Graz Daniele Pozzi: Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics, University of Music and Performing Arts, Graz **Contacts** i...@xcoax.org http://xcoax.org https://twitter.com/xcoaxorg http://facebook.com/xcoax.org https://www.instagram.com/xcoaxorg/ __ SPECTRE list for media culture in Deep Europe Info, archive and help: http://post.in-mind.de/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/spectre
[spectre] Algorithms that Matter Symposium 2020: Call for contributions
**ALMAT - Algorithms that Matter** **Symposium on Algorithmic Agency in Artistic Practice** 6–7 July 2020, Graz Austria https://almat.iem.at/symposium.html Please feel free to distribute this call to your networks. **Submission deadline: 31 January 2020** Artists and scientists have worked with digital computers for over seventy years, and algorithmic practices exist for a lot longer. But in recent years, increased computing power and decreased costs and miniaturisation of machines have created a new quantity and quality of everyday exposure, economic and political criticality, and with it a wave of public attention and discourse. As artists-researchers, how do we incorporate this new situation into our practices, and more importantly, how does this changed situation retroact on our understanding of the role of digital art, sound art and artistic practice itself? Rather than understanding algorithms as existing and transparent tools, the ALMAT Symposium is interested in their genealogical, processual aspects and their transformative potential. We seek critical approaches that avoid both mystification and commodification, that aim at opening the black box of "wonder" that is often presented to the public when utilising algorithms. The foundation for the symposium is given by the eponymous project ALMAT – Algorithms that Matter. ALMAT is an artistic research project by Hanns Holger Rutz and David Pirrò funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF AR 403-GBL) and hosted by the Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics (IEM) at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz. ALMAT 2020 will take place (06–07 July) adjoining the 8th Conference on Computation, Communication, Aesthetics & X – xCoAx (08–10 July). xCoAx is an exploration of the intersection where computational tools and media meet art and culture, in the form of a multi-disciplinary enquiry on aesthetics, computation, communication and the elusive X factor that connects them all. xCoAx has issued a separate call for participation – http://www.xcoax.org – and reduced combi-tickets are available for xCoAx + ALMAT. **Call for Contributions** The ALMAT Symposium calls for artistic research contributions in the following two categories: 1. Contributions exploring the symposium's theme and the questions arising from it. This may include: - What are the material qualities specific of algorithms and algorithmic practices? How does the algorithmic become malleable as material? - Are there particular affordances of the algorithmic? - How does algorithmic agency unfold, how can it be observed, formulated, or communicated? Which alternatives to traditional concepts such as control/controller could be formulated? - How does the reconfigurative "intrinsic" or "speculative" movement of algorithms extend to or retroact on the artist or recipient, how does it shape their interactions? - How can artistic experimentation with algorithms be communicated to an audience, how may it help sensitise and empower people to take ownership of the algorithmic? - Which are the thresholds of heteronomy/autonomy, what makes an algorithmic practice become generative? - What are philosophical, technological, aesthetic or artistic consequences of acknowledging the agency of algorithms? 2. Contributions that explicitly refer to the research, the experiences and the case studies of the ALMAT research project. Contributions may be commentary, continuation, critique or, more in general, a response to one or more aesthetic and theoretic manifestations and artefacts reflected in the project's documentation. The project's (ongoing) documentation is an online hypertext starting at the Continuous Exposition: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/381565/381566. In particular, we identified a number of works that are good candidates for responses, as they will be visible or audible during the symposium (see submission page). For more information and details of contribution formats and application process, please refer to: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/381565/698006 Contact: For any questions, please write to . __ SPECTRE list for media culture in Deep Europe Info, archive and help: http://post.in-mind.de/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/spectre
[spectre] The Secret Services' Fear of Art: HMKV Exhibition "Artists and Agents – Performance Art and Secret Services" Opens on 25 October
(Dear all, should you be near Dortmund, Germany, between 25 Oct and 22 March, please come by! All the best, Inke) The Secret Services' Fear of Art HMKV Exhibition "Artists and Agents – Performance Art and Secret Services" Opens on 25 October Press conference followed by a guided tour of the exhibition: Thursday, 24 October 2019, 11:00, HMKV (Hartware MedienKunstVerein) at Dortmunder U, Level 3 Opening night: Friday, 25 October 2019, 19:00, Cinema in the Dortmunder U, ground floor Exhibition period: 26 October 2019 - 22 March 2020 Address: HMKV (Hartware MedienKunstVerein) at the Dortmunder U, Level 3, Leonie-Reygers-Terrasse, 44137 Dortmund, Germany From 26 October 2019, the HMKV (Hartware MedienKunstVerein) will be showing the extensively researched international group exhibition "Artists & Agents - Performance Art and Secret Services" at the Dortmunder U. On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the exhibition highlights the interaction between secret services and performance art - an art form that was considered most dangerous by the single-party dictatorships of Eastern Europe. In order to effectively infiltrate the art scenes and ultimately "decompose" and "liquidate" them, the infiltrating agents in some cases had to 'perform' and become 'artists' themselves. Artists & Agents presents numerous examples of artistic subversion as well as hitherto unknown cases of secret service infiltration of the art scene by agents, presenting materials some of which have never been shown before. The exhibition, developed in cooperation with the Slavic Seminar of the University of Zurich, is curated by Inke Arns (HMKV), Kata Krasznahorkai and Sylvia Sasse (both from the University of Zurich) is the result of extensive research in the secret service archives of the former Eastern Bloc countries. After 1990 these were opened to research for the first time. Investigation of the documentation of art by informants and of the influence of the secret services on artistic work became possible. "What is new and unusual about our exhibition is the focus on the perspective of the secret services on performance art - in other words, on the files that various secret services in the GDR, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, and the USSR have compiled on performance art between 1960 and 1990," says HMKV director and co-curator Inke Arns. Another novelty is the significance that secret service records are revealed to have had for art history: In meticulous detail, the reports document artistic activities, some of which were hardly known, as well as the active, operative intervention of the state in the artistic creative process - with the aim of preventing and destroying it as well as socially discrediting and criminalizing dissident artists. According to the Slavicist and co-curator Sylvia Sasse, the files “reveal little about the observed, but quite a bit about the observers‘ fears and strategies”: "Performance art was considered so dangerous because the secret police could not classify it at all," says art historian and co-curator Kata Krasznahorkai. "It doesn't produce 'pictures' or 'sculptures'. It could appear anywhere and at any time – and disappear again. Highly suspicious was also its origin in the USA and the fact that it created a new public sphere – a parallel, free public sphere that these secret services feared the most". In order to prevent such art happenings and to frame artists as enemies of the state, however, the agents themselves had to 'perform'. Perhaps the most exciting aspect of the exhibition is the "destructive power" of this 'fake art' on behalf of the state, according to Sylvia Sasse: "Agents were smuggled into happenings to criminalize artists. Anyone who imagines the secret police as a bureaucratic machinery overlooks its 'theatre' – an elaborate orchestration aiming to produce internal enemies. Of course, this does not only apply to Eastern Europe and to 'back then', but these are strategies that are also on the rise again today." The artists were partly aware of this situation and reflect on it with the help of the distance of decades. In addition to a wealth of file material, the HMKV will present numerous works by performance artists confronting their own files, as well as more recent artistic positions that deal with the intersection of art and secret services, including some from beyond Eastern Europe. The exhibited files and artistic positions therefore also contribute to raising awareness of the dangers and warning signs of autocratic systems: "In the files we read how, for example, the Stasi spoke of contemporary art - often in a very degrading and defamatory language. One recognizes this language again today in right-wing populist parties which accuse contemporary art and culture of showing too little loyalty to the ‘nation‘,” the curators say. ***
