Art Industries. Disruption of the Arts
Presentation of the MCD #72 Issue by Anne-Cécile Worms (FR), CEO of Art2M (Art2Machine) presented by E.C.A.S. – Tools for an Unknown Future.
With the participation of:
Pia Myrvold (NO) – artist
Marco Mancuso (IT) – critic, curator and Director at Digicult
In a time of economical crisis and cuts to art and culture, it’s increasing the number of international examples, cultural subjects, creative professionals (artists, designers, hackers, makers, musicians, filmmakers …) and industries – ICT, science research, manufacturing processes, robotcs, biotechnologies, artificial intelligence and more – involved in the standardization of sustainable research and development models in order to activate processes of Open Research that are functional to the creation of a “cultural object”.
Marco Mancuso, Digicult Director has been invited at Bozar Festival in Brussels – within the symposium “Tools for the Unkwnown Future. Art & Digital Technologies: Disruptive Innovation Practices For An Unknown Future” (http://www.bozar.be/activity.php?id=15457) – to talk about the Carte Blanche curated for the issue #74 of Magazine MCD.
MCD Director Anne Cècile Warms will introduce the whole publication leaving Marco Mancuso a room to talk about his researches and the interviews curated within the world of international media art.
For this issue Marco Mancuso focused on the most valuable case studies of Open Innovation strategies in the world of artistic media production, looking at those hidden forms of collaborations between artists, designer, scientists, practioneers, curators, critics, universities, institutions and industries in the world of ICT technologies, applied and medical sciences, open hardware and free software, computational and interaction design, audiovisual technologies…
With critical texts by Marc Garrett (Furtherfield), Claudia D’Alonzo (Digicult), Caroline Heron (Metamute) Nik Hafermaas (Uebersee) e interviste a Philip Dean (Aalto Media Factory), Gerfried Stocker (Ars Electronica), Carlo Ratti (MIT Senseable City Lab), Michael John Gorman (Science Gallery), Jeffrey Huang and Alex Barchiesi (Sinlab), Joachim Sauter (ART+COM).
The publication is at the base of the new courses Marco Mancuso is teaching at NABA – Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti Milano named “Tecniche dei Nuovi Media Integrati: Art Industries”
To have more infos about the publication, researches and subjects involved, please write at redazione@digicult.it and check the Pdf Issue: www.digicult.it/wp-content/public/MCD-74-DigicultCarteBlanche.pdf
For more than a decade, the economies necessary to set processes of media art and culture production have come from banks, private entrepreneurs, external sponsorships on markets that are apparently virgin but obviously ready for commercial contamination just to guarantee their own survival. The common sensation is that even these models are shortly destined to failure. We have to give place to more virtuous processes which correlate closely the research field with the production sector. I am speaking about “production” in a wide sense, and I am advocating to pay close attention to what is rather defined “cultural production”.
In a time of economical crisis and cuts to art and culture, it’s increasing, ideed, the number of international examples, cultural subjects, creative professionals (artists, designers, hackers, makers, musicians, filmmakers, graphic designers …) and industries – ICT, science research, manufacturing processes, robotcs, biotechnologies, artificial intelligence and more – involved in the standardization of sustainable research and development models in order to activate processes of Open Research that are functional to the creation of a “cultural object”.
It has been observed, over the past years, a growing phenomenon for which different cultural subjects, not necessarily institutionalized but making “value” on a new scale of socio-economic models more connected to Internet, Networks, Bottom-Up cultural production, can therefore provide guarantees by relating industrial companies with a network of universities, media & research centers, institutions, as well as creating an exchange mechanism among artists, professionals and practitioners (such as professors, former students, researchers, etc.) that may be even linked to these institutions themselves. Under the so-called “Art Industries”, these new cultural players are also able at setting dynamics of diffusion and circulation of the “cultural object” produced, within exhibition and museum itineraries which industries would probably have no access to. It may be that the interest of an entire productive sector to invest in art and culture will be greater than it was in the past.
The ability of “Art Industries” is therefore to act as a catalyst and incubator of a new form of bottom-up economy and culture, linked to the use of technology, even though, to do so, it is necessary that a network of contacts is created; it is necessary to be integrated in the right professional circuits and, above all, it is necessary to know all the underworld of artists and designers who have taken an active part for about twenty years. It’s important to know the most important case studies at international level, it is necessary to draw a specific literature, between that relating to the “creative industries” and that concerning the “media art”, to know also how paradigms of production of a cultural and artistic object are changing, as they are influenced by the relationship with companies and the mass production market, as meccanisms of free expression and research on the medium are changing. But the outcome is already determined.