_Almat 2020 program online now!_ We are happy to announce the availability of the program of the Almat 2020 symposium on algorithmic agency in artistic practice.
https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/921059/921060 We thank all contributors who made their work available as dedicated pages on the Research Catalogue. The program will be followed up by round-table discussions on September 19, which we intend to make available as video recordings. The Almat 2020 symposium is interested in the genealogical, processual aspects of algorithms 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. We depart from the assumption that algorithms possess an inherent material agency that emerges from the intra-action between human and machine (K. Barad). In these exchange processes, we experience gaps, breaks and bends in the flow, the reconfigurative nature of the algorithmic which bounces back and reconfigures our thinking and approach to artistic work. When algorithms are inserted in the creative process, they actively shape this process and spread outside the boundaries of a particular medium or artefact. The symposium looks to rethink the relation between humans and algorithms (N.K. Hayles) in terms of an organic or ecological perspective (Y. Hui) in which actors are entangled and co-generative. The foundation for the symposium is given by the eponymous artistic research project Almat - Algorithms that Matter, funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF AR 403-GBL) and hosted at the Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics (IEM) at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz. Almat 2020 was originally planned to 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. Due to the Coronavirus crisis, xCoAx went into an online-only mode, and the Almat symposium has been replaced by an online assemblage of the submitted proposals only. _List of contributions_ Luc Döbereiner and David Pirrò Contingency and Synchronization Kosmas Giannoutakis and Arthur Lanotte-Fauré Confluent Currents Dragica Kahlina Game Audio as an Autonomous System Steffen Krebber The Modernist Anticlock Ron Kuivila Hearing Changes: Listening to the Air, The Fifth Root of Two, Sparkline (with acceleration) Daniel Mayer Algorithms in Sound Synthesis, Processing, and Composition: a Dialectic Game Jeffrey Morris Bytebeat: Deterministic and Undeterminable Tom Mudd Algorithms and Agency in Electronic Music: Three Recent Projects Daniele Pozzi Relating Sound Algorithms and Concrete Spaces: Two Recent Works Hanns Holger Rutz Writing (about) Writing Machines Casper Schipper Cisp: a Live-Coding Language for Non-Standard Synthesis Algorithms Oswaldo Emiddio Vasquez Hadjilyra Material Composition Rewa Wright and Simon Howden Making a Software Assemblage with Plants-Bodies-Data Stefano Zorzanello Copernicus Listening. Creative Survival Strategies and Techniques in the World of Sounds ______________________________________________ SPECTRE list for media culture in Deep Europe Info, archive and help: http://post.in-mind.de/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/spectre
