Here is some information for those who like to hook up on the Art in Society Symposium in NY.

The Arts conference will take place over 23-25 February at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, 721 Broadway, (Corner Waverly Place) New York, NY 10003 . (See here for theprogramme. )

Nina’s session on “new media art education initiatives” will be on Friday, 4.10 pm. Nina Czegledy, Lynn Hughes, Trebor Scholz will be presenting. I will join as a discussant. (We meet 2.45 at Dean & Delucca at University at 11th St.)

Cristina Biazus’ session entitled “Digital Environments and Creative Processes: The Production of Meaning” will be on Friday at 5 p.m.

Afterwards we’ll meet in the NYUniversity neighborhood for early dinner and preparation of the Saturday morning session.
Lori kindly attached her recs for restaurants we want to share with anyone who is lost.

Our session (panel 2) on “interdisciplinary and cross-cultural art education processes with digital media” with Roberta Altman and Lori A. Kent will take place early morning on Saturday, 25, at 9.30am.

At 10.45 I will be presenting software to be explored as well as the UNESCO Young Digital Creators Educator’s Kit on behalf of Doyun Lee, UNESCO Digi Arts, in the conference foyer.

By the way, The New York Armory Show takes place during the conference, over Feb 23 to 26, (at Pier 94 in NYC) it “is a good way to inventory the art market on an (almost) international scale. 148 vendors present an updated version of the earlier infamous “Armory Show” that introduced Modernism to America. Tickets are $10 for students and $20 regular admission. At 55th street, walk west to the water” (see the post on Currents.)

I will be staying near Columbia University. Here is my mobile (cell) +49 – 179- 46 81 342. Those of you who are in the neighborhood, just email me.

Here is the map of the conference venue:

Here’s The WeatherPixie for New York (Central Park)

Images via the Common Ground Art conference Web site and weatherpixie.com

The Worldmapper project “is a collection of world maps, where territories are re-sized on each map according to the subject of interest”. Danny Dorling,
geographer at Sheffield University and Mark Newman, physicist at the University of Michigan applied an artistic strategy of alienation and deformation to cartography. The contents mapped in the Worldmapper project are related to the inequality represented through issues such as infant mortality, life expectancy, wealth, education etc. which shape the form of the maps. Here are some references and resources:

Worldmapper – The Anatomy of a Small Planet

Paper by Gastner and Newman on the diffusion-based method for producing density equalising maps

Vol. 4(1) January 2007 of PLoS Medicine Journal

“Buehnen des Selbst. Zur Autobiographie in den Kuensten des 20. und 21. Jahrhundert” is a new publication of the Gestalt & Diskurs-series at the Muthesius Academy of Art, Design and Architecture, edited by Theresa Georgen & Carola Muysers. (Muthesius-Hochschule Kiel 2006: Gestalt und Diskurs Bd. 5, ISBN 3-9808798-6-0 (German) . According to Misch, the autobiography is defined as a description (graphie) of life (bios) of an individual through her/himself (auto). Representatives of the visual arts, architecture as well as literature and film, such as Wladimir Majakowskij, Erich Mendelsohn, Dorothea Tanning, Niki de St. Phalle, Sigmar Polke, Agnes Varda, Judy Chicago, Anselm Kiefer, Lynn Hershman, Diether Roth, David Hockney, Keith Haring und Tracy Emin are discussed as so called “autobiographic professionals/experts”. A review (in German language) can be found here on the ArtHist.net

I blog this because I am interested in perceiving life as a story, and a driver for developing artistic concepts and shaping processes. Writing, storytelling as well as the narrative in a more general sense constitute basic means for cross-disciplinary aesthetic processes with interactive systems. (An interesting example in this interdisciplinary context bringing together arts, design, textile and digital media is the work by Xiao Li Tan based on the thesis entitled
“Storytelling Wearables, an Alternative Autobiographie” on which I already reported last year.)

Amongst other authors, Cornelia Sollfrank, hacker, net and concept artist who invented female extension as well as the famous net art generator and who is a founder of the Old Boys Network discusses about “the impossible possibility” to write down one’s life (“I’ll be my mirrow”) with the curator Ute Vorkoeper. Renate Berger addresses the “navigation of the sea of life” related to gender issues in (auto)biographies.
Biography is big issue in German arts education and was introduced as an overall didactic concept for arts education (see the book Beruehrungen und Verpflechtungen edited by Manfred Blohm). However, Buehnen des Selbst brings together a variety of examples of artists and intends to look at the diverse media-based tendencies of the so called “autobiography of art” (Kunst-Autobiographie).

Friday we went to ICH² (Me to the power of 2), an intermedia dance performance for planetariums in the MediaDome Kiel (at University of Applied Sciences), which was co-ordinated by Tom Duscher, professor at the Department of Digital Media/Intermedia at the Muthesius-Academy of Arts, Kiel, realised in cooperation with the ballet from the city of Kiel with the director and head of choreography Mario Schroeder as well as Eduard Thomas, director of the Mediadome of the University of Applied Sciences in Kiel

We were discussing the changing meaning of the term of “the scenary setting” which changes in terms of the motion, the behaviour and the augmentation of the real environment attached to the choreography of performing bodies (very different from the kind of bombastic stage technology used in musicals and the like). The following elements were brought together in the performance: The performing dancers equipped with sensors and , motion capturing/tracking, the freezing of still images which creates a kind of temporarily planetarium paintings at the ceiling, immersive video animations projected and last not least the overall sound arrangement (by Sven Lütgen).
Also spoken text and typographic elements were integrated in the overall intermedia performance. Here is the link http://www.ich-quadrat.de/eng/index.php (English version, German: www.ich-quadrat.de). Would be interesting to discuss more low cost models to be developed with schools kids, students and other partner institutions.
Here’s the project description:

“ICH² is a unique installation for an extra-ordinary space: a planetarium including a 360 degrees moving image projection. State-of-the-art projection technology is merging with dance theatre and interactive media into a fascinating wholesome piece of art, is modifying it and allowing a completely new kind of production: dancer and media together create an artistic environment that involves the audience in a new way. The impact of the imagery and the intensively short proximity of the performers, forms a high level of immersion. Hardly has a visitor been closer to the dancers. This turns standard planetariums into experimental Digital Theatres, in which man and technology are part of a unique experience of symbiosis.
The main area of research for project ReACT was the advancement of real-time tracking-technology in regard of the spacial and technical characteristics of planetariums. While usually linear image sets were shown, the use of reactive software allowed interactivity and manipulation of the projected content.
Concept: With the help of installed cameras and sensors attached to the performer’s body, movements in the space can be tracked and transmitted to a computer system based on vvvv, a toolkit for real time video synthesis.
A specially programmed software interprets the dancer’s movements in real-time, which in turn is then projected onto the dome as interactive projection and stage backdrop. This allows to create a digital double of the dancer: Motion Tracking as duplication process.
This sensory tracking system is used as well for the audio part of the production. The acoustic input is used as impulse for the digital image generation so that the visuals are synchronized in real-time. In this way a reactive visual and audio world is created, that synergetically re-interprets the image and audio composition. “ photos via the web site www.ich-quadrat.de
Next performance will take place today, SA 10.2. , 8 pm

Just back from transmediale (I will come back to it later when I am back) where the new book developed in the framework of the conference proceedings of the 1st Media Art Conference held in Osnabrück in May 2006. It is called “Image problem? Media Art and Performance within the current picture/image-discussion”, edited by Slavko Kacunko, professor of modern art history (Kunstgeschichte der Moderne) at the University of Osnabrück and Dawn Leach,Düsseldorf, was available.

Slavko Kacunko, Dawn Leach (eds.)

Image-Problem?
Media Art and Performance within the current picture/image-discussion

Logos-Verlag, Berlin 2007
ISBN: 978_3-8325-1473-0

Language: English, German

“The present volume focuses the discussion of the time- and action-based arts seen before the backdrop of a general concept of the pictorial. The contributions also throw a light rich in contrast when the entirety of the picture science debate spreads before our view. Their mixture of perspectives and discursive affiliations provide current readings for this area of scholarly study.

The majority of the contributions collected in this volume originated in May 2006 at a conference of the Department of Culture and Geo-Sciences of the University of Osnabrück, Germany, that was devoted to questions of performance and media art within the context of the current discussion of the picture
/image science. The conference was an attempt to alleviate the suppression of media arts� practice, theory, and history from university contexts and brought together competent media experts, junior research staff and the interested public.

The present collection of texts begins with Dawn Leach’s brief discussion of the image and text issue, image diff erences, and systematisation attempts. Special attention is paid to the notion of picture anthropology and the age old image of man question, as currency in the German debates. This sets the
stage for some comparisons between North American and German efforts in this field and is rounded off with brief mention of new evolving agendas as well as concluding remarks concerning possible changes in academic fields at university level.

Slavko Kacunko devotes his essay to a generation of 1947 born �prophets� and �slanderers of prophets� that will be sixty come 2007. A characterisation of this generation, which here is called the Generation of
Eighty-three furnishes the pretext for historicizing �prophecy� in the age of its topicality. The focal point of his characterisation is the programmatic text published in the biopolitical year of birth of the Eighty-three-ers, Peter Sloterdijk’s Kritik der zynischen Vernunft (1983; in English as Critique of Cynical Reason [Minnesota, 1988]), flanked by the postdoctoral thesis Beat Wyss completed in 1983, Trauer der Vollendung ( (Hegel’s Art History and the Critique of Modernity, Res Monographs in Anthropology and Aesthetics series, Cambridge [UK] and New York, 1999) and, again dating from 1983, Hans Belting�s inaugural lecture in Munich on the end of art history.
The current image-theory debate is interpreted as one of the by-products of the “83 ideology” an outlook formed out of the criticism that raged against the generation of 68 and which is proving increasingly to be a stumbling block on the onerous path toward a fi tting scholarly treatment of more recent developments in art and the media.

Lena Bader reminds us of the dual function of photography at the inception of art historical study as both subject and medium with a view to defusing polemic tendencies to either postulate continuity at the expense of iconic differences, or to stylise historiographic shi s into a complete rupture with the past. Her new /old instrument of choice is the comparative analysis, which she believes can accommodate both consideration of pictoriality and mediality.

Katja Hoffmann is critical of historical efforts aimed at an “all-inclusiveconcept”
since it produces generalities at the expense of diff erences. She does place symbolic actions at the core of her exemplifi cation, but hopes to show by means of memory and context how the interpretive approach can produce more than levelling results.

Verena Kuni’s agenda is diff erent from Lena Bader’s and Katja Hoffmann’s since her specialist concern with web based art prompts her to a differentiated account of the state of disrepair in documenting her subject and already foresees the detrimental eff ects on future historical treatment.The context of the web, she argues, is a complex one that can only be insufficiently emulated. Kuni sees the reflexive reenactments of several artists as a possibility for sharing creative eff orts that would otherwise be
totally lost.

Marga van Mechelen’s project relates the fi rst directorship of De Appel (1975-1983) to the question “Is the medium still a condition of art?” Van Mechelen shows that the idea of the essential qualities of a medium and the many forms of artistic production more properly placed within Rosalind Krauss’ idea of the post-medium condition were realised within the framework of De Appel. She argues, that the De Appel programme went far beyond the medium condition and explains this paradox by discussing
some of the better known projects that were realized in this framework.

Petra Missomelius is concerned with narration in the spatial organization of digital environments. She brings a “topological turn” into play. The concept of narrative works introduced into participatory aesthetics offers the active viewer new modes of comprehending the spatial. She argues that our spacio-temporal experience of the architectonics of contact, the active negotiation of possible and actual space can be read as narrative structuring. Social interaction in “third spaces” (Bhabha 1994), she says, engages imaginary faculties, facilitates new, tentative, alternating identities, and creates hybrid cultural communities.

The storytelling and prototype development in interactive systems which Daniela Reimann is involved in as interdisciplinary didactic researcher represents a shift from Missomelius’ perspective. Not only conceived as teaching instrument, these practice oriented co-operations are equally instructive for teachers, specifically art instructors. Performative aspects and robotic systems stimulate different links to the spatio-temporal experience that instil imaginative outlets and make fit for creative output in a new
environment.

“In Between” is an excellent example for Gabriele Schmid’s critical observations concerning the short reach of aesthetic reception theory when faced with the holographic experience. Her arguments go beyond the specifi c example, but are strongly supported by its force. The noncontemplative, embodied reception is of course argued in all forms of digital based art defence, but the holographic medium has received far too little attention and is worthy of far more attention as Schmid cogently argues.

With Jens Schröter’s contribution we are invited to rethink our scopic regimes and he has good grounds to argue his transplanar perspective. Like Schmid he invites us to reconsider our discursive eff orts on an individual work: Marcel Duchamp�s TU M�. But his reconsideration proves that our blind spot has implications. He identifi es three types of transplanar images: 1. the stereoscopic, 2. the holographic, 3. the virtual interactive i.e. volumetric images. The �third spaces� that Missomelius introduces turn into a scientific re-evaluation of our scopic regimes with the purport of new genealogies that Spielmann wishes us to recognize in the differences between the media of moving images.

Yvonne Spielmann’s insistence here on medium specifi ty, grounded as it is in technical diff erences, prompts her to argue that these considerations must preace and inform any interdisciplinary approach to visuality. Even if we agree with Mitchell’s verdict that strictly speaking there are no visual media, since our perception encompasses more than the visual, we can not ignore, says Spielmann, research into the structuring of multi-sensory reception of multimedia artefacts. She offers an exemplary taxonomy of the filmic, videographic and digital forms of presentation meant to contribute to intermedia investigation of the refl exive participation of the recipient. The contribution of media studies, in her view, would entail employing cultural semiotic tools in media historical comparisons.

The fact that our guests from Poland (Prof. Dr. Ryszard Kluszczynski und Dr. Maciej Ozog) made no reference to picture science debates (which is why their texts are unfortunately not included) made clear, that the general discussion revolving around a picture science, is first and foremost of relevance for German speakers. Not the least reason to prompt seven of the eleven authors to choose to write in English with a view to generating more scholarly exchange bearing on these issues.”

via medienkunstdatenbank